Battleground state takes Trump to court over immigration detention warehouse

by Gloria Rebecca Gomez, Arizona MirrorApril 24, 2026Arizona 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.GET THE MORNING HEADLINES. SUBSCRIBENew facility slated to be operational by the fall 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.The move to erect dozens of new detention centers sparked vehement pushback from elected officials and community members alike. Public criticism of the federal government’s approach to immigration enforcement has spiked in the wake of mass raids and the killings of Alex Pretti and Renee Goode in Minnesota.Hundreds of Surprise residents have consistently packed city council meetings to voice their disapproval of the planned facility, located a mile away from a public high school whose student body is over 60% Hispanic. One council meeting saw over a thousand attendees. But it’s unclear what the city council could do to oppose the federal government. And city leadership has shown little interest in taking up the issue. Mayor Kevin Sartor said he believed the city has no legal grounds to take action against the Trump administration over the facility in an April 15 interview on The Mike Broomhead Show. Instead, Sartor and four other city officials met with the Department of Homeland Security in March to lobby for a reimbursement of lost city revenue and an agreement that ICE operations won’t spill over into the nearby schools.Mayes: ICE violated federal laws protecting immigrants in detention and requiring public noticeDuring Friday’s news conference, Mayes criticized Sartor’s unwillingness to resist the construction of the ICE facility.“You lose every battle that you choose not to fight,” she said. “Today, the state of Arizona is choosing to fight.”The Democrat has vocally opposed ICE’s plans since February, when she wrote a letter demanding more information from then DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and warning that she was considering filing a lawsuit to stop the facility under the state’s public nuisance law. On Friday, Mayes said that idea was dropped in the face of the likelihood that it would fail because of the U.S. Constitution’s Supremacy Clause, which elevates federal laws above state laws.Instead, the lawsuit alleges that the Trump administration violated the National Environmental Policy Act, which calls for public input on and environmental assessments of construction projects that are likely to impact local communities; the Immigration and National Act, which mandates that the Department of Homeland Security set up “appropriate places” for immigrants to be detained; and the Administrative Procedure Act, which requires the federal government to offer clear explanations for its actions. Hinging the lawsuit on ways in which federal laws were flouted insulates the legal challenge against potential arguments that the federal government’s decisions take precedence over state regulations, Mayes said.“The Supremacy Clause doesn’t apply to the federal government’s own laws,” she said.Similar legal arguments against a facility in Maryland accusing the federal government of failing to conduct environmental reviews and allowing public input convinced a federal judge to block construction last week.Mayes said that locating...