The ICE back door: From Phoenix’s McDowell to Nogales

The white Nissan pickup was left on a street in west Phoenix .

In the trunk were a tile saw, boxes of ceramic tile and an open bag of adhesive. Ramón Barraza, the man who drove it, never returned for it.

It was 7 a.m. when Barraza left the apartment he shared with his girlfriend near 43rd Avenue and McDowell Road in Maryvale, a predominantly Latino neighborhood in west Phoenix. It was the first Monday of January 2026. Remnants of Christmas lights still hung from balconies. Barraza had already paid his rent.

He left in his pickup for work. He has not returned home since.

Barraza is 60. In Mexico , he had worked as a certified public accountant. In Phoenix, he learned to charge by the square foot. He had spent two decades installing ceramic tile floors.

That morning, he was expected at a house near 119th Avenue, a roughly 10-mile drive. He had been working there for more than a week, laying marble tiles. Each weighed about 20 pounds. Lifting them again and again left his muscles aching.

He headed west on McDowell Road, a broad thoroughfare that crosses Phoenix. It begins at the foot of the mountains, among homes with spacious driveways, and continues toward Maryvale, where the city grows denser with butcher shops, markets, currency exchanges and apartment complexes like the one Barraza had left that morning.

He turned onto 43rd Avenue to begin his route. Near 47th Avenue, he noticed a vehicle merge onto McDowell Road and begin following him. He saw it in his rearview mirror. He kept driving.

It was a white Chevrolet Tahoe with dark windows. The SUV followed him for several blocks.

At 67th Avenue and McDowell Road, he stopped for gas. His cellphone screen showed it was just after 7:10 a.m. He greeted some friends from construction, filled the tank, poured himself coffee and exchanged a few comments about the day’s work.

Rumors had been circulating in Phoenix for weeks. Social media videos warned that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement was detaining people on streets, at gas stations and in parking lots. Barraza lived in the United States without legal status, but he still had to work.

He merged back into westbound traffic. Right away, he saw the same Tahoe with tinted windows. This time it was following too closely. After he passed 75th Avenue, it flashed its lights and signaled him to pull over.

“It had no identification of any kind,” Barraza recalled. “It was like a ghost car. It wasn’t police. It didn’t have a light bar. It had nothing.”

He turned right and stopped on an unmarked street. A vacant lot was on one side. The men who got out of the SUV were not wearing uniforms.

“Get out of your vehicle,” they told him. “They even spoke to me in Spanish.”

He complied, opened the door and got out. He said one of them asked, “What is your name?”

“My name is Ramón Barraza,” he replied.

“Good. You’re the one we came for. You entered on a tourist visa and stayed in the country. So you’re illegal. We’re ICE, and we’re taking you with us.”

He then saw that more than one SUV was involved. Four vehicles took part in his arrest, he said: one stopped in front of him, two behind him and another beside him. Then he felt handcuffs tighten around his wrists.

Traffic continued moving on McDowell Road.

They put him in the back seat of one of the vehicles. A woman was driving; Barraza said she was wearing a blue uniform. At 7:35 a.m., the white pickup was left there beside the vacant lot, with the tile saw, boxes of ceramic tile and open bag of adhesive.

They retraced the route Barraza had driven minutes earlier on McDowell Road. They passed the gas station where he had talked with his friends and the spot where he first noticed them following him. Then they turned right onto 43rd Avenue, and he caught sight of his apartment complex before the convoy entered the freeway heading east.

“What will become of my life now?” he remembered thinking.

On the way, he tried to tell the officer that the handcuffs were hurting him. He tried first in Spanish, then in English. “Wait a moment,” the agent said. “We’re almost there.”

As he waited, Phoenix passed outside the window.

With Barraza still handcuffed, the vehicle left the freeway and crossed McDowell Road again. He knew downtown Phoenix well but did not recognize where they took him.

The agents brought him into a building through a rear street. “They took me through a warehouse garage. There was no sign, just a gate behind a house. It was very hidden,” he recalled.

A guard came out to meet them, he said. In the garage, two people sat at a small table and asked him to unbuckle his belt and pants and remove his shoelaces. They took his cellphone and wallet. They removed the cuffs from his wrists and shackled his ankles.

The building where ICE took Barraza is at 2035 N. Central Ave., north of McDowell Road in Phoenix.

From the outside, the building reveals little: a gray facade, rows of windows, some bars and metal shutters. People carrying folders and photographs arrive through the main entrance each day. They come for interviews, fingerprinting or other immigration proceedings.

