ICE rushes public comment period to create mega-prison in Arizona desert
ALSO INSIDE: Epstein took handwritten notes of his criminal conspiracy, survivor alleges
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ICE rushes public comment period to create mega-prison in Arizona desert
The Department of Homeland Security is pushing through plans to reopen a closed, 500-capacity prison in southern Arizona and use it to hold nearly 1,500 detainees.
The proposed location in Marana has been met with fierce opposition from local communities. Earlier this year, both the Pima County Board of Supervisors and the neighboring Tucson City Council voted to oppose the site’s use as a detention center. In an apparent attempt to sidestep that pushback, DHS has cut its typical 30-day public comment period down to eight days.
Because this is a federal project, members of the public from across the country are encouraged to submit comments regarding the proposal to icesustainability@ice.dhs.gov by June 18. Grassroots group Pima Resists ICE first noticed the expedited timeline only days before it was set to close. The group has carefully monitored the proposed site since it was first announced, and lead organizer Caroline Isaacs believes the attempt to block the community out of the process is a sign that public pressure is working.
“This is a pattern that we’re seeing in this administration, and particularly within DHS of systematic dismantling of any shred of accountability, of transparency, of checks and balances,” Isaacs told COURIER. “It’s very clear from every step that they’ve taken that they have no interest in hearing community concerns or addressing them, and they’re not going to go out of their way to allow for what used to be standard public input processes and good governance.”
Isaacs advised anyone submitting comments to focus on the purpose of the public comment period — namely, environmental concerns. While the administration could dismiss human rights violations as outside the scope of the review, issues relating to the site’s potentially hazardous location on a 100-year floodplain, the light pollution that could come with increased capacity, or the impact of additional barbed wire fences on property values are more likely to be seriously considered.
The Marana proposal is one of the latest in a string of prison camps the Trump administration has attempted to rush through without public consent. Local governments in Georgia, Michigan, Missouri, Virginia, Utah, and several other states have enacted measures of opposition to stall or prevent facilities from opening, though those efforts have only succeeded in a handful of cases.
Members of Congress have joined protestors in pressuring DHS to abandon its incarceration plans in Georgia, New York, and Arizona, with mixed results. The Trump administration ignored requests from Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) and the residents of Circle City, Georgia, and purchased a site expected to hold 10,000 people. In response, city officials determined there wasn’t adequate utility infrastructure and shut off the water to the site. In Chester, New York, DHS abandoned its plans after Rep. Pat Ryan (D-NY) collected more than 20,000 petition signatures from community members in opposition to the site.
In Surprise, Arizona, Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) was initially opposed to the proposed site in his district, but got on board after DHS officials assured him they would listen to community concerns. Rep. Juan Ciscomani (R-AZ), who represents Marana, has remained silent on the issue, prompting his colleague in a neighboring district to take action.
Once again, DHS is rushing through a public comment period to avoid public scrutiny and expedite Trump’s mass deportation agenda. Our community has already made its concerns clear. DHS should extend the review period by at least 30 days to give the public a meaningful opportunity to review this report and provide feedback,” said Rep. Adelita Grijalva (D-AZ). “Human beings are not cargo to be warehoused in detention facilities, where far too many are denied even the most basic medical care and treatment. DHS should abandon its plans for this facility, just as they have done with others around the country.”
“Detention expansion is a money-making machine for the private prison industry. Arbitrary deportation quotas mean more beds, bigger contracts, and more profits for companies that have poured millions into Trump’s campaign,” Rep. Adelita Grijalva (D-AZ) said after the site was announced. “Time and again, these facilities have operated with too little oversight and accountability – with devastating human consequences, including dozens of deaths in custody. Our community deserves transparency, and families deserve an immigration system rooted in dignity and due process, not corporate profit.”
Opposition to the mass incarceration of immigrants has risen sharply since December 2025, when plans made by the Trump administration to convert industrial warehouses into detention camps were leaked to the Washington Post. The decision to hold massive amounts of people in uninhabitable warehouses, coupled with the murders of Renee Goode and Alex Pretti by ICE agents in Minnesota, caused a seismic shift in public support for the president’s anti-immigration efforts.
*Editor’s Note: This story has been updated with a statement from Rep. Grijalva.
Since day one of Trump’s political career, people have desperately attempted to normalize his absurd abuses of power and blatant corruption – and 10 years later, much of corporate media remains a victim of their own attempts to return to a sense of normalcy.
It’s time to stop sane-washing the insanity.
What Happened
Marina Lacerda was twelve years old when she had to become the main provider for her mom and little sister. She was able to get odd jobs around Queens thanks to an older friend — nothing glamorous, but it kept the lights on.
