GardaWorld Accelerates Hiring at Surprise Warehouse Despite Pending State Lawsuit
Every job posting warns of exposure to toxic chemicals and extreme temperatures at the facility, which the state has argued in court was built to store goods, not house people.
Over the past week, GardaWorld Federal Services has ramped up its recruiting efforts for the operation of the warehouse detention center in Surprise, Az. The company has published job postings for medical staff, security guards, transportation personnel, and operational support. This recruitment push marks a sharp increase in activity after a slow start on the contract awarded in early March, and it comes even as Arizona’s lawsuit against DHS alleging NEPA, APA, and INA violations remains unresolved.
A day before the state announced its lawsuit, ICE issued a stop‑work order on the GardaWorld contract. Two weeks later, the agency lifted that order, and soon after, the company began recruiting in earnest.
Most of the job descriptions now state that “we are currently building a pipeline for this role, with an expected start date of later this year,” signaling that both ICE and GardaWorld expect the project to move forward despite ongoing litigation.
Staffing Plan for a Long-Term Detention Center
The job descriptions shed light into ICE’s longer‑term plans for the site, suggesting it is being built out as a long‑term detention facility, even though official documents portray it as a short‑term processing center.
GardaWorld is hiring internal custody officers to provide “direct supervision of the resident population,” patrol housing units, conduct searches for contraband, and manage intake and release. Separate perimeter security positions focus on guarding the outer grounds, controlling vehicle and pedestrian access, and searching cars and people at entry points, indicating a fenced, controlled campus with layered security. Inside, a dedicated control‑room operator will run the CCTV system, alarms, access‑control panels, and sally ports, maintaining constant surveillance over the movement of residents and staff.
Armed transport officers will move residents in restraints to courts, hospitals, airports, and other detention facilities, tying Surprise directly into the broader detention pipeline. A full medical team—licensed nurses, medical assistants, medical records staff, pharmacy technicians, and a healthcare quality lead—will run intake screenings, chronic‑care clinics, medication distribution, and infection‑control programs in line with correctional healthcare standards. Even the maintenance, janitorial, and laundry roles are described in terms of servicing “resident housing units,” kitchens, medical spaces, and common areas around the clock, indicating that this is a detention facility where people will live, work, and receive medical care, not a processing center that happens to have some beds.
Early Warning Signs of Hazardous Conditions
The position descriptions also hint at what the facility will be like for the people inside it. Every single job posting repeats the warning that “employees may be exposed to extreme cold or hot weather conditions, fumes, or airborne particles, toxic or caustic chemicals, and loud noise.” This underscores a central concern raised by critics of ICE’s warehouse detention plan: these structures were built to store goods, not people.
In its initial complaint, the state of Arizona asserted the warehouse “was constructed as an industrial distribution facility for up to four commercial tenants, not a space to house hundreds of human beings” and that it “almost certainly does not have the appropriate water and wastewater infrastructure to safely (and humanely) house hundreds of people.” The Plaintiffs go on to say that the site “sits directly across the street from a chemical storage facility containing thousands of gallons of hazardous materials.”
The complaint, combined with the warnings issued in the job descriptions, paint a picture of a facility whose design, location, and working conditions are fundamentally misaligned with the basic health and safety needs of the people ICE plans to detain there.
GardaWorld did not respond to a request for comment.
F ICE
Such blatant disregard for the law is par for the course