ICE maintains that it is not a detention center. “It is a processing facility, not a detention center,” the agency said in an email to Conecta Arizona.

Yet from Jan. 1, 2025, through March 10, 2026, ICE held 9,276 people at the Central Avenue office, according to internal ICE records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, published by the Deportation Data Project and analyzed by Conecta Arizona .

The spaces where people are held are called “hold rooms” in ICE detention standards . They are temporary cells designed for stays of no more than 12 hours, “except in exceptional circumstances.” Because the written policy says people remain there only while awaiting transfer to another facility, the rules prohibit beds or cots.

But the 12-hour rule changed in June 2025, when the agency issued an internal waiver extending the limit from 12 to 72 hours for one year. In the document, ICE acknowledged the limit had already been violated before such detentions were authorized, saying it “had to resort to holding individuals in holding facilities beyond the 12-hour limit.” To formalize that practice, the agency authorized holding people for as long as three days in the “temporary” cells.

Even under the new limit, at least 423 cases exceeded 72 hours during the period analyzed.

On June 23, 2026, a federal judge struck down the waiver finding it arbitrary and capricious, in part because it conflicted with ICE’s own national standards.

Before 2008, according to the the Global Detention Project , the Central Avenue building operated as a formal immigration detention center. Today, it is listed on paper as an administrative office — a classification that helps explain why its use as a holding facility receives little public attention.

Still, thousands of people pass through its holding areas each year. Barraza spent 26 hours in the cells at ICE’s Central Avenue office in Phoenix while the waiver extending the holding limit from 12 to 72 hours was in effect. His case shows the effects of changes adopted during President Donald Trump’s second term. His account helps reconstruct some of what happens behind the doors of an office whose use as a detention site has received little public attention.

On the other side of the gate, there were no waiting rooms or public-service counters. There were cells. Barraza knew he was still in Phoenix, but he did not know exactly where he was or how long he would be there.

At that point, his family was not yet looking for him and did not know where he was.

They put him in one of the cells. Before entering, he could see people in others, including one holding only women. He had never been in a place like it. The room had no windows and had a door with a small window facing a hallway. The cell seemed only slightly larger than his apartment bedroom. Barraza estimated it was about 15 by 20 feet, perhaps 15 by 15. It did not seem large, but he said he counted about 25 people inside.

In the cell, he saw a sink and an exposed toilet for everyone to use. He knew he would have no privacy if he needed it.

Two concrete structures served as beds, but there was not enough room for everyone. Many people lay on mats on the floor, and others had to step carefully to avoid those who were sleeping. Some rested next to the toilet.

One cellmate asked, “Where are you from?”

“Sinaloa.”

Another man jumped in: “I’m from Sinaloa, too.” Then another, and another. Barraza felt more at ease.

Some said they had been detained at immigration appointments; others, on their way to work. Still others acknowledged having criminal records.

Barraza thought, “Oh, man, I don’t even have enough for a soda if they let me out. How am I going to get back to my hometown?”

Through the small window in the door, he asked to call his family. They told him to wait.

“One moment. The person who will interview you hasn’t arrived,” they replied.

While he waited, he cupped his hand under the sink faucet and brought the water to his mouth. They were not given cups. As the hours passed, he continued asking to call his family. Again, he was told to wait.

In the same cell, Barraza spoke with a man who said he had been held there for almost three days.

ICE told Conecta Arizona that immigrants “are processed quickly” for transfer to detention centers such as Eloy or Florence, both in Arizona. The agency also said detainees receive clean water, appropriate bedding and blankets. ICE added that all detainees receive three meals a day.

Barraza described what he was given to eat every six hours:

“One of those little bean burritos, the frozen kind you put in the microwave. They gave it to us warm, at least. One burrito, nothing else. No water, no fruit.” He said they remained hungry. Some asked for another burrito. They were told no.

María Fernanda Arreguín Gámez, then Mexico’s consul for protection and legal affairs in Phoenix, told Conecta Arizona that she visited the facility regularly and had seen detainees receive one burrito during her visits. She also said the food complied with ICE policy. “We looked into how much energy it contains and why they are giving them only that as a meal. They classify it as meeting the basic nutrition standards,” Arreguín said.

ICE added that “certified dietitians evaluate the food.”

