Arizona AG sues Trump over Surprise immigration detention warehouse

By: Gloria Rebecca Gomez - April 24, 2026 4:57 pm

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes is suing the Trump administration over its plan to turn a warehouse in Surprise into an immigration detention center, saying that federal law prohibits its construction because the building is directly across the street from a hazardous chemical storage facility.

During a Friday news conference announcing the lawsuit, Mayes argued the building was never meant to house people and accused the Trump administration of violating multiple federal laws to support its mass deportation campaign. Standing in front of the 418,400-square-foot commercial warehouse that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement bought earlier this year, Mayes warned that its proximity to dangerous chemicals could result in a “mass casualty event,” if a chemical spill or fire occurred.

“Let this sink in: the federal government wants to open a jail inside a documented chemical hazard zone,” she said, gesturing to two large tankers with multiple warning labels idling on the side of the street, just outside of the entrance to the warehouse’s parking lot.

The warehouse is one of at least 24 across the country the Trump administration is aiming to retrofit into new immigration detention facilities to deliver on the White House’s goal to deport one million people every year. ICE originally set the capacity for the Surprise facility at 1,500 people, which would have made it one of the largest detention centers in the state. There are currently six ICE detention facilities in Arizona. The Eloy Detention Center has a bed capacity of 1,500 and the San Luis Regional Detention Center, the second largest, can hold up to 704 people. But the warehouse retrofitting program has seen revisions under new Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, and the planned capacity for the Surprise center was recently reduced to 542, with plans to house 250 by September.

https://azmirror.com/2026/04/24/arizona-ag-sues-trump-over-surprise-immigration-detention-warehouse/