A group of Democratic lawmakers said they were left “frightened” by the “inhumane” conditions they witnessed last week during a surprise inspection of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Mesa, Arizona.

The unannounced visit from Reps. Yassamin Ansari, Adelita Grijalva and Greg Stanton came hours after explosive reporting from the Arizona Mirror, which detailed how the population at the Arizona Removal Operations Coordination Center sharply declined around the time lawmakers carried out planned inspections.

On Monday, Grijalva sat down with Rachel Maddow to discuss what she saw during her visit. “So much of the initial rumor was that there was a hunger strike, and so we wanted to go and see what the facility looked like,” she said. “And when we went to the door, it’s like a vacant office building. There was no indication of what was there.”

Once inside, Grijalva told MS NOW, she was asked to sign paperwork pledging she wouldn’t bring in any recording devices or speak to the detainees, which she said was a violation of lawmakers’ oversight duties.

During her inspection, the congresswoman said she witnessed firsthand how overcrowded the facility was. “If you look at the top of the door, it says ‘Max occupancy: 21 people,’” she said, noting that there was “clearly double, almost triple” that number inside each room.

Grijalva described the conditions as “inhumane” and “disgusting.”

She recalled one interaction she had with a detainee: “When I was walking by the women’s facility, [a detainee] asked me for sanitary napkins because there were two young ladies in there that needed sanitary napkins and didn’t have them.”

Outside the facility, the Arizona Democrat said she saw dozens of detainees packed into charter buses. “I kept asking, were these people in this facility, and where would they fit? Because literally, people are packed in so tight that if they said everyone take a seat, they physically would not be able to without sitting on top of each other,” she said.

In a statement to the Mirror, a spokesperson for ICE said that “population levels fluctuate” at the facility, but stressed that the Arizona Removal Operations Coordination Center complies “with all applicable standards” and is used for “short-term detention.”

In a statement, the Department of Homeland Security told MS NOW that the lawmakers “arrived unannounced at the Arizona Removal Operations Coordination Center” and said their “claims this facility is overcrowded and horrific are FALSE,” adding “ICE has higher detention standards than most U.S. prisons that hold actual U.S. citizens.”

You can watch more of Grijalva’s interview in the clip at the top of the page.

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From MS Now.