Immigration detention facilities in Florence, Arizona, are quietly managing a measles outbreak, with three cases identified there as of Friday, but information shared with the public has been limited and delayed, to the concern of volunteers who help recently released detainees.
Migrant advocates say some detainees at Florence appear to be experiencing longer stays, due to necessary quarantine measures. The wife of a Florence detainee said her husband, and other immigrant detainees being transferred to Florence, were forced to wait more than 24 hours on a bus outside the facility earlier this month, due to the outbreak.
At the same time, volunteers who assist people released from immigration detention told the Arizona Daily Star that people are still being released from Florence, with mixed messages from the facilities on whether they've possibly been exposed.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, parent agency of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said Friday the three confirmed cases in Pinal County were at the two federal detention facilities in Florence, but not at Eloy Detention Center. The detention centers are owned and run by the private, for-profit company CoreCivic.
"ICE Health Services Corps (ICE's medical authority) immediately took steps to quarantine and control further spread and infection, ceasing all movement within the facility and quarantining all individuals suspected of making contact with the infected," according to the emailed DHS statement to the Star.Â
But as of Friday morning, the location of the measles cases was unknown to Anna Keating, an advocate who works at a Phoenix shelter that receives detainees after they're released from Florence and Eloy.
"We sent people to Philadelphia and Newark on Tuesday on a Greyhound bus," she said, referring to detainees from Eloy. "Iâm concerned weâre spreading it in the country, I'm concerned weâre spreading it throughout the world. I'm concerned for our volunteers."
Initial cold-like symptoms typically appear one to two weeks after measles exposure, and the highly contagious virus can be transmitted days before its signature rash appears.
Detainees at Florence have told Keating they've been checked by a nurse daily for signs of the virus and are told to wear masks when they leave their cells, Keating said. Eloy detainees said they're being checked for symptoms weekly, she said.
"We have to find out what protocols they're following to contain it by hearing it from detainees," Keating said. "That's frustrating. They actually are doing quite a bit. ... But they absolutely are not being open about this and I don't know why."
The quarantine at Florence is supposed to last through Feb. 4, according to the Mexican consulate in Tucson. Consulate officials have been conducting consulate interviews with Mexican nationals by phone instead of in person, due to the quarantine, said Lee Wong Medina, deputy consul in Tucson.
Pastor Hector Ramirez, of Iglesia Cristiana el Buen Pastor in Mesa, said his church has been receiving immigrants released from Florence and Eloy detention centers since 2018. He's concerned about the risk of public exposure, though county health officials say the risk to the public is low.
A vial of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine. Immigration detention facilities in Florence, Arizona are quietly managing a measles outbreak, with three cases identified there as of Friday, but information shared with the public has been limited and delayed.
"Last week, we didn't know that there were measles cases in Florence," he said Friday, speaking in Spanish. "How can they let people leave Florence knowing that there is a quarantine?"
ICE and DHS had not responded to the Star's Thursday query about whether deportations were continuing from Florence during the outbreak.
On Wednesday Ramirez inquired with Florence officials about whether there's any measles-exposure risk to his volunteers, who are all over age 70. Initially, the official said no, there was no risk, Ramirez recalled.
But later, Ramirez got an email saying 11 migrants would instead be released to the Phoenix bus depot, rather than his church, to ensure his staff wouldn't risk exposure to measles.
"He told me, 'Knowing that your volunteers are (older) adults and not wanting to expose them, we're not going to bring them to your church,'" he said.
Keating, with a different Phoenix shelter, said she arranged for a volunteer to meet the released migrants at the bus depot and help them on their way.Â
It's unclear what's being done to prevent staff from spreading the disease, Keating said.
"Weâve got literally hundreds of people going in and out of the facility every day that work there," Keating said. "Don't we as a community have a right to know what protocols theyâve put in place to prevent this from spreading outside the detention center, and also within the detention center?"
Unvaccinated staff at Eloy helped drive the spread of the virus during Pinal County's last measles outbreak, in 2016 at the Eloy Detention Center, the Associated Press reported. The outbreak of the highly contagious disease involved 31 cases among detainees and staff.
DHS did not respond to the Star's query about whether staff are required to get vaccinated for measles.Â
Tucson immigration attorney Mo Goldman said he has a client at Florence who posted bond on Jan. 23, but still hadn't been released days later. An ICE officer told him it was due to the outbreak; he was told his client could either get the measles vaccine or wait longer to ensure he hasn't contracted the virus.
Even 72 hours after exposure, the measles vaccine, or immunoglobulin medicine, can help prevent the virus or reduce the illness's severity, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Goldman noted the irony of what he called the Trump administration's anti-vaccine rhetoric, even as its agencies rely on the vaccine during an actual public health event.
"It's a weird juxtaposition," he said. "It definitely contradicts their policy on the outside."
