Tales of ICE: Three Brave Women, One Cowardly Congressman

71-year-old great-grandmother rejoins her family after nearly a year in ICE custody. (Photo credit, Arizona Republic).

Here are the stories of three women who fell into the custody of the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE, as it is now known by everyone), who should have been free. They all have in common imprisonment at the ICE detention center in Eloy in Pinal County, at the northern end of Arizona’s Sixth Congressional District. The other thing they have in common is that the Sixth District congressman, Juan Ciscomani, appears to have no interest in their cases. Or he’s just up to his usual practice of ducking responsibility for anything horrible done by the Trump administration that happens in his jurisdiction.

Karla Toledo, Too Activist for ICE

            Ms. Toledo is a Tucson resident who was taken from her home on May 18 by ICE agents storming her residence. They mocked her insistence on her rights and took her away on what appears to be flimsy charges. She was held at Eloy for a few days until a local outcry led to her release. She was supported by Adelita Grijalva, the other member of Congress representing Tucson. Congresswoman Grijalva excoriated ICE for charging Ms. Toledo with assaulting one of the officers, despite video of the arrest showing no such thing: “Smearing people after the fact and gaslighting the public is part of ICE’s playbook whenever they face scrutiny over their actions.”

            The main charge is that Toledo, a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals immigrant (children brought to America young, given longtime legal protection, but now pursued for deportation by Trump’s people), illegally returned to Mexico from a trip in 2024. She says she had proper paperwork for the trip. Her real offense, apparently, is being a part of a local immigrant rights group. The immediate response by Congresswoman Grijalva and immigration attorney Mo Goldman got Toledo’s release on low bail, although her case will still have to be heard in immigration court.

Narges Dehghania, Trump’s People Don’t Like Her (But They Should)

            Ms. Dehghania was an Iranian dissident imprisoned in her home country, where she was sexually assaulted by prison guards. Upon her release she fled her country to go to the US. But she was arrested at the Mexican border trying to enter the country. Her immigration case is pending (and has been for more than a year). The slowness of her case isn’t surprising, nor, it seems, is the abominable way she was treated at Eloy. Accurately analyzed as suicidal, instead of receiving mental health treatment she was thrown into a solitary confinement cell. “This place is not a place you should put a human being,” she told Arizona Daily Star reporters, “I felt like I was nothing.”

            When President Trump started the Iran war, Ciscomani was quoted to the effect that the conflict would lead to freedom for the Iranian people from the country’s oppressive theocratic regime. Dehghani actively opposed the regime long before Ciscomani likely gave it any serious thought. But she is locked up in his district, treated inhumanely although she represents something he supposedly supports.

Maria Cristina Tapia Cornejo, Locked Up While Worse Went Free

            Last JulyFederal authorities raided an Arizona restaurant chain and arrested its owners for conspiring to smuggle undocumented immigrants into the US to work (on the cheap) at their restaurants. The owners were released on loosely enforced supervision, but 22 of their undocumented employees were also swept up and put in the Eloy detention center. They included Ms. Cornejo, a 71-year-old great-grandmother who washed dishes up at the restaurant in Cottonwood. According to the Arizona Republic, “ICE officials have refused numerous requests by Tapia Cornejo, her family and advocates that she be released on humanitarian grounds considering her lack of criminal record, her age, her declining memory and the fact that she is deaf in one ear and partially deaf in the other.”

            Publicity did the trick though, as it had in the case of Ms. Toledo. After the Republic reported on her case ICE officials scrambled to let her out pending a hearing on her case. She was reunited with her family in Phoenix on Friday.

            Two of these stories have a happy ending, although the specter of deportation, even on flimsy charges, hangs over these women’s heads. The unchanging variables are that ICE will reflexively chose incarceration for people suspected of immigration offenses, and the actions of its agents will be wholeheartedly supported by Juan Ciscomani, whose vote for more money and less oversight for ICE personnel, who have killed in public and allowed prisoners to die in the detention centers, is well known.