After about a year, her friend came to her with what sounded like a huge break: a rich guy in Manhattan who paid $300 for massages. She’d told him about Marina’s situation and he said to bring her by. In 2002, that was two weeks’ rent — money that would normally take a week of hard work to earn.
So she went.
“I immediately thought, wow, this is the real deal. Having a maid open the door and seeing all that — it was so different from what I was used to,” Marina told COURIER. “Seeing that, and just walking into his mansion, and walking into his waiting room, seeing all the pictures with different presidents and different friends and celebrities. I was just so impressed — and, you know, shocked that I was even in this mansion.”
The extravagance was intimidating, but Marina’s friend reassured her it would be a quick job with a big payoff. The maid took them up to the third floor, where they waited in the massage parlor until the owner arrived.
“He walked into the room, he was wearing a robe, and he comes up and he puts out his hand,” Marina recalled. “And he says, ‘Hi, my name is Jeffrey.’”
Marina was first ensnared by Jeffrey Epstein when she was 13 years old and remained in his web for six years. The grooming and sexual abuse she encountered with him wasn’t entirely unfamiliar; it reminded her of her stepfather, who would creep into her room at night when she was younger.
Both men preyed on her youth and her desperation. But while she eventually reported her stepfather to the police to put an end to his abuse, Epstein was experienced. He knew exactly how to coerce her both into coming back and into silence. Every visit ended with a thick envelope of cash, either from him directly or from his executive assistant, Lesley Groff. Lesley even gave Marina her cell phone number and encouraged her to call if she needed anything. There was always just enough money to help Marina get by — but never enough for her to break the cycle of abuse.
“If I was going to get paid, Jeffrey Epstein would pay me directly with cash. But if I did need money or if I wanted something else, or if I needed furniture, I would have to call Lesley Groff,” Marina said. “If I even wanted to speak to Jeffrey Epstein, I had to go through Lesley Groff.”
Groff was questioned by congressional investigators in June as part of their probe into the government’s handling of the now-closed case against Epstein’s trafficking empire. She claimed to have had absolutely no knowledge of her boss’ criminal activity during her long tenure as his executive assistant.
“For 18 years, I worked for Dr. Jekyll but was never permitted to see the true Mr. Hyde,” Groff said in a prepared statement. “Mr. Epstein was, in hindsight, a master manipulater [sic] and deceiver who separated his legitimate life from his secret life as an abuser and made sure, that as his secretary, those two worlds did not collide.”
But accounts from Marina and other survivors tell a completely different story. Lesley was the point-of-contact for New York girls in Epstein’s orbit, just as Sarah Kellen was for girls in Florida. Lesley met Marina in person, scheduled massages over the phone, and gave her money.
Marina may have been forced to do adult things, but she was very much a child — in voice, in size, in mentality. Those aren’t the sort of things that go unnoticed. And, by all accounts, they didn’t.
Marina said that by the time she was 17, Epstein had lost interest in her sexually and told her she was looking and acting too old for him.
That’s when he and Lesley pushed her into recruiting.
“I didn’t know what trafficking was,” Marina said. “I didn’t think that me bringing my friends and some of the girls that I thought needed help, who were also immigrants, were also getting kicked out of their house and were also in a house where there was drug abuse, where there was alcohol abuse. I’m thinking that I’m helping these women — I’m sorry, these girls.”
For a little while, she did what her friend had done: found girls in her neighborhood who could use the money, brought them to Epstein’s mansion, and they both got paid.
Marina didn’t recruit for long. She eventually cut ties and tried to move on from Epstein completely. And she thought she had, until a few years later, there was a knock at her door.
“So in 2008, when the FBI agents reached my door and knocked on the door, I opened up the door and they introduced themselves and they said, we want to talk to you about Jeffrey Epstein. And immediately, my first reaction was like, ‘Oh no,’” Marina said. I closed the door, and when I closed the door, the FBI agent put her foot on the door and said to me, ‘You’re going to speak to me whether you like it or not.’ And she dropped her card inside my house and I closed the door. And when I closed the door, I picked up the card and I was just like, ‘Oh my God, like, what do I do?”
As Marina describes it, the government treated her more like a suspect than a victim — and it looked like they were still deciding which one she was.
Buried within the Epstein Files are internal documents and email correspondence between the agents assigned to Marina’s case and Epstein’s attorneys. These files pull back the curtain on what was going on. Many of the source files have since been taken down by the US Department of Justice after it was discovered that they were improperly redacted; Marina’s name was illegally left unredacted at least 50 times, even on pages where the names of Epstein’s known accomplices were blacked out.
Prosecutors were unsure how to handle the complicated victim/accomplice structure Epstein had created: was Marina a victim due to the sexual abuse, or an accomplice as a result of her participation in recruiting other girls? The FBI wanted to use her as a witness, but at the time of their visit, had not determined whether or not to grant her immunity.
