The white Nissan pickup was left on a street in west Phoenix.In the trunk were a tile saw, boxes of ceramic tile and an open bag of adhesive. Ramón Barraza, the man who drove it, never returned for it.It was 7 a.m. when Barraza left the apartment he shared with his girlfriend near 43rd Avenue and McDowell Road in Maryvale, a predominantly Latino neighborhood in west Phoenix. It was the first Monday of January 2026. Remnants of Christmas lights still hung from balconies. Barraza had already paid his rent.He left in his pickup for work. He has not returned home since.Barraza is 60. In Mexico, he had worked as a certified public accountant. In Phoenix, he learned to charge by the square foot. He had spent two decades installing ceramic tile floors.That morning, he was expected at a house near 119th Avenue, a roughly 10-mile drive. He had been working there for more than a week, laying marble tiles. Each weighed about 20 pounds. Lifting them again and again left his muscles aching.He headed west on McDowell Road, a broad thoroughfare that crosses Phoenix. It begins at the foot of the mountains, among homes with spacious driveways, and continues toward Maryvale, where the city grows denser with butcher shops, markets, currency exchanges and apartment complexes like the one Barraza had left that morning.He turned onto 43rd Avenue to begin his route. Near 47th Avenue, he noticed a vehicle merge onto McDowell Road and begin following him. He saw it in his rearview mirror. He kept driving.It was a white Chevrolet Tahoe with dark windows. The SUV followed him for several blocks.At 67th Avenue and McDowell Road, he stopped for gas. His cellphone screen showed it was just after 7:10 a.m. He greeted some friends from construction, filled the tank, poured himself coffee and exchanged a few comments about the day’s work.Rumors had been circulating in Phoenix for weeks. Social media videos warned that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement was detaining people on streets, at gas stations and in parking lots. Barraza lived in the United States without legal status, but he still had to work.He merged back into westbound traffic. Right away, he saw the same Tahoe with tinted windows. This time it was following too closely. After he passed 75th Avenue, it flashed its lights and signaled him to pull over.“It had no identification of any kind,” Barraza recalled. “It was like a ghost car. It wasn’t police. It didn’t have a light bar. It had nothing.”He turned right and stopped on an unmarked street. A vacant lot was on one side. The men who got out of the SUV were not wearing uniforms.“Get out of your vehicle,” they told him. “They even spoke to me in Spanish.”He complied, opened the door and got out. He said one of them asked, “What is your name?”“My name is Ramón Barraza,” he replied.“Good. You’re the one we came for. You entered on a tourist visa and stayed in the country. So you’re illegal. We’re ICE, and we’re taking you with us.”He then saw that more than one SUV was involved. Four vehicles took part in his arrest, he said: one stopped in front of him, two behind him and another beside him. Then he felt handcuffs tighten around his wrists.Traffic continued moving on McDowell Road.They put him in the back seat of one of the vehicles. A woman was driving; Barraza said she was wearing a blue uniform. At 7:35 a.m., the white pickup was left there beside the vacant lot, with the tile saw, boxes of ceramic tile and open bag of adhesive.They retraced the route Barraza had driven minutes earlier on McDowell Road. They passed the gas station where he had talked with his friends and the spot where he first noticed them following him. Then they turned right onto 43rd Avenue, and he caught sight of his apartment complex before the convoy entered the freeway heading east.“What will become of my life now?” he remembered thinking.On the way, he tried to tell the officer that the handcuffs were hurting him. He tried first in Spanish, then in English. “Wait a moment,” the agent said. “We’re almost there.”As he waited, Phoenix passed outside the window.With Barraza still handcuffed, the vehicle left the freeway and crossed McDowell Road again. He knew downtown Phoenix well but did not recognize where they took him.The agents brought him into a building through a rear street. “They took me through a warehouse garage. There was no sign, just a gate behind a house. It was very hidden,” he recalled.A guard came out to meet them, he said. In the garage, two people sat at a small table and asked him to unbuckle his belt and pants and remove his shoelaces. They took his cellphone and wallet. They removed the cuffs from his wrists and shackled his ankles. An office ICE does not consider a detention center The building where ICE took Barraza is at 2035 N. Central Ave., north of McDowell Road in Phoenix.From the outside, the building reveals little: a gray facade, rows of windows, some bars and metal shutters. People carrying folders and