Vaccination is still the best way to prevent measles or reduce the severity of illness, which used to kill 400 to 500 people in the U.S. each year â and millions worldwide â before the vaccine was developed in the 1960s.
Detainees faced extended stay on bus
An asylum seeker, who lives in Washington state, told the Star Wednesday that her husband was transferred to Florence from another detention center on Jan. 21, the day federal officials say the first measles case was confirmed there.
The woman â who asked the Star to identify her only as Yoselin, due to her and her husband's fear of retaliation by ICE â said her husband, along with about two dozen other detainees, were forced to wait on two small buses in Florence's parking lot for more than 24 hours, due to the outbreak.Â
"They told them that there was a person infected with measles and that they had to wait to see if they hadn't infected others," she said, speaking in Spanish and citing her husband's comments. The extended wait on the bus was "traumatic. He called me crying afterwards," Yoselin told the Star.
The detainees had to sleep on the bus, with their wrists and ankles shackled the whole time, and the heat during the day was "unbearable,"Â Yoselin's husband told her.
Neither ICE nor DHS, its parent agency, responded to the Star's Thursday email inquiring about the incident.
Yoselin's husband said Florence detainees were told not to talk about the measles situation, "because the last thing they want is chaos among all those who are detained," Yoselin told the Star. The man declined to speak to the Star directly because ICE records detainees' phone conversations, Yoselin said.
Delayed answers
In an email Wednesday, Jan. 28, DHS initially told the Star only one measles case had been confirmed among its Pinal County detainees, in a Mexican national at the Florence detention center, also called the Florence Service Processing Center.
But the day before DHS's email, local health officials said there were three confirmed cases of measles among people in federal custody in Pinal County.
Late Friday afternoon DHS acknowledged, in an email to the Star, the two additional cases confirmed days earlier by local health officials.
One of the patients with measles is at the Florence detention center, and the other is at the nearby Central Arizona Florence Correctional Center, which houses both criminal detainees and immigrants in ICE detention, which is civil detention, not punitive, a DHS spokesman wrote in the Friday email.
Before DHS's confirmation, neither the Arizona Department of Health Services nor the Pinal County Health Department would say where the additional two cases were located, nor whether they were connected epidemiologically, citing patient privacy.
"In situations involving a small number of cases within a defined population, even confirming whether cases are related can allow individuals, facilities, or specific circumstances to be identified or narrowed down," risking indirect identification of patients, county health department spokeswoman Castro said. "... When there is a confirmed public exposure or a need for community action, we do provide more detailed information to protect public health."
CoreCivic would not share details on the outbreak, referring the Star's questions to ICE and DHS.
"What I can share is the health and safety of those entrusted to our care is the top priority for CoreCivic," said spokesman Brian Todd. "This commitment is shared by our government partners at ICE, and we work closely with them to ensure the well-being of everyone in our care."
Arizona outbreak
The U.S. recorded the most measles cases in three decades last year, even though the disease was declared eliminated in the U.S. in 2000.
An ongoing measles outbreak that spans Arizona and Utah now includes 231 cases in Arizona, including 25 cases reported in Arizona so far in 2026.
Pima County recently confirmed its third case of measles since Dec. 31, 2025.
As anti-vaccine rhetoric has spread, non-medical vaccine exemptions for Arizona's kindergarteners have increased in recent years, The Arizona Republic reported, though a majority of children still get vaccinated.
Three "connected" cases of measles is considered an outbreak, Nicole Witt, assistant director of preparedness for the state health department, said during a Tuesday, Jan. 27 Zoom meeting with reporters.
The state health department wasn't aware of any public exposures to measles in Pinal County, she said.Â
Detention centers are controlled settings, she said, and usually "contact tracing" allows officials to identify any community member, such as an employee who comes and goes, who could be at risk of exposure.
"In the case where we have a setting where they can, through contact tracing, identify everyone and notify everyone (potentially exposed), there isn't in those cases the need to do a similar type of public exposure notification like you see in, for example, (after exposure in) a grocery store or a concert," she said.
Yoselin, whose husband is detained at Florence, said her family crossed the U.S. border into Arizona two years ago to request asylum and then moved to Washington state. They have an open asylum case and attended their routine check-in with ICE in early November, with no problems, she said, but two weeks later, her husband was detained by immigration authorities while driving.
Yoselin said her husband has already requested a voluntary departure to his home country, because being detained is "suffocating."
"He wants to go back to his country because he's already suffocating. He can't take it anymore," she said. "He's a strong man, but because of everything that's happening now, he starts to cry, he gets sad" when he calls her.
Their 13-year-old daughter is depressed and doesn't want to go to school, Yoselin said, adding the family can no longer pay their rent, with their primary breadwinner in detention.
"We want to return to our country because there is no peace here anymore," she said. "There is no tranquility. Everything is chaos."
