Greg Stanton

Trying to set a limit: After months of horrific reports from ICE detention centers, Democratic U.S. Reps. Adelita Grijalva, Yassamin Ansari and Greg Stanton are trying to set a 12-hour limit on how long people can be held at holding facilities like the one near the Mesa Gateway Airport. The trio visited the holding facility recently and called it a “failure of basic humanity” in a news release. “No one should be forced to sleep on concrete floors or share a toilet in full view of dozens of others, in confined spaces never meant for prolonged detention,” Grijalva said. “This bill restores commonsense limits, strengthens oversight, and makes clear that humane treatment is not optional — it’s the law.” (April 30, 2026)

In other dystopian immigration news: Tempe eighth-grader Dilan Manay Paredes and his mother are stuck in detention in Texas, the New Times’ Morgan Fischer reports. Last week, dozens of students at the Paredes’ school walked out in protest of his detention, and Democratic U.S. Rep. Greg Stanton called for the release of the boy and his mother. The family left Ecuador three years ago and sought asylum in the U.S. The mother skipped an immigration check-in out of fear she’d be arrested. When she was taken into custody in a Walmart parking lot (Border Patrol claims she “failed to yield” and agents thought she was smuggling people), she called the school and said she’d come by with ICE to pick up her son so she wouldn’t leave him behind. “Just tell them I’m gonna miss you guys,” the boy wrote to a friend in Spanish in an Instagram message. “I love you guys a lot. They’re outside. They might send me back to my country.” (June 1, 2026)

Time to upgrade: A bipartisan trio of U.S. representatives from Arizona are pushing for a major overhaul of the port of entry in downtown Nogales, which is prone to flooding, EJ Clarke reports for KGUN. Republican Rep. Juan Ciscomani was joined by fellow Republican Rep. Abe Hamadeh and Democratic Rep. Greg Stanton in a letter to the Department of Homeland Security calling the port “a national asset in desperate need of investment.” Speaking of Nogales, Karloz Chavez, who was raised in the border city, just won the American Poolplayers Association team Master championship, per the Green Valley News’ Jeff Chew. (May 21, 2026)

Extremism: Republican U.S. Rep. Eli Crane of Northern Arizona’s Congressional District 2 introduced legislation to defund the National Endowment for Democracy, which supports pro-democracy groups around the world, and which Crane says is “a key contributor to global censorship campaigns, domestic propaganda, and regime change politics,” the Verde Independent’s Tony Capobianco writes. Meanwhile, Democratic U.S. Rep. Yassamin Ansari announced her extreme heat legislative agenda, which includes a trio of bills dealing with urban heat mitigation, emergency preparedness and studying the economic impact of extreme heat. Finally Democratic U.S. Rep. Greg Stanton launched a new “extreme heat” caucus in Congress, per KJZZ’s Katherine Davis-Young. (June 5, 2025)

The government is winning (second): The federal government shutdown entered its third week and is now the second-longest shutdown in U.S. history, per 12News’ Andrew Weil and Megan Divers. The longest shutdown in history was during Donald Trump’s first term and lasted 35 days. The shutdown has trickled down to Arizona federal workers as many make backup plans for another week without pay, reports Henry Smardo and Nick Karmia for Cronkite News. The Arizona AFL-CIO reported that around 34,500 federal workers have been furloughed or are working without pay. Democratic Rep. Greg Stanton said the shutdown was a moral failure of leadership and — like other Democrats — has pushed for an end to the shutdown. “To Arizonans, please stand with these workers who land your planes, keep you safe, protect your homes,” Stanton said. “Those prolonging the shutdown to exert more pain, to punish these federal workers out of spite, shame on you.” (October 23, 2025)

No Child Left Funded: Arizona U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly and U.S. Rep. Greg Stanton penned a letter asking Education Secretary Linda McMahon to release the $118 million in federal education funding Arizona usually gets on July 1, KTAR’s Shira Tanzer reports. The Trump administration is holding onto more than $6 billion in federal grants, and the members of Congress said the state’s overall federal education funding fell by 11%. (July 9, 2025)

Watch out, Stanton: Kai Newkirk made it onto the Washington Post’s list of progressive candidates who might knock off Democratic incumbents. Newkirk is running against U.S. Rep. Greg Stanton in Arizona’s 4th Congressional District, where Stanton’s support for Israel and the Laken Riley Act might make him vulnerable to criticism from the left. (July 15, 2026)

