Sen. Mark Kelly says he’s still working to shed light on immigrants who have been detained by ICE despite having no criminal record. Earlier this month, he traveled to the Eloy Detention Center south of Phoenix to visit with people held there.
Kelly says he spent about three hours at the facility met with two detainees. The first was Kelly Yu — a longtime Phoenix-area resident and business owner who came to the U.S. more than 20 years ago as a pregnant teenager fleeing China’s one-child policy. She was detained in May during a routing ICE check in.
Kelly says detaining people like Yu — who has no criminal history and whose mother, daughter and husband are all U.S. citizens — is not the platform President Donald Trump ran on.
“I think his main message was, he was going to deport criminals and gang members. And what I saw in this facility was a lot of moms and grandmothers who don’t seem to be a threat to society,” Kelly said. "I don't think it's in accordance with our morals and our ethics to be doing this. Gang members, criminals, drug dealers — we should throw more resources at that. And not so much worry about people who are job creators and are productive members of communities."
Kelly also met with an undocumented woman from New Jersey who was detained in Yuma while visiting her son who is a U.S. Marine based there. Kelly says she was helping her son and his wife with child care and was taken into custody the fourth time she tried to enter the U.S. Marine base. She also has no criminal history.
Kelly is the fourth member of Congress to travel to Eloy seeking a visit with detainees in recent months. Rep. Yassamin Ansari went to the facility for a general visit in May. She also tried to visit specific detainees in July, but says all three of those requests were denied. Rep. Greg Stanton also tried to the facility last month to no avail, but made a second, successful visit this month.
This week, Sen. Ruben Gallego said he also met with Yu’s family in Peoria.
EDITOR'S NOTE: The story has been updated to correct that Mark Kelly is the fourth member of Congress to travel to Eloy seeking a visit with detainees in recent months.
