Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting

Judges ruled deporting at-risk migrants home could lead to persecution or torture. ICE is detaining them anyway.

At least 120 immigrants were detained for months in Arizona ICE facilities, despite judges barring their deportation home ...
Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting

Our methods: Inside our analysis of Arizona habeas corpus cases

More than 120 immigrants in Arizona detention facilities won protection from deportation to their home countries because they ...
AZCIR

Arizona promised secure treatment for its sickest psychiatric patients. Seven years later, it still doesn’t exist.

This article is published as part of the Mental Health Parity Collaborative, a national partnership between AZCIR, The Carter Center and other newsrooms throughout the U.S. Larry Bootsma was 23 years ...
AZCIR

New law increases oversight of Arizona sober living homes

Photos of 43-year-old Jeffrey Hustito, who died at a sober living home in Glendale, Arizona in 2022. A new law will increase oversight of such facilities. Photo by Adriana Zehbrauskas, special to ...
AZCIR

Tag: arizona health care cost containment system

Secure behavioral health residential facilities were authorized in 2019 to fill a critical gap in care. But years of implementation delays have left people with serious mental illness caught in a loop ...
AZCIR

Dozens of people died in Arizona sober living homes as state officials fumbled Medicaid fraud response

This story about Arizona’s response to Medicaid fraud was produced by the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting, an independent nonprofit newsroom dedicated to statewide investigative reporting, ...
AZCIR

Arizona gave families public money for private schools. Then private schools raised tuition.

Last year, Arizona became the first state in the nation to offer universal school choice for all families. State leaders promised families roughly $7,000 a year to spend on private schools and other ...
AZCIR

Groundwater regulation weaknesses exploited by industrial-scale agriculture

ELFRIDA, Ariz. — Elaine Bailey stood at the microphone at the Sunsites Community Center in southeastern Arizona, voice shaking as she described the massive scale of new agricultural development next ...
AZCIR

Medicaid fraud targeting Indigenous communities continues despite AHCCCS reforms

Nearly three years after Arizona uncovered an unprecedented $2.5 billion Medicaid fraud scandal that targeted Indigenous communities, sober living program operators are still recruiting vulnerable ...
AZCIR

‘Sovereign citizen’ filings flood Pima County, parallel national resurgence of controversial movement

A 63-page packet arrived at the Pima County Recorder’s Office in January, postmarked from Texas with unusual formatting identifying the sender: oddly hyphenated names, stray colons and bracketed-off ...
AZCIR

Sovereign citizens use “paper terrorism” to intimidate, harass Sedona public officials

SEDONA—Sedona Police Officer Steven Willadsen dragged a salt-and-pepper-haired man in his thirties out of a blue SUV, forcing him to the pavement of an Arizona roadway flanked by strips of the area’s ...
AZCIR

Border vigilantes are blurring the lines of law enforcement

This story is a collaboration between the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting and the Texas Observer. It was late afternoon when a small group traveling in a white Ford F-150 approached a ...