PHOENIX (AZFamily) — Ricky Wassenaar was already serving 16 life sentences for his role in an escape attempt and hostage standoff at the Lewis Complex prison in Buckeye in 2004. For the past 20 years, he remained mostly out of the limelight, serving his time.

But in April of this year, Wassenaar attacked three inmates in the Cimarron Unit of the state prison in Tucson, killing them, and sparking a controversy over how he was able to carry out the murders and how he had access to other inmates in the first place.

“I would have killed at least seven. My goal was at least seven,” Wassenaar told True Crime Arizona’s Briana Whitney, in a phone interview. She said he seemed excited to talk about it, bragging that he had provided a service, because the inmates he killed were sex offenders.

According to Wassenaar’s inmate profile, at the end of 2024, he was moved out of maximum security, where he had been for decades, and into close custody, which is a slightly lower level of security.

“He was max custody and then he was put out in close custody, which means he gets to walk among them (other inmates),” said Rodney Carr, who is a former warden in the Arizona prison system.

He left the Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry after Gov. Katie Hobbs hired Ryan Thornell as the new director. Thornell came to Arizona from Maine, where he was deputy commissioner of a prison system a fraction the size of Arizona’s.

“I worked for a lot of directors and not always that I agreed with. But that’s my job. Well, with him it got to the point where I couldn’t,” said Carr.

Carr and another former warden, as well as several correctional officers, reached out to Arizona’s Family Investigates with similar complaints: that the department under Thornell’s leadership was moving maximum security inmates into close custody, where it costs less and requires fewer correctional officers to oversee the inmates.

“Under the way they’re managing maximum security inmates in a closed custody environment, staff are going to get hurt,” said Carr.

In an interview with Arizona’s Family Investigates, Thornell said he is moving inmates out of maximum security. “That is absolutely something we are doing. Just like every other department of corrections across the country must do. It’s a practice and we are doing that here,” said Thornell.

He said 90 to 95% of inmates who are in custody will eventually be released into the community, including those in maximum security. And Thornell said keeping them in maximum security the entire time they are in prison is not good for the community once they are released. He said the effect the isolation of maximum custody has on inmates is real and often negative.

“How can I say that somebody in max custody is OK to release into local Arizona, but they’re not OK to release into a close custody yard that still has fences or razor wire?” he said.

When asked if it was a mistake to take Wassenaar out of maximum custody, Thornell said no, but he couched his answer.

“Hindsight is always 20/20, right? So, knowing what I know today, should we have moved him out of max custody? Yes, we should have. Would I do it knowing the facts that I have at my disposal today? Knowing what he did then? No, I wouldn’t. But the practice was sound. It’s still a sound practice,” he said.

Thornell acknowledged that the number of violent incidents in close custody has increased, but he denied that it was the result of max-custody inmates creating more problems.

“It’s easy for a warden, a former warden, to come forward and say, ‘20 years ago, that’s not how we did it.’ Well, 20 years ago, nobody cared who we were releasing back into the community,” said Thornell.

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PHOENIX (AZFamily) — Some Arizona lawmakers are demanding answers on what has been happening outside a Phoenix immigration court recently.

On Wednesday, four Arizona Democrats sent a letter to the Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons. It came from Sens. Mark Kelly and Ruben Gallego, as well as Reps. Yassamin Ansari and Greg Stanton.

The letter comes after tense protests last week. For two days straight, ICE agents were at Phoenix immigration court, arresting people there for routine hearings and putting them into vans. That second day turned chaotic with protestors and officers getting physical.

“That pattern of dismissal and detainment kind of slowed down towards the end of the week, but unfortunately, today we did see more people detained at the immigration court,” said state Sen. Analise Ortiz, a Democrat from the West Valley.

She has been showing up to immigration court to support migrants at their hearings, and says ICE was there again on Wednesday, but it was different this time. “People were actually being told they could leave the courthouse, so they were driving off of the property and then being stopped and detained down the street. Someone relayed to me that a toddler was detained. This is just horrible, and this is inhumane,” said Ortiz.

The letter poses three main questions, with the first being how many people has ICE arrested and detained at an immigration court during the week of May 19 and how many have been placed in expedited removal?

The second asks for copies of all guidance and written directives associated with this recent ICE action, and the third asks how ICE is complying with requirements for screening individuals for fear of persecution.

The letter also says the Democratic lawmakers believe tactics like this make the immigration process less fair and efficient and undermine the Trump administration’s goal of targeting criminals who are public safety threats.

“A lot of these individuals who are in deportation proceedings (or) immigration proceedings, they don’t have a criminal history,” said immigration attorney Sheree Wright with IBF Law Group.

She has been volunteering to advise migrants at their hearings. “When it comes to safety, these are not criminals,” said Wright.

Arizona’s Family also spoke to a former Phoenix-based ICE agent who was in the field for 22 years. He wanted to remain anonymous.

The former agent said arrests like the ones at the immigration court are not new. He also said they are safer for the public, the officers, and the detainees because there is a screening process at places like court buildings. According to the former officer, when they detain someone, they often go through what is called “custody redetermination” to see if the migrant should continue with their immigration proceedings or be placed in expedited removal.

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