Luis Silas, another Mexican migrant detained at the same office as Barraza nearly a month later, in February 2026, said he also recalled receiving only a bean burrito, “like the ones from the store,” every six hours.

“At 6 in the morning, noon and 6 in the evening,” Silas said.

ICE detained Silas, 58, when he went to buy wood to build a bookcase for his wife at a store near 43rd Avenue and Camelback Road, north of McDowell Road in the same neighborhood. His case parallels Barraza’s in several ways. The agents addressed him by name, and he responded. He believes they identified him through his car’s license plates. His son, Isaac Luis-Azamar, witnessed the scene and intervened because he thought an agent was about to hit his father. Isaac was arrested and accused of assaulting an ICE officer. Silas was taken to the Central Avenue office.

Like Barraza, he could not identify the location because he was brought in through the back. “It’s very hidden,” he said. He described the interior: “They are rooms divided up to hold people. It’s just that the doors are hidden.”

After entering, he also asked to contact his family and received the same response Barraza recalled: “We’re waiting for the person there to arrive so you can talk.”

Silas said officers threw him to the ground during his arrest. His arm hurt.

Regarding medical care, Arreguín warned that because the site is a processing office rather than a formal detention center, people do not receive regular medical consultations or access to medication. ICE said the opposite in its email, asserting that it provides comprehensive health care from the moment someone enters its custody, “including medical, dental and mental health services, as well as 24-hour emergency care.”

The consul said that when someone needs treatment, the consulate tries to deliver medication through relatives.

ICE also said in its response that for many detainees, “this is the best medical care they have received in their entire lives.”

Silas had one chance to shower during the three days he spent at the Central Avenue office. He was also lent a toothbrush. Barraza said people who had been detained longer were allowed to shower at a designated time based on their group. His cell’s time was between 1 and 2 a.m. No one in his group showered the night he was there.

Arreguín said that after months of pressing the issue, the consulate persuaded ICE to provide at least one bottle of water a day, an occasional shower, soap and a toothbrush to people held for longer periods at the Phoenix office.

“That is why we go every day,” she said. “If someone tells us, ‘I don’t have water,’ we ask for the water."

Phoenix immigration attorney Hugo Larios, who has practiced in Arizona for more than two decades, said of the building:

“The ICE offices on Central are not equipped to hold people there overnight,” he said in a telephone interview.”

His turn for an interview came at 8 p.m. Barraza said the agent already had all the answers. The questions did not come with question marks.

The agent looked at the screen. “I’m not going to ask you. I’m going to tell you where you lived, and you’re going to confirm whether I’m wrong.” An address appeared on the monitor: McDowell Road. His apartment number. Personal information no one had asked him to provide.

“I think they captured my plates at 47th Avenue, when they got behind me. Then, with that ... they followed me to 67th,” Barraza said.

Larios explained that ICE can access databases linking license plates to registered addresses. “ICE parks at a gas station, and a pickup that looks like it is used for construction or landscaping pulls in. Then they run the plates to see who owns it, whether that person has papers and so on,” he said.

According to Larios, agents make arrests even without sufficient information.

“Basically, racial profiling is allowed now,” he said. “If the person admits to being here without papers, they arrest them. Unfortunately, we’re seeing it every day.”

Barraza said the officer who interviewed him told him he would help and prepare the paperwork himself. The officer told Barraza to make sure he understood what he was signing.

“Look, if I were you, I’d sign a voluntary departure. I’ll prepare the paper myself. Don’t think I’m going to put anything bad in it. I’ll put down voluntary departure so you can fix your situation later, have your girlfriend petition for you and enter legally,” Barraza recalled.

The officer told him he could speak with a representative from the Mexican Consulate.

Under the Vienna Convention the consulate’s role when meeting with a detainee is to ensure the person knows their legal options and has access to representation.

“We always tell them that we are not attorneys and that their family needs to contact an attorney directly. We offer a program called Free Legal Guidance,” Mexico’s consul for protection and legal affairs in Phoenix explained.

Barraza said he spoke with a consular representative. He told the representative that he had entered on a tourist visa and lived with Yesenia, a U.S. citizen he planned to marry. First, he had to finalize a divorce that was already underway.

According to Barraza, the Mexican official said signing a voluntary departure would be in his best interest but warned him to make sure the document said exactly that. He would receive an English version and a Spanish one, but would sign the English document.

“He told me: ‘But think it through carefully. If you believe you have a citizen child, a wife or someone born in the United States who can petition for you, then fight your case,’” Barraza recalled.

