To: City of Surprise Mayor and Council, Governor Katie Hobbs, Attorney General Kris Mayes
Block the construction of a new detention center in Surprise!
ICE is spending a shocking $38 billion to buy and convert warehouses across the country into detention centers—a core tactic at the center of Trump’s cruel deportation regime. And they have their sights set on Surprise, Arizona, for one of the next locations of their cruel camps.
Arizona residents OPPOSE misusing our taxpayer dollars to fund this administration’s inhumane, chaotic, and unlawful deportation agenda. And we demand our local elected leaders do everything in their power to block the construction of this new mega detention center.
Why is this important?
The federal government is spending $313 million to convert a warehouse in Surprise, Arizona, into a mega ICE detention facility. The 400,000-square-foot building is set to be among the larger ICE facilities, detaining up to 1,500 people. Warehouses are for packages, not people, and every single person in our state must speak out against this dehumanizing construction.
GardaWorld Federal is the company contracted to oversee the conversion—the same company running the disastrous detention camp in the Everglades, “Alligator Alcatraz.” The Everglades detention camp is a dangerous facility where immigrants have gone missing, and experts have sounded the alarm on everything from deadly diseases, hazardous flooding, and human rights abuses.
We can’t allow GardaWorld Federal and DHS to replicate the inhumane and immoral camp in our own backyard. We need local elected officials to use every lever in their power to interfere, delay, and block the development of a detention camp in Surprise, Arizona.