A elderly Cuban woman has been released after spending nine months in ICE detention in Eloy, south of Phoenix.
As the Arizona Daily Star reported, 79-year-old Julia Benitez was detained after crossing the border to seek asylum last May and has been suffering from worsening dementia.
Prompted by the Star’s reporting, Congresswoman Adelita Grijalva met Benitez during her first oversight visit to the Eloy Detention Center earlier this month. Back then, she said Benitez didn’t know where she was.
Still, her family’s requests for humanitarian parole were denied for months.
That changed this week, when ICE released her. By Friday afternoon, Grijalva was on the way to Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport to meet her at the gate before she flew to Miami to reunite with family.
The release comes after Grijalva’s visit to the facility earlier this week.
“I was so very happy for her, and then I talked to her daughter, and she was just very grateful. They’ve been praying for nine months for her to get out,” Grijalva said.
ICE did not respond to questions about Benitez’s release or the “blanket denials” of humanitarian parole requests that immigration attorneys say they agency is carrying out.
Grijalva while she welcomes Benitez’s release, many medically vulnerable immigrants are still detained. She says she would like to see a review of all requests for humanitarian release from ICE.
“We’ll ask for that, I would love to demand that, but we’re asking them to take masks off, and we’re in this stalemate because of that,” she said.
The government has been partially shut down since mid-February amid ongoing negotiations about reforms to ICE and Border Patrol.
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