“Lacerda was a victim (she was paid to perform sexual acts when she was under 18) and was also paid to bring girls to Epstein, thus Lacerda could be classified both as a victim and as a co-conspirator,” agents wrote in their immunity determination, listing four federal crimes she would face if immunity was not granted.
While prosecutors deliberated, Marina reached out to the only person she knew with the resources to help.
“I ran up my stairs and I called Lesley and I said, ‘Lesley, I’m very confused. I have two FBI agents here asking me about Jeffrey Epstein.’ And she says, ‘Don’t worry, Jeffrey’s going to call you right away.’ Jeffrey calls me within seconds, and when he called me, I said, ‘What the hell is going on? Why are there FBI agents in my door?’” Marina said. “And he said, ‘Listen, don’t call me. Don’t call the office. Don’t do anything.’ And I said, ‘Jeffrey, I’m very scared. I need to call these people. The FBI agent said that I need to speak to her.’ He said, ‘Don’t worry, I’m going to have lawyers call you.’ And within five minutes I had lawyers calling me.”
After that, the lawyers went to work — for Jeffrey Epstein.
“I went to their office and my first question was, ‘Should I be completely honest about everything?’ And they said, ‘Yes, you need to be completely honest about everything that you know,’” Marina said. “And I was honest, I think too honest to the point that they were telling me, ‘You’re going to go to jail. You were trafficking women.’ And I was like, ‘But I was 14 years old, 13, 15 years old. They’re like, ‘Well, what you did is against the law.’”
The FBI did eventually determine that Marina should receive immunity and wanted to bring her in to testify before a grand jury, but instead of contacting her directly, prosecutors went through Epstein’s attorneys. Marina was never told about the deal, and Epstein’s lawyers told prosecutors that if they compelled her to appear, she would plead the Fifth and refuse to cooperate with the investigation.
As a result, prosecutors left the entire New York side of Epstein’s operation out of the 2008 indictment. It severely limited their case and paved the way for the sweetheart deal that allowed Epstein to continue trafficking for another decade.
Marina knew none of this until the Epstein Files were released.
She also discovered an answer to a question she’d had for years — one that could provide a tangible, undeniable thread connecting Epstein’s clients, accomplices, and co-conspirators to the countless crimes they committed.
“It’s crazy how today I can see all my files and see how the FBI found me in 2008. From what I understand, and from what I’ve learned so far, it’s that they had a piece of paper with my name on it, and he was in his West Palm Beach home,” Marina said. “He threw it out in the garbage, and I guess they were conducting an investigation, and they found that piece of paper. And that’s how they found me in New York in 2008.”
According to a 2019 prosecution memo, Epstein kept notes on his criminal conspiracy. He wrote down his conversations, how he spent his cash, and kept a ledger of where his money was going and what it was used for. Those notes are referenced in the files, but don’t appear to have been released by the DOJ, an omission that would be in direct violation of the Epstein Files Transparency Act.
It’s easy for individual members of Congress to get overlooked by national outlets as they quietly skate to reelection again, and again, and again. The following is an overview of different congressional representatives you may not have heard of, with fun facts about their origin stories they’ve tried to keep out of the public narrative.
Mississippi Sen. Roger Wicker
Since taking office in 2007, Sen. Wicker has:
Sponsored 332 bills, 15 of which have been signed into law
Believes the US should execute a preemptive nuclear strike against Russia
Opposes humanitarian aid of any kind to Palestine
Opposed President Obama nominating a Supreme Court Justice in an election year: “American people should have the opportunity to make their voices heard before filling a lifetime appointment to the nation’s highest court.”
Supported President Trump nominating a Supreme Court Justice in an election year: “Republicans promised to confirm well-qualified, conservative judges and justices to the federal courts. We should continue to fulfill this promise.”
Fun Facts
Sen. Wicker is loyal to his campaign donors — and the return on their investment has been well worth it. One of his first successes in office was to guarantee $6 million in spending to Aurora Flight Sciences, a defense contractor whose president had donated $8,000 to his first Senate run in 2006. Wicker has continued to fight for the private company’s bottom line, securing them another $48 million contract in 2018.
His opposition to addressing climate change appears to be financially motivated as well. Wicker was quiet on the subject until the oil and gas industry began donating to his campaign in 2012. Two years later, he was pushing for the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. In 2015, Wicker was the only senator to vote against the formal recognition of climate change, and in 2017, he was one of the primary voices that convinced Trump to leave the Paris Climate Agreement.
Wicker was generously rewarded for his actions: he received $200,000 from the oil and gas industry before the Paris pullout and another $1 million in the years since.
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