'They should not be in a prison': Sen. Mark Kelly after ICE detention visit

U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly said his recent meetings with two women detained at the Eloy immigration detention center underscore the flaws of the Trump administration’s campaign to arrest as many immigrants as possible, regardless of whether they pose any threat.

“By any reasonable measure, they should not be in a prison, and I think that’s true for probably most of the people in there,” Kelly, an Arizona Democrat, said in a telephone interview with the Arizona Daily Star on Thursday afternoon, following his visit to Eloy in Pinal County. “Under a normal functioning government, you wouldn’t be locking these folks up.”

Kelly met with a grandmother named Maria Pelaez, who has lived in the U.S. for 20 years and has no criminal record, he said. Pelaez, a New Jersey resident, was detained as she entered the Marine Corps Air Station in Yuma to help her son and daughter-in-law — both U.S. Marines — care for their 2-year-old son, while the daughter-in-law recovered from surgery.

At the Eloy Detention Center, Pelaez broke into tears when Kelly asked about the pride she felt at her son’s boot-camp graduation, Kelly recalled. Although an immigration judge approved the woman’s release from detention on bond, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is fighting that decision with an appeal, Kelly said.

“They did not want to let her out,” Kelly said. As the mother of someone willing to fight for their country, “she is the exact type of person we should want in this country,” he said.

Kelly said he also met with Kelly Yu, a Peoria restaurant owner who fled Hong Kong in 2004 and whose months-long ICE detention has generated outrage. Yu, whose U.S. citizen child attends Arizona State University, employs 70 people at her three restaurant locations and has no criminal record, yet could be deported any day, Kelly said.

“She’s created a life here. She’s a job creator,” he said. “Present this case to any reasonable person and they would say, ‘What are we doing? Why would we throw this woman out of the country?’ She’s not a risk to anyone. She’s putting food on the table for 70 other families. It just doesn’t make any sense.”

In the Eloy Detention Center, 83% of detainees are classified by ICE as having “no ICE threat level,” meaning they have no criminal convictions, according to the most recent ICE data.

Oversight curtailed under Trump

Kelly is the latest of several Democratic U.S. legislators who have sought to conduct oversight visits at ICE detention centers, as the number of people in ICE detention reaches record levels and concerns about detention conditions are rising.

Democratic lawmakers have been turned away from ICE facilities when making unannounced visits, even though, by law, Congress members are not required to give prior notice of oversight visits.

A dozen Democratic legislators sued the Trump administration on July 30 over the prior-notice requirement it’s imposed on ICE oversight visits.

“Federal law makes it absolutely clear that members of Congress do not have to provide prior notice for those visits, for clear reasons,” said U.S. Rep. Greg Stanton, D-Arizona, on Friday. “That way we don’t get a curated visit. We get an impromptu visit, so we can see conditions as they actually are.”

Turned away after an unannounced visit to Eloy in July, Stanton scheduled an Eloy visit on Aug. 5 and met with 20 detainees who shared “eye-opening” stories, Stanton told the Star. The detainees included asylum seekers and people who said they’ve lived in the U.S. for decades and have no criminal record, he said.

“The president talked about enforcement of immigration laws by going after violent criminals,” Stanton said. “That’s not what’s actually happening.”

U.S. Rep. Yassamin Ansari, D-Arizona, conducted a surprise oversight visit at Eloy in May, in which she said she encountered “sickening” detention conditions. Last month, Ansari said she was denied the opportunity to speak with three detainees, including Yu, who had given permission to speak with Ansari during a scheduled July 19 visit.

Neither ICE nor the Department of Homeland Security responded to the Star’s repeated inquiries about why Ansari wasn’t permitted to speak with the detainees.

In a statement, an unnamed DHS spokesperson said Ansari still would have been allowed to tour the facility.

“After being told that Ansari would be unable to speak with detainees, her office did not even show up or have the courtesy to send a cancellation notice to ICE,” the DHS statement said. “Any claim that there are subprime conditions at ICE detention centers are FALSE. All detainees are provided with proper meals, medical treatment, and have opportunities to communicate with their family members and lawyers. Ensuring the safety, security, and well-being of individuals in our custody is a top priority at ICE. ICE has higher detention standards than most U.S. prisons that hold actual U.S. citizens.”

An August report from Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Georgia, identified more than 500 “credible reports of human rights abuse” in U.S. immigration detention centers since January.

Advocates say concerns about inhumane detention conditions will only worsen as ICE arrest numbers rise, and as DHS scrambles to construct more detention space.

Arizona ‘Alligator Alcatraz’?

This week, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem named Arizona among possible states that could house a new state-run immigration facility like “Alligator Alcatraz,” which DHS hastily erected in the Florida Everglades.

DHS has not yet contacted Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs’ office about the possibility, but “if they did ask, we would not participate,” Hobbs’ spokesman Christian Slater said in an email.