photographs arrive through the main entrance each day. They come for interviews, fingerprinting or other immigration proceedings.ICE maintains that it is not a detention center. “It is a processing facility, not a detention center,” the agency said in an email to Conecta Arizona.Yet from Jan. 1, 2025, through March 10, 2026, ICE held 9,276 people at the Central Avenue office, according to internal ICE records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, published by the Deportation Data Project and analyzed by Conecta Arizona.The spaces where people are held are called “hold rooms” in ICE detention standards. They are temporary cells designed for stays of no more than 12 hours, “except in exceptional circumstances.” Because the written policy says people remain there only while awaiting transfer to another facility, the rules prohibit beds or cots.But the 12-hour rule changed in June 2025, when the agency issued an internal waiver extending the limit from 12 to 72 hours for one year. In the document, ICE acknowledged the limit had already been violated before such detentions were authorized, saying it “had to resort to holding individuals in holding facilities beyond the 12-hour limit.” To formalize that practice, the agency authorized holding people for as long as three days in the “temporary” cells.Even under the new limit, at least 423 cases exceeded 72 hours during the period analyzed.On June 23, 2026, a federal judge struck down the waiver finding it arbitrary and capricious, in part because it conflicted with ICE’s own national standards.Before 2008, according to the the Global Detention Project, the Central Avenue building operated as a formal immigration detention center. Today, it is listed on paper as an administrative office — a classification that helps explain why its use as a holding facility receives little public attention.Still, thousands of people pass through its holding areas each year. Barraza spent 26 hours in the cells at ICE’s Central Avenue office in Phoenix while the waiver extending the holding limit from 12 to 72 hours was in effect. His case shows the effects of changes adopted during President Donald Trump’s second term. His account helps reconstruct some of what happens behind the doors of an office whose use as a detention site has received little public attention. Behind the doors: Cells, food and hours of waiting On the other side of the gate, there were no waiting rooms or public-service counters. There were cells. Barraza knew he was still in Phoenix, but he did not know exactly where he was or how long he would be there.At that point, his family was not yet looking for him and did not know where he was.They put him in one of the cells. Before entering, he could see people in others, including one holding only women. He had never been in a place like it. The room had no windows and had a door with a small window facing a hallway. The cell seemed only slightly larger than his apartment bedroom. Barraza estimated it was about 15 by 20 feet, perhaps 15 by 15. It did not seem large, but he said he counted about 25 people inside.In the cell, he saw a sink and an exposed toilet for everyone to use. He knew he would have no privacy if he needed it.Two concrete structures served as beds, but there was not enough room for everyone. Many people lay on mats on the floor, and others had to step carefully to avoid those who were sleeping. Some rested next to the toilet.One cellmate asked, “Where are you from?”“Sinaloa.”Another man jumped in: “I’m from Sinaloa, too.” Then another, and another. Barraza felt more at ease.Some said they had been detained at immigration appointments; others, on their way to work. Still others acknowledged having criminal records.Barraza thought, “Oh, man, I don’t even have enough for a soda if they let me out. How am I going to get back to my hometown?”Through the small window in the door, he asked to call his family. They told him to wait.“One moment. The person who will interview you hasn’t arrived,” they replied.While he waited, he cupped his hand under the sink faucet and brought the water to his mouth. They were not given cups. As the hours passed, he continued asking to call his family. Again, he was told to wait.In the same cell, Barraza spoke with a man who said he had been held there for almost three days.ICE told Conecta Arizona that immigrants “are processed quickly” for transfer to detention centers such as Eloy or Florence, both in Arizona. The agency also said detainees receive clean water, appropriate bedding and blankets. ICE added that all detainees receive three meals a day.Barraza described what he was given to eat every six hours:“One of those little bean burritos, the frozen kind you put in the microwave. They gave it to us warm, at least. One burrito, nothing else. No water, no fruit.” He said they remained hungry. Some asked for another burrito. They were told no.María Fernanda Arreguín Gámez, then Mexico’s consul for protection and legal affairs in Phoenix, told Conecta Arizona that she visited the facility regularly and had seen detainees receive one burrito during her visits. She also said the food complied with ICE policy. “We looked into how much energy it contains and why they are giving them only that as a meal. They classify it as meeting the basic nutrition standards,” Arreguín said.ICE added that “certified dietitians evaluate the food.”Luis Silas, another Mexican migrant detained at the same office as Barraza nearly a month later, in February 2026, said he also recalled receiving only a bean burrito, “like the ones from the store,” every six hours.