U.S. Rep. Adelita Grijalva, an Arizona Democrat, sharply criticized detentions of elderly people with medical issues after a visit to the ICE Eloy Detention Center on Wednesday.
During the visit, her first to an ICE facility since being elected to Congress, Grijalva met with Julia Benitez, a 79-year-old Cuban woman who has been detained since illegally crossing the southern border about nine months ago in an attempt to join family in Florida.
Grijalva said Benitez was “incredibly confused, doesn’t know why she’s here, thought she was going to be here for five days.”
“It was heartbreaking, because as we were leaving, she thought we were here to pick her up and take her home,” Grijalva said.
Grijalva said Benitez started to cry when she realized the congresswoman would leave without her.
An immigration judge rejected Benitez’s asylum case, though her family is appealing the decision, the Arizona Daily Star reported. Following a 2025 ruling by the nation’s highest immigration court, migrants who cross