Arreguín maintained that consular staff cannot recommend that a person accept or reject voluntary departure. Their role, she said, is to present the available options and try to ensure the family consults an attorney before the detainee signs. She also said the team that visits ICE facilities is trained to preliminarily identify people who might qualify for a bond hearing.

The consulate could not explain what specifically happened during Barraza’s interview. His file is protected by personal-data rules, and only he can request it through Mexico’s transparency platform.

Barraza said no one told him he could request a bond hearing.

By then, he had been detained about 13 hours without being able to contact Yesenia, with whom he had moved into a Maryvale apartment in August 2025.

Before Yesenia, Barraza had been married for 34 years. He met Yesenia at a park while walking with his son, and he began a new life with her.

He thought about his family, his abandoned pickup, his tools, his clients and the unfinished marble floor. He thought about the ICE agent who had checked his criminal record and found it clean.

“I never committed a crime, not even the smallest one,” Barraza said. “But everyone pays for what one person does.” Holding out his palms, he said officers struggled to process him:

“They couldn’t even take my fingerprints. They wouldn’t show up. My fingers are practically worn down from work. They’re covered in calluses.”

Yesenia began to worry when it was time for “Coke time,” a routine they shared at lunch. Barraza would have a Coke, Yesenia a Monster energy drink, and the boy would join them with something of his own. Even when he was busy, Barraza would answer the video call or pick up the phone to say he could not talk. That afternoon, he did not answer.

“I didn’t hear from him until around 8 that night,” Yesenia said.

She had already made dinner, and the boy was waiting with her. Barraza called from an unknown number to say he had been detained. Yesenia tried calling the number back for information, but officials would only confirm that he was in custody.

In Silas’ case, 15 hours passed before he was allowed to call at 2 a.m.

Silas’ daughter answered, but before they could speak, she had to listen to a recording. She recalled the message: “If you have a neighbor, anyone you think is an illegal immigrant, you can report them, and we’ll give you a certain amount of money.” Then she heard her father’s voice.

After speaking with the consulate, Barraza returned to the immigration agent and said he would accept voluntary departure. That same night, when Yesenia was able to speak with him, she asked him not to sign anything and said they should find an attorney. Barraza believed that if he were transferred to a detention center or deported, he would have fewer options.

He recalled the agent telling him that the laws had never been enforced “this way, so strictly” and that in his case, officials would have released him before, but could not now.

The records document that change. The Central Avenue office received thousands of people even before 2025. In 2022 and 2023, during the Biden administration , there were about 18,000 admissions. Most stays were associated with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the agency responsible for the border and ports of entry, and many people were released on parole or orders of recognizance. During those two years, the median stay at the office was less than nine hours.

The shift came later, coinciding with Trump’s return to the presidency. In 2025 and 2026, the Central Avenue office continued to receive thousands of people, but the pattern changed: Most detentions were linked to ICE, departures were concentrated in transfers and removals, and prolonged stays began to number in the hundreds.

In addition, the government tightened its detention policies in July 2025. For years, people who entered the country without authorization but had lived in the United States for years could ask a judge for a bond hearing while their immigration cases were pending. The new interpretation allowed more immigrants to be detained without such a hearing. The policy was challenged and produced conflicting court decisions. But that dispute concerned people who had entered the country without inspection. That was not Barraza’s situation.

Larios explained that because Barraza had entered on a tourist visa and did not have a criminal record, he could request a bond hearing. “With $500 or $1,000, he could be out in a week with a hearing before a judge,” Larios said.

Under detention standards, ICE must give each person the ICE National Detainee Handbook, which sets out their rights, including the right to request bond when applicable. Barraza said he received nothing. The consular representative did not tell him about that option either.

According to federal data analyzed by the Deportation Data Project, voluntary departures increased 28-fold during the first year of the Trump administration. Researchers concluded that many people accepted them to avoid spending more time in detention, not because they understood their legal options.

Arrests of people without criminal records, such as Barraza, increased 8.7-fold. Arrests on streets and in communities, rather than in jails, increased 11-fold. Barraza’s arrest was one of them.

The next day, Barraza signed the voluntary departure paperwork.

Silas spent even longer in ICE’s temporary cells. He was brought in Friday, Jan. 30, and sent to Mexico on Monday, Feb. 2. He spent more than 70 hours in custody, sleeping on the same mats for three nights and sharing space with at least 14 people.

