Surprise AZ’s Propsed ICE Facility Is Surprisingly Large and a Surprisingly Grave Moral Question for Every AZ Community

This footage (which will play in your Blue Sky app if you click below) gives an interesting insight into the sheer size of the recently DHS-purchased warehouse facility in Surprise, AZ. It looks as if the campus would be capable of holding many THOUSANDS of detainees. The size is simply staggering.

It’s hard to put into perspective how truly massive the warehouse is that was recently sold by the Rockefeller Group to the Department of Homeland Security for $70 million to build a concentration camp in Surprise, AZ. Across the street is a huge neighborhood and a school. It’s 400,000-square-feet.

— Arizona Right Watch (@azrww.bsky.social) 2026-02-03T23:34:48.246Z

That revelation is supplemented by testimony from an as-yet identified man, who obviously has some relevant historical insights we must consider, to the Surprise town council (which, again, I cannot simply embed; the link will open a Substack post from Simon Rosenberg, to which I subscribe). Coverage of that hearing, which drew hundreds of concerned citizens, is here.

The basic message is that as Americans, we now ‘know enough’ about Homeland Security’s leadership, amorality, and unconstitutional behavior toward detainees to be unable to retain a claim to innocence for the crimes against human rights that will occur within. We must stand up and be heard and resist, lest we become like the mayor of that German village to which the speaker refers.

It can often feel overwhelming — the sheer scale of the reckless immorality and outright lawlessness now happening in our own government. What can I possibly do to stop this, you might ask? I ask myself that question daily.

The only answer is, what you are able to. Some of us have a larger ability, some of us a smaller one; but each can and must do what they are able.

Every army in history has a rough ratio of 90% support/10% warfighters. If you can be a soldier on the frontline of the resistance to this evil, great! But if you can’t (which is most of us), you can lend your time and talents to supporting those who can and will.

Mutual aid and community grassroots resistance is what will ultimately save us from this sickness metastacizing within our federal government out of the unique malignancy that is Donald Trump and his cadre of fascist revolutionaries.

Our politicians and office-holders will and must rely on our efforts to do anything effective in resistance to Trump’s ongoing authoritarian putsch: make them take up the fight. As FDR famously probably didn’t say, “make me”, but the myth holds a truth — elected officials can and will only do that which their supporters “make” them do.

Think globally, but “make” them, locally.