No chance to hide: When three Democratic members of Congress showed up unannounced at an ICE holding facility in Mesa, they came away saying the overcrowded conditions in the facility were “shocking,” “shameful” and people were packed in “like sardines,” Jerod MacDonald-Evoy reports for the Arizona Mirror. Democratic U.S. Reps. Greg Stanton, Yassamin Ansari and Adelita Grijalva decided to show up without warning after the Mirror reported last week that the number of detainees dropped right after two of the Democratic lawmakers gave the required seven-days notice for a planned visit. Then the number of detainees shot back up right after that first visit. At a different ICE facility in central Phoenix, the wife of a detainee says 33 men are crammed into a single cell and the food is so bad it’s making some detainees vomit, the Republic’s David Ulloa Jr and Daniel Gonzalez report. (April 13, 2026)

DINO stampede: Democrat Amish Shah is officially running for Congress — again — in a crowded Democratic primary to take on Republican David Schweikert — again, per the Republic’s Laura Gersony. And he’s racked up endorsements from former Republican state lawmakers Rusty Bowers, Regina Cobb and Joel John. Meanwhile, Democratic U.S. Rep. Greg Stanton got put in charge of the campaign wing of the “New Democrat Coalition,” a moderate, pro-business group of Democrats. (May 14, 2025)

That didn’t take long: In less than two days, nearly 7,000 people wrote to the Department of Homeland Security about the warehouse in Surprise that ICE officials want to turn into an immigration detention center, per the Republic’s Elena Santa Cruz. The deluge of comments came after Democratic U.S. Rep. Greg Stanton took advantage of an opportunity for public feedback and created a form for Arizonans to use. At least one Arizonan, Republican U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar, says he’s satisfied with the answers he got from DHS, although a letter from a member of Congress usually gets a faster response than everyday citizens would get from a form letter. (February 25, 2026)

Congress says shhhhhhhh!: Federal lawmakers, including Arizona Democratic Congressman Greg Stanton, are worried that some European airlines are allowing people to talk on the phone during flights and they want to make sure that doesn’t happen in the U.S., the Washington Post reports. Lawmakers passed the Quiet Skies Act in 2018. While it should ban in-flight calls, the FAA hasn’t actually adopted rules to implement it. So they’re trying again with a new Quiet Skies Act, which Stanton co-sponsored. Traditional cellphone calls are already prohibited, but lawmakers are worried that the restriction doesn’t apply to Wi-Fi calls, even though airlines in the U.S. already ban all phone calls in the air. (July 23, 2026)

In other dystopian immigration news: Tempe eighth-grader Dilan Manay Paredes and his mother are stuck in detention in Texas, the New Times’ Morgan Fischer reports. Last week, dozens of students at the Paredes’ school walked out in protest of his detention, and Democratic U.S. Rep. Greg Stanton called for the release of the boy and his mother. The family left Ecuador three years ago and sought asylum in the U.S. The mother skipped an immigration check-in out of fear she’d be arrested. When she was taken into custody in a Walmart parking lot (Border Patrol claims she “failed to yield” and agents thought she was smuggling people), she called the school and said she’d come by with ICE to pick up her son so she wouldn’t leave him behind. “Just tell them I’m gonna miss you guys,” the boy wrote to a friend in Spanish in an Instagram message. “I love you guys a lot. They’re outside. They might send me back to my country.” (June 1, 2026)

Calling bullshit: Despite publicly available data showing overcrowding at an immigration holding facility in Mesa, a Department of Homeland Security official claimed two Democratic members of Congress were wrong when they highlighted the overcrowding, the Arizona Mirror’s Jerod MacDonald-Evoy reports. As MacDonald-Evoy previously reported, one of the few times the facility wasn’t overcrowded was when U.S. Reps. Yassamin Ansari and Greg Stanton visited the facility in February, after giving ICE a week-long heads-up about the visit. (May 26, 2026)

That’s suspicious: An immigration holding facility in Mesa is routinely overcrowded and keeps detainees longer than intended, but just happened to drop near capacity ahead of a congressional visit in February, the Arizona Mirror’s Jerod MacDonald-Evoy reports. The site is meant to hold 157 people, yet regularly housed more than 500 before Democratic U.S. Reps. Yassamin Ansari and Greg Stanton announced their visit. After the notice, numbers dipped, then climbed right back up once they left. (April 10, 2026)

Rest in Peace: Longtime Republic photographer Rob Schumacher passed away. Schumacher had shot just about every major sports event in the state in the last few decades, and tributes poured in from journalists, sports fans and Congressman Greg Stanton, who wrote that “no one was better suited to tell Arizona’s story.” (May 20, 2026)