Federal Contract Filing Confirms Plans for Immigration Detention Center in Arizona Suburb
Despite months of silence from the private prison company and local officials, a government notice names Management & Training Corporation as the sole contractor for a facility in Marana
Updated Feb. 26, 2026, 12:41 p.m. E.T.
After being contacted by Project Salt Box for this story, the Town of Marana said it had just become aware of the sole-source notice and acknowledged “the possibility of a federal agreement with MTC.” The town characterized the matter as “a transaction between the federal government and MTC that the Town of Marana is not a party to” — distancing itself from any role in the process despite documented communications with M.T.C. dating to May 2025. Town officials said M.T.C. had assured them it was open to meeting with residents “should the agreement move forward,” but stopped short of committing to any public process themselves. The town said it does not currently have plans for public engagement.
A federal contracting notice has confirmed what immigration authorities refused to acknowledge for months: a large immigration detention center is coming to Marana, Ariz., a suburb of Tucson where residents have spent the fall and winter demanding answers that local and federal officials declined to provide.
The Department of Homeland Security posted a notice to the federal contracting portal SAM.gov on Wednesday announcing its intent to award a sole-source, two-year contract to Management & Training Corporation, a private prison company, to operate a detention facility in the town capable of holding up to 775 people. The notice states that M.T.C. “is the sole owner and operator of the Marana detention facility that meets ICE requirements in the timeframe.”
The contract posting filed Wednesday left little ambiguity. “DHS/ICE needs to increase bed capacity to meet the administration’s interior enforcement and border decompression goals,” it reads.
The notice is the first official federal confirmation of a facility that local officials and M.T.C. had declined to discuss publicly for months, even as community opposition mounted. As recently as last fall, an ICE spokeswoman said the agency does not discuss “pre-decisional conversations” before a contract is finalized.
The site has a complicated history. The Arizona State Prison-Marana was built in the mid-1990s as the state’s first private prison and operated by M.T.C. until the state purchased it from the company in 2013. It was closed in December 2023 under Gov. Katie Hobbs as a cost-saving measure.
The state then sold the facility back to M.T.C. for $15 million in the spring of 2025 — a deal that came after the Arizona Legislature rejected a proposal to lease the property to the federal government for $1 a year to house immigration detainees. At the time of the sale, an M.T.C. spokesperson confirmed the company intended to use the facility as a detention center but declined to provide details.
Reporting by Arizona Luminaria later revealed that M.T.C. executives had quietly reached out to Marana town officials as early as May 2025 to ask what permits would be needed to reopen the site. Town officials told the company that because the property was already zoned for quasi-public land use, no rezoning would be required — only building permits and a business license.
The revelation that the facility was essentially a done deal, with no public process required, drew hundreds of residents to a community forum in October. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Arizona called on the town to hold M.T.C. to the same standards as any other business operating in the area. A representative from the ACLU could not be immediately reached for comment on the development in Marana.
The federal filing, posted Wednesday morning and with offers due by Thursday, describes a facility that would operate around the clock, providing guards, meals, medical and mental health care, legal services and transportation in compliance with ICE’s 2025 National Detention Standards. A detailed performance work statement attached to the solicitation describes a capacity of 513 male detainees — a figure that does not align with the 775-person ceiling cited in the notice itself. ICE did not immediately explain the discrepancy.
M.T.C. did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesman for the town of Marana could not immediately be reached.
The Marana facility has been added to our ICE Detention Tracker, an ongoing map of purchased, prospective, and operational immigration detention sites across the United States.
Thanks for this, it’s great. I’m in the process of compiling data on all ICE / CBP awards (contracts) from USAspending.gov. The goal is to create a summary of spending / obligations by contractor, and by county / city. Plus a searchable spreadsheet of active awards. This is to inform corporate targeting by protest / boycott / divestment campaigns. Does this seem like something Project Salt Box already has? Or something they could use? I’m doing this on my own, and I have limited time to work on it. So I don’t want to duplicate work already done by others. Also, I’m a data analyst, not a website designer. So if the Project would be interested in leveraging my work to get good info out to interested parties I’d love to share it. Let me know.
This is great information. Thank you for giving us all the eyes to see what is happening to our country. And thank you too #I Have Friends Everywhere for stepping up.
Check this out from Timothy Snyder’s Substack post this morning https://snyder.substack.com/p/cabinet-apocalypse?r=1tv0f8&utm_medium=ios