After the Arizona Attorney General filed her federal complaint on April 24, we made a specific prediction: DHS would ultimately walk away from the warehouse at 13290 W. Sweetwater Ave. Not because of politics generally, but because of what sits directly across the street. Rinchem Company, Inc. stores fluorine, hydrochloric acid, TMAH, and other hazardous chemicals at levels that trigger federal Risk Management Plan requirements — and that RMP contains no provisions for a captive, non-ambulatory population that cannot self-evacuate in an emergency. We said that problem wasn’t going away, and that eventually, someone with authority would have to reckon with it.
On May 6, GEO Group CEO George Zoley confirmed on his quarterly earnings call that the warehouse conversion program has been paused. DHS is reassessing. The warehouse sites, in his words, had become “politically problematic.” Read the full report here.
We believe Sweetwater is among them.
This is what it looks like when volunteer research produces real consequences. NWVI identified the Rinchem hazard. Our volunteers analyzed the Risk Management Plan. That analysis anchored Count II of the Arizona Attorney General’s federal complaint. We didn’t speculate — we documented. And we said publicly that the chemical hazard across the street was an obstacle that no amount of political overreach could simply override.
Now, to be honest about what we know and what we don’t. No one has officially announced that the Sweetwater facility is closing. The fight is not over. But the federal program built on warehouse conversions has been paused, and the sites generating the most resistance — legal, logistical, and community-based — are the ones under the most pressure. We built that case here.
The work continues. But we were right, and the people who made that possible are the volunteers who did the research, showed up to every meeting, and refused to let this facility become a fait accompli.
We’re not done. But today, we can say it plainly: we called it.