Just down the road from where families sit and eat before jumping on a flight out to go on vacation, dozens of immigrants at a time are being held at a secluded facility at a suburban Phoenix airport. They’ll be there, with no beds or showers, until they board a plane that will either fly them to an out-of-state immigrant detention facility or deport them.
The Arizona Removal Operations Coordination Center, or AROCC for short, is a 25,000-square-foot facility at the Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport. It opened in 2010 to little fanfare and can house up to 157 detainees and 79 employees from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to an ICE press release from 2010.
While larger detention facilities in the state have gotten much more attention, AROCC has avoided the limelight. It is one of many temporary hold facilities across the country, meant to house detainees for short periods of time before they are shipped to longer-term facilities or removed from the country.
However, an analysis by the Arizona Mirror of data of ICE detention records that the Deportation Data Project obtained via the Freedom of Information Act shows that, in some cases, detainees have stayed for longer than the 12 hours ICE has said the facility is meant for.
“The short-term hold facilities are meant to be very short-term hold facilities,” Noah Schramm, border policy strategist for the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona told the Mirror. “If you are finding people who are staying there for extended periods of time, that is something we would find concerning.”
Of the more than 9,000 people who have gone through the facility between September 2023 and June 2025, the Mirror was able to identify 95 instances in which people stayed at the facility for longer than 48 hours. In one case, a detainee was recorded as having stayed at the facility for 42 days.
The man held for 42 days was listed as “not an aggravated felon” from Venezuela whose charge was listed as “immigrant without an immigrant visa.” He was deported to Mexico, according to the data.
As recently as June of this year, 77 people were detained for approximately four days over a weekend that included the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha; at least one of the detainees was identified in the data as a practicing Muslim. The 77 people were ultimately deported via a lengthy charter flight.
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The 2022 audit also describes more of the inside of the facility. At the rear of the building is a gated sally-port for vehicles to enter where detainees are brought into a larger room and processed.
They’re then taken to one of 10 “multiple occupancy hold rooms” that do “not contain showers” or beds “due to the short stay.”
“Detainees remain in the clothing they arrive in and are offered sweatpants or sweatshirts for temperature comfort if needed. There are no educational rooms, library, on-site medical clinic, food service or recreation areas located at the AROCC,” the audit report says.
Auditors do note that there is one shower with a curtain at the facility, though it is not in the holding rooms.
ICE did not respond to questions about the current state of the facility, the cases it identified of detainees who stayed longer than 48 hours or provide additional information on how it works with subcontractors.
“Thank you for contacting ICE Media. We have routed your query to the appropriate public affairs officer for handling,” a rapid email response to the Mirror’s questions said. Two weeks later, when the Mirror followed up the agency replied, “Acknowledging receipt of your query. Thank you.”
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