Kelly said he’s opposed to the idea, and to the allocation of so much taxpayer money to incarcerating immigrants who pose no public safety threat, at the expense of public spending in areas such as education and scientific research.

“We are now investing in the wrong thing. We’re going to invest in prisons for people who are no threat to anybody? That doesn’t make sense,” Kelly said.

In July, Congress approved $170 billion for immigration and border enforcement, including $45 billion for building new ICE detention facilities and $30 billion for ICE enforcement and deportation operations.

Back to homepage

Subscriber Login

Keep reading with a digital access subscription.

Subscribe now

“The budget of ICE is going to be bigger than the U.S. Marine Corps in a heartbeat,” said Kelly, a Navy combat veteran.

‘Moment’ for immigration reform?

Public support for immigration has been rising in the U.S. A July Gallup poll found a record-high 79% of respondents say immigration is a good thing for the country.

The shift in public sentiment comes as the Trump administration has targeted not only undocumented immigrants with criminal records, but increasingly people without any criminal history, or with minor non-violent offenses, who have lived in the country for decades.

“Mass deportation involves deporting our neighbors, our friends, our colleagues, people our kids go to school with,” Stanton said. “And it turns out, deporting these individuals is very unpopular with the American people.”

Trump’s DHS is also arresting and deporting legal immigrants and asylum seekers who entered the U.S. with the government’s permission and proper documentation. ICE agents have been waiting at immigration courthouses to arrest people attending required hearings.

Kelly said it could be the right moment for Congress to finally enact comprehensive immigration reform, as well as protections for “Dreamers,” unauthorized immigrants brought to the U.S. as children.

“Maybe this is a moment we could do something that’s positive,” Kelly said. “I know a bunch of my Republican colleagues, they get it. They don’t think we should be deporting 10 million people, despite what the president of the United States says. They do not all agree with that. That’s not a reasonable system that helps us as a nation.”

Stanton agreed now could be the time to “build an immigration system that supports and grows the American economy,” including supporting the agriculture and health-care industries and talented international students. He also supports giving Dreamers a path to citizenship, a proposal with broad public support.

With the southern border secure, “Now is the time to have those conversations,” Stanton said. “We need immigration policies that support the aging of America, in terms of taking care of our seniors, parents and grandparents. We’re going to need a visa system that brings in a trained work force in that important area.”

Nearly 70% of likely voters support a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants who have lived in the U.S. for at least 10 years and are married to a citizen, and 64% support a path to citizenship for those brought to the U.S. as children, a May poll from Data for Progress found.

Immigration experts say Congress has poured money into border and ICE enforcement, without tackling common-sense immigration reforms that would help fix the system, such as adding more immigration judges and asylum officers.

Republicans have blocked multiple attempts to modernize the immigration system, which hasn’t been updated in three decades.

Less than 1% of people who want to move to the U.S. have a legal pathway to do so, according to the Cato Institute, and long-time undocumented immigrants face a potential 10-year ban from the U.S., under a Clinton-era law, if they try to regularize their status.

Kelly said he had issues with the Biden administration’s handling of the southern border, amid a global increase in migration, until Biden imposed controversial restrictions on asylum access in mid-2024.

But under Trump, Kelly said, “We’re wildly swinging in the other direction, in a way that is not in the best interest of this country.”

Advocates say Biden violated U.S. law with his June 2024 asylum restrictions, which have been credited with reducing the number of migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border to seek asylum.

In May, a federal court ruled that most of Biden’s asylum restrictions violated U.S. immigration law that allows people to request asylum once on U.S. soil, regardless of how they entered the country.

Long-standing problem

Problems with immigration detention conditions are long-standing, but appear to be worsening under Trump, as the administration has dramatically curtailed oversight offices that receive and investigate complaints, including the DHS Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, said Liz Casey, social worker on the advocacy team at the nonprofit Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project.

Casey has heard from ICE detainees about problems accessing medical care, unclean conditions, broken air conditioning, verbal abuse and discrimination by guards, as well as overcrowding and understaffing in ICE detention facilities.

“Not having any oversight seemingly is making conditions and abuses significantly worse,” she said, based on recent anecdotal accounts from detainees. “There needs to be truly independent oversight, with actual accountability and consequences when rights are violated.”

A spokesman for CoreCivic, the private company that runs the Eloy Detention Center and Florence Correctional Complex, said CoreCivic takes the health and safety of its detainees seriously.

“Our immigration facilities are monitored very closely by our government partners at ICE, and they are required to undergo regular review and audit processes to ensure an appropriate standard of living and care for all detainees,” said public affairs manager Brian Todd in a Friday email.

Immigration detention is civil in nature, intended to hold people during removal proceedings, rather than as punishment for a crime, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center.

Casey said immigration detention is “inherently inhumane,” and she’s concerned by the Trump administration’s resistance to unannounced congressional oversight visits.

“We are very grateful that people are using their congressional power to do any type of visits or oversight right now. It’s still extremely useful,” she said. “But unannounced inspections would be much more like true oversight.”