“At 6 in the morning, noon and 6 in the evening,” Silas said.ICE detained Silas, 58, when he went to buy wood to build a bookcase for his wife at a store near 43rd Avenue and Camelback Road, north of McDowell Road in the same neighborhood. His case parallels Barraza’s in several ways. The agents addressed him by name, and he responded. He believes they identified him through his car’s license plates. His son, Isaac Luis-Azamar, witnessed the scene and intervened because he thought an agent was about to hit his father. Isaac was arrested and accused of assaulting an ICE officer. Silas was taken to the Central Avenue office.Like Barraza, he could not identify the location because he was brought in through the back. “It’s very hidden,” he said. He described the interior: “They are rooms divided up to hold people. It’s just that the doors are hidden.”After entering, he also asked to contact his family and received the same response Barraza recalled: “We’re waiting for the person there to arrive so you can talk.”Silas said officers threw him to the ground during his arrest. His arm hurt.Regarding medical care, Arreguín warned that because the site is a processing office rather than a formal detention center, people do not receive regular medical consultations or access to medication. ICE said the opposite in its email, asserting that it provides comprehensive health care from the moment someone enters its custody, “including medical, dental and mental health services, as well as 24-hour emergency care.”The consul said that when someone needs treatment, the consulate tries to deliver medication through relatives.ICE also said in its response that for many detainees, “this is the best medical care they have received in their entire lives.”Silas had one chance to shower during the three days he spent at the Central Avenue office. He was also lent a toothbrush. Barraza said people who had been detained longer were allowed to shower at a designated time based on their group. His cell’s time was between 1 and 2 a.m. No one in his group showered the night he was there.Arreguín said that after months of pressing the issue, the consulate persuaded ICE to provide at least one bottle of water a day, an occasional shower, soap and a toothbrush to people held for longer periods at the Phoenix office.“That is why we go every day,” she said. “If someone tells us, ‘I don’t have water,’ we ask for the water."Phoenix immigration attorney Hugo Larios, who has practiced in Arizona for more than two decades, said of the building:“The ICE offices on Central are not equipped to hold people there overnight,” he said in a telephone interview.” A voluntary departure and Barraza’s legal options His turn for an interview came at 8 p.m. Barraza said the agent already had all the answers. The questions did not come with question marks.The agent looked at the screen. “I’m not going to ask you. I’m going to tell you where you lived, and you’re going to confirm whether I’m wrong.” An address appeared on the monitor: McDowell Road. His apartment number. Personal information no one had asked him to provide.“I think they captured my plates at 47th Avenue, when they got behind me. Then, with that ... they followed me to 67th,” Barraza said.Larios explained that ICE can access databases linking license plates to registered addresses. “ICE parks at a gas station, and a pickup that looks like it is used for construction or landscaping pulls in. Then they run the plates to see who owns it, whether that person has papers and so on,” he said.According to Larios, agents make arrests even without sufficient information.“Basically, racial profiling is allowed now,” he said. “If the person admits to being here without papers, they arrest them. Unfortunately, we’re seeing it every day.”Barraza said the officer who interviewed him told him he would help and prepare the paperwork himself. The officer told Barraza to make sure he understood what he was signing.“Look, if I were you, I’d sign a voluntary departure. I’ll prepare the paper myself. Don’t think I’m going to put anything bad in it. I’ll put down voluntary departure so you can fix your situation later, have your girlfriend petition for you and enter legally,” Barraza recalled.The officer told him he could speak with a representative from the Mexican Consulate.Under the Vienna Conventi