“A Stain on Our Country”: Representatives Ansari and Grijalva Hold “Stop Mass Detention Center” Community Briefing

46 deaths: the highest number ever of people who have died while in ICE custody since the start of the second Trump Administration.

5000 people are detained every day in Arizona’s three detention facilities, with innocent people, including pregnant women and disabled individuals, who have lived decades in this country being kidnapped from the communities they have been a part of and positively contributed to the American Dream.

70,700 people are in these detention facilities across the nation.

91 percent of the detainees are in for-profit private prisons, funded in part by a $75 billion “slush fund” courtesy of Trump and his MAGA White Nationalist loyalists in Congress and operated by people looking to make a quick buck at the expense of human suffering.

Families separated.

DACA recipients are living in fear of having their protections removed and being kidnapped, detained, and deported.

10,000 veterans who have served in the United States military have been detained and deported.

People are forced to remain in detention for months and perhaps years, due to inadequate legal protections, preparation, and financial resources, such as no right to a public attorney, backlogged court dockets overseen by inexperienced judges, and no right to a legal review by an Immigration Judge.

Crappy food with detainees telling their attorney, Salvador Macias, that “They would not give this food to their own pet.”

Contaminated drinking water.

Shitty bedding arrangements.

Substandard medical care, with one person, Emmanuel Damas, dying from a toothache, allowed to morph into sepsis.

People are forced to wear used underwear.

Unsanitary facilities where people are cramped together.

Reports of increased verbal and physical abuse from ICE and detainee guards, especially towards the LGBTQ and disabled detainees.

A fear among detainees that they will be deported to a third-party country where they have no familial ties.

Retaliation against detainees if their advocates stir trouble for ICE and their supervisors.

No government oversight except for willing Congressmen, because Mr. Trump has gutted the institutions that perform the oversight.

These are the conditions in Arizona and America’s Concentration Camps that Donald Trump and Stephen Miller have cruelly and inhumanely foisted on the nation in their drive to make the United States whiter by kidnapping, not the most criminal elements, but people who have contributed positively to American society for years, while the twice impeached and 34-time convicted felon pardoned his loyalists who he enabled to attack the Nation’s Capitol on January 6, 2021.

You can call these chambers of horrors detention centers, but let us be real.

They are concentration camps, many of which are administered by Trump’s private prison donors and loyalists who want to bring a concentration camp to a neighborhood near you.

On April 2, 2026, Arizona Represenatives Yassamin Ansari and Adelita Grijalva held a Stop Mass Detention Center Community Meeting at the Phoenix Elementary School District Governing Board Room.

Representative Greg Stanton was originally slated to attend as well, but became ill with COVID and could only deliver a video statement.

The meeting was filled with people who knew at least one person who had been victimized by Donald Trump and Stephen Miller’s cruel and xenophobic, fascist-style immigration system and their, what Representative Ansari calls “Trump’s paramilitary'”-the Gestapo-like goons posing as ICE agents.

Also in the meeting were legal experts and community members, including survivors of Trump and Miller’s cruel directives at these facilities, to put a human face on the tragedy unfolding at these facilities and comment firsthand on what life is like in the Florence and Eloy Detention Centers at a time when Trump’s private prisoner donor collaborators want to construct new concentration camps in Surprise and Marana.

Presly Nelson, the brother of Emmanuel Damas, the person who ICE let die from a toothache that morphed into sepsis, gave a video presentation where he thanked Arizonans for “their support and love,” saying:

“I also want to thank you for speaking out against the wrong that was done to my brother and all other detainees that have been in ICE custody…What happened to my brother was tragic. What happened to my brother was inhumane. Denying his family access to see him until it was the last minute, the last 24 hours was wrong…We need changes. We need big change in our system…A toothache should not kill…It’s important that we keep Emmanuel’s story alive…”

Sonia Almarez, the partner of Arbella “Yari” Rodríguez Márquez, the lady suffering from leukemia who has been held under “horrendous conditions” at the Eloy Detention Center for over a year, was understandably tearful and emotional during her presentation, where she outlined her 14-month efforts to get the medical care Yari desperately needs while worried every day that she might get the call from Eloy telling her “She (Yari) didn’t make it.”

Almarez told those gathered that since her detention, Yari has “been intentionally neglected with ICE providing no cancer treatment,” resulting in her losing 70 pounds, getting lupus, her right leg becoming “painfully swollen,” her right arm being placed in “a brace for months with nerve and tendon damage, having to use a walker, and the appearance of spots around her body.

Tanisha Hartwell-Parris, wife of decorated Iraq Veteran, father, and legal 27 year resident Marlon Parris, spoke after Almarez, calling out the Trump-Miller Immigration Detention Program for kidnapping her husband two days after the Presidential Inauguration despite his service to the country and the fact that his Green Card was renewed during the first Trump Administration, followed by an issuance of a no-interest letter by the Department of Homeland Security that appeared to be satisfied that Parris was a productive and reformed member of society after serving time for an offense steming from PTSD suffered after his military service.

