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.
-
Fifty-six-year-old Emmanuel Damas died in a Scottsdale hospital March 2. His family says he began complaining of a toothache around Feb. 13, but was given only ibuprofen at the Florence Correctional Center. -
Grijalva, local leaders and a few dozen protesters gathered outside the gated-off Marana Prison complex – an old state prison sold to the for-profit Management & Training Corporation last year for $15 million. -
On Tuesday, the person in charge of overseeing kitchen staff for more than a dozen sports bars raided in January by immigration authorities pleaded guilty in federal court. -
Adelita Grijalva has been regularly meeting with tribal leaders from southern Arizona — the Pascua Yaqui Tribe, Tohono O’odham Nation and Gila River Indian Community — and they’re all sharing the same thing, telling KJZZ: “DHS must consult with tribes. They’re not doing it now. This administration doesn’t honor sovereignty.’” -
A Day 1 executive order enacted by President Donald Trump froze all refugee admissions and the funding attached to them.
