Marana, Arizona debates plan to reopen prison as ICE detention site

In short: A closed state prison in Marana, Arizona may be turned into a large ICE immigration detention center, and members of Congress say key details are still not public.

What happened

A former Arizona state prison in Marana closed years ago and sat empty. In July 2025, the state sold the roughly 500-bed facility to Management & Training Corporation, or MTC, a private company that runs prisons and detention centers under government contracts.

News reports and a federal notice say ICE, the agency that detains people for immigration reasons, signaled it wants to use the site. The plan described in reporting would increase capacity to roughly 775 people. A DHS memo cited in coverage said the center would provide guards, meals, medical care, and transportation.

On Feb. 19, 2026, Reps. Adelita Grijalva, Greg Stanton, and Yassamin Ansari sent a letter to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons. They asked whether a contract has been signed or finalized and called the lack of public information unacceptable. MTC has said ICE issued an “intent” to use a sole-source contract, meaning no bidding process, but that no final agreement is in place.

Why it matters

Marana is now facing a local fight over a federal decision that could reshape the town, from jobs and traffic to medical and safety services. It also ties into a wider national debate about private contractors and the technology used in immigration enforcement, like computer scoring tools that help decide who is detained versus released (similar to a risk score in insurance). The New York Times reports that AI is part of the larger political argument, but local reporting has not shown a specific AI system being deployed at the Marana facility.

Source: NYTimes