The reason given by the government for Parris’s detainment. He “was on a list” and taken into custody “without any warning.”

Incarcerated until August, 2025, Parris was taken to Sky Harbor Airport and deported to another country where the whole family will reunite, seek citizenship, and look to establish roots there, saying:

“Not because we wanted to leave, but because we were forced to face the reality that we could no longer be able to build a future here together. We are choosing stability, dignity, and peace for our family even if it means doing so outside of the country he once served.”

Another panelist, Immigration Attorney Salvador Macias, said his brother does not want his parents to leave their home for fear they would be picked up and detained.

The last speaker, a detainee survivor called Mariana, with the assistance of a translator, spoke of the harsh treatment she received, partially because she was a lesbian.

An asylum seeker from Colombia who entered the United States in December, 2024 and was jailed in the Eloy Detention Center for 15 months, Mariana immediately spoke of what happened to her health during that time, saying:

“I was treated like a criminal even though I committed no crime. I came to this country seeking protection, and I was granted it…Still, I was kept locked away in the Eloy Detention Center for 15 months. Inside that place, my body began to break down…I was constantly vomiting in pain, unable to eat. It took two weeks, sometimes three, for them to even check on me. By the time I finally received treatment, I was already severely sick…I went from losing dangerous amounts of weight to gaining it rapidly. I was diagnosed with thyroid issues and am now pre-diabetic…”

Mariana then described the abuse she received from the detention staff, even after winning her case to be released, stating:

“I had already experienced anxiety and depression before, but in Eloy, it became something deeper…The officers. The people responsible for my care did not protect me. They mocked me. They pointed at me. They made racist comments. Comments about my appearance. Comments about who I am. That kind of treatment does not leave you, and all of this happened when I had already won my case…There was no reason to keep me detained, and still I remained there. Without a date. Without answers. Without dignity.”

She then pointed out that her case at Eloy was not unique, commenting:

“This is not just my story. There are many people inside Eloy who are ignored and afraid. People who are not serving sentences. People who are trapped in a system that keeps them there. I am here today because I survived, but survival is not justice. No one should have to get sick to be heard. No one should have to be humiliated to be protected. Eloy is not a place of safety. It is a place where abuse happens. Where injustice becomes normal. Inside, we experience harassment. Officers cross boundaries with the detainees. We live under fear-based tactics. We are denied basic rights, like the one hour a day that we are supposed to have outside. We are locked down for days without justification simply because there is not enough staff. We do not have consistent access to clean drinking water, even to something as basic as ice…This is not detention. This is harmful. Eloy should not continue operating like this and that is why it must be shut down.”

After the presentation, Representatives Ansari and Grijalva made closing comments.

Representative Ansari thanked all the panelists for their bravery, declaring, “Our fight is not over. In fact, our fight is very much just getting started.” She vowed to fight for holding the people responsible for these abuses accountable, the abolishment of ICE, and to stop funding it, telling the audience, “When we do take back the majority in Congress, I think we need to be prosecuting people from the top down.”

Representative Grijalva called everyone to action, saying:

“What we’ve heard today is a call to action. A reminder that behind every statistic is a human being. A mother, a father, an abuela, a neighbor. We cannot normalize a system where people are detained without dignity, where medical neglect becomes fatal, and where corporations are proffering over human suffering. We cannot accept secrecy in our own neighborhoods nor allow decisions that impact our communities to be made without us…We can not sit down. We can not let this go. This is just an example of what is happening in human suffering every single day…46 people have died in ICE detention…It’s scary because tomorrow, that number is going to grow.”

During the event, Representative Ansari said that what is happening to the people in these detention centers-concentration camps is “A stain on our country.”

She is right.

Shame on the people in office who created this situation by obstructing bipartisan immigration reform, turning a blind eye to Trump and Miller’s racist, xenophobic immigration policies, and refusing to lift a finger to address it.

These collaborators should be voted out of office.

Shame on the Trump donors and loyalists who are using taxpayer funds to build these private prisons for profit centers for human suffering.

These vile plutocrats and oligarchs should go to jail for their inhumane and avaricious acts.

Shame on the people who allowed this to happen by turning a blind eye to the horrors these people are experiencing, not saying anything, or not caring enough to be informed, and will one day plead ignorance and declare, “I didn’t know it was that bad.”

These people should never be allowed to get away with that excuse.

It is time to stand up and be counted.

It is time to fight for what the ideal and dream of America is by working to vote out the people who passed these policies and jail the ones who willingly implemented them to either advance their white nationalist agenda or make a profit at the expense of human suffering.