A graduate from Dysart High School, the school across from the proposed concentration camp just spoke out against the facility, describing it as a “death camp.” They point out that Dysart High has a 60% Hispanic population. Another speaker said there are actually 9 schools in the nearby vicinity.

Residents are chiding the council and mayor for saying they had no idea this facility was being bought by DHS. “It was your job to know,” said a speaker who called the council “failures.” Another said they wouldn’t be making these “we can’t do anything” excuses if it was a proposed homeless shelter.

So far, only two have spoken up in favor of the concentration camp. The crowd booed the hell out of them. The mayor told people to stop booing and they booed him too.

A Surprise resident said that, if this camp gets finalized, it will turn Surprise into an “epicenter of protests,” and lead to more death and more violence. “This doesn’t belong in anyone’s backyard or anywhere in the United States.”

Surprise is west of Phoenix and has significantly grown over the last 20 years. Several speakers tonight have tearfully talked about the life they’ve built in the area as the children and grandchildren of the migrant field workers back when Surprise was just miles and miles of agricultural land.

Nobody is accepting the mayor and council’s weak statement, excuses that the deal is done, and that they had no knowledge of the purchase — They’ve been repeatedly called failures to the community and speakers keep recommending ways the City can take actionable steps to stop this concentration camp.

A Dysart High School student who says she can see the warehouse from her neighborhood: “I get a pit in my stomach when I think about how in a few months I have to go to school knowing humans are screaming for help and not getting the rights they deserve.” It’s 11:15 PM.

The meeting is adjourned. Mayor Kevin Sartor ended the long meeting by saying “We hear you, we have a lot to consider and your voices are impactful and powerful.” Surprise showed tf up. The overflow room filled + hundreds outside. It ended with only 2 speakers in favor of the ICE camp.

Highlighting the speaker who stood in front of the Surprise mayor and told him to consider what the Mayor of Ohrdruf must’ve thought before he died by suicide: “He might have thought ‘how is this my fault I had no jurisdiction over this’ maybe he said ‘this site was not subject to local zoning.’”