“Some had been detained for several days,” Silas recalled. Arreguín acknowledged that the consulate had identified such cases. “When they are Mexican nationals, we ask the decision-makers ourselves to transfer them or explain why the person has not been transferred,” she said.

For more than a decade, ICE’s rules for temporary holding cells changed little. Every version published in 2011 , 2016 , 2019 and 2025 , requires access to drinking water and cups, basic hygiene items, privacy when using the toilet and a meal after six hours. The standards also require documentation of every meal provided and say people must receive telephone access upon arrival or immediately afterward.

ICE administrative offices, such as the one in Phoenix, are not always subject to the same framework as formal detention centers and operate in a less clearly defined area. ICE runs them under its own internal directives, including the waiver issued in June 2025 that extended the holding limit from 12 to 72 hours.

Conecta Arizona could not locate any public inspections of the Phoenix office by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General or ICE’s Office of Detention Oversight.

The absence of publicly available inspections may be related to how such spaces are classified. According to the American Immigration Council , facilities that hold people for less than 72 hours and have an average daily population below 10 generally fall outside routine reviews by ICE and its outside contractors.

Nor was it possible to confirm the cells’ official capacity in any public ICE record. Barraza saw three before he was locked up. Silas, detained a month later, recalled counting eight. Mexico’s consul for protection said there are seven.

Thousands of people pass through the holding areas each year. Yet the site’s official classification as an administrative office rather than a detention center makes it harder to know what happens inside its cells.

The accounts of people held there help reconstruct some of what occurs inside.

During the three days Silas was there, he received one burrito every six hours and observed a pattern that repeated each morning. “At 8 was the departure for Nogales,” he recalled. He saw people arrive every day, and by the next morning, many were gone. “They were told they could sign and leave.” Silas came to believe some people accepted voluntary departure to avoid remaining in detention for a long time.

The Mexican consul described a similar situation. “We have to be there at 6 in the morning,” she said. Consular staff have had to move their visits earlier to try to find people before they are transferred to Florence or sign voluntary departure paperwork, she explained.

Silas also eventually agreed to leave. He could not speak with a representative from the Mexican Consulate because he made the request on a Sunday. He said he was not given the National Detainee Handbook. On Monday, Feb. 2, 2026, he agreed to leave the country that had been his home for 24 years. When he crossed the border, his son was still detained and accused of assaulting an ICE agent.

Barraza was placed in a van with other people on Jan. 6, 2026. His ankles were shackled again.

Barraza recalled that a family with three young children was in the van. According to his account, the children had been taken to the facility and were then transported with him in the same van to Nogales. During the trip, a woman he identified as their mother told him she had not slept because she had shared a cell with other women and was afraid for her children.

Internal ICE records obtained through FOIA and processed by the Deportation Data Project contain information consistent with parts of his account. Three Mexican minors were detained in Phoenix on Jan. 5, 2026: one born in 2023, another in 2020 and a third in 2014, making them about 2, 6 and 11 years old. All three were recorded as collateral arrests and had no criminal records. All three were taken to the ICE field office in Phoenix, the same facility where Barraza spent his only night in detention. Like Barraza, all three left at 9:10 a.m. Jan. 6. Their destination: Nogales.

The matching dates, location and approximate ages correspond with the family Barraza described, although the available records alone cannot establish that they were the same people.

One day after Barraza left, on Jan. 7, a group of women stood watch outside the main entrance to the same ICE office, holding signs and “Know Your Rights” cards. They carried a notebook to record relatives’ phone numbers. They also noted what people arriving for administrative appointments were wearing, in case they did not come back out.

They were members of the Borderlands Resource Initiative . They came because of what was already happening on Phoenix’s streets. They said many immigrants went to appointments alone, without an attorney or anyone who could notify relatives if they were detained. They knew nothing about the cells.

When Barraza crossed the border into Nogales, Sonora, it was also his girlfriend Yesenia’s birthday.

The migrants in the van agreed to stay together after crossing so they could look out for one another. While shackled on the journey, they talked about eating together in Nogales.

As soon as they entered Mexico, they received a sandwich and water. The Mexican government offered them lodging and some money in pesos. Barraza felt they received a good welcome. He was also given a brochure describing a program for returnees that promised access to phone calls, legal assistance and help paying for travel to their places of origin.

“Mexican immigration picked me up and took me to a shelter,” he said. He had dreamed many times of returning to Mexico, but not this way.

