Ansari makes surprise visit to Phoenix ICE facility after Mirror report

Filed 1h ago · Via Arizona Mirror · The Buffoon Desk

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Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: Baker, Cornelia, 1855- · No restrictions · via Wikimedia Commons

Rep. Yassamin Ansari made a surprise oversight visit to a Phoenix ICE facility Wednesday, her 13th such visit, after Arizona Mirror reporting found detainees staying roughly 20 hours instead of the facility's stated 8-to-10-hour norm. The site has 10 holding cells, no beds, no on-site medical care, and no shower for detainees, and is officially meant to hold people no more than 12 hours. Fire department records show 11 emergency responses to the facility between December and March, nearly all sending a detainee to the hospital with lights and sirens.

Ansari found 29 detainees on-site and said an ICE official told her a waiver removing the 12-hour limit was lifted in July, months after a federal court had already vacated that waiver as ‘arbitrary and capricious.’ She was barred from speaking to detainees under a new ICE policy requiring prior approval. ICE, meanwhile, has publicly denounced the Mirror's reporting on ICE's own released data as false.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

Denying your own numbers while the ambulance records tell a different story is the kind of thing that would get a used-tractor salesman run out of the county fair. A facility built for a half-day layover stretching to nearly a full day isn't a rounding error, it's a pattern. Every new oversight visit turning up a brand-new rule tells you exactly how welcome the oversight is.

Source: Read the original at Arizona Mirror → Scored: The Bandit · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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