He slept in a shelter set up in an industrial park in Nogales, wearing the same stained clothes he had worn when he left for work in Phoenix. He had no money and felt disoriented. Nothing seemed real.

“It’s a nest of confusion. I don’t even know Mexican currency,” he said.

From Jan. 20 through Dec. 17, 2025, the United States repatriated 145,537 Mexicans. In Nogales, his face, his name and his callused fingers would become part of a new year’s statistics.

“For a person my age, it’s difficult,” he said. In Mexico, being older than 35 is already a problem for someone seeking work. “I don’t even have identification.”

Barraza stayed at the Nogales shelter for a week. Yesenia traveled to the border to bring him clothes and shoes. He wanted to look presentable when he arrived at his parents’ home. With the 3,000 pesos the Mexican government gave him, he bought a ticket to his hometown, Quilá, Sinaloa.

Quilá, a town of 5,988 residents near Culiacán, has faced violence since September 2024 that has pushed many people to leave the region. Barraza, who had been away for 23 years, returned unfamiliar with that landscape. His uncertainty was of a different kind.

The streets seemed smaller. He noticed fewer trees and more small houses packed closely together. He had returned to the town where he was born but no longer knew how to inhabit it.

In Phoenix, Yesenia decided to follow through with their plan for 2026. In late February, a pregnancy test was positive. “We had planned for 2026 to be a year together, and we’re still following that plan. That’s why I’m leaving now,” she said.

On March 11, she boarded a bus to Culiacán, Sinaloa , to live with Barraza in Mexico, a country she had visited but never lived in. The bus left from 27th Avenue and McDowell Road.

On April 18, 2026, Barraza received the final judgment in his divorce from his previous spouse while in Quilá, Sinaloa. Yesenia was beside him; the hearing was conducted by video from Phoenix. Their immigration attorney told them that if Yesenia files the petition, if the waiver is approved and if nothing becomes complicated, Barraza could return in seven or eight years.

The attorney also warned him what would happen if he became impatient. “If you try to cross again without documents and are detained, the penalty becomes longer. There would be no possible waiver until you have spent 10 years outside the country.”

After returning to his parents’ home, Barraza recognized a Volkswagen Beetle in the yard. It was the car he had left parked there 23 years earlier when he emigrated to the United States. In Phoenix, his white pickup has remained parked since Jan. 5, when ICE agents took him from McDowell Road. His children retrieved it from the street and parked it with all his tools still inside, as though Barraza would go to work the next day.

“I don’t know what future awaits me. I have to look for work at my age. It will be very hard for someone to hire me, but I have to work."

In Luis Silas’ case, a federal jury acquitted his son, Isaac Luis-Azamar, on July 17, 2026, of assaulting an ICE agent. The defense maintained that he had intervened to protect his father after seeing him knocked down and believing the agent was about to strike him. By then, Silas had been in Nogales, Sonora, for more than five months. As of publication, his son remained in ICE custody in Arizona.

Ramón’s phone number, with an Arizona area code, still rings in Sinaloa. He continues paying for the line. His clients and construction friends greet him from the other end. He answers them as he always has.

Barraza said that despite everything, he feels grateful to the United States.

“I achieved my American dream because, with the family I brought, my children are now professionals. I worked in construction so they could get an education, so they could stand up for themselves in that country.”

For now, Barraza remains caught between two lives. “It’s very uncertain. I can’t organize my thoughts,” he said. “They took me out of my life. I don’t feel at home.”

He feels that despite so many years of work, he did not manage to have “something” in the United States. He wants others to know his story so they can prepare.

What he did manage was to become a son again.

“In that respect, I’m doing well because I can be with my parents after so many years: hug them, pamper them, care for them. Give them their medicine, give them everything. I’m allowing myself that luxury,” he said.

On Sept. 9, 2026, U.S. Rep. Yassamin Ansari made an unannounced visit to ICE’s Phoenix facility. At a news conference outside the building, she said she had seen cells with toilets, spaces designated for families and some smaller cells. “I learned that if a minor were held here, they would be placed alone in one of those smaller cells,” she said. She was not allowed to speak with detainees.

As Barraza tries to rebuild a future in Mexico, the gray building on Central Avenue in Phoenix continues to bring dozens of immigrants like him through its back door.

The arrest and detention data cited in this story come from internal ICE records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act and published by the Deportation Data Project at deportationdata.org. Conecta Arizona conducted the journalistic analysis of those records.

This story was originally published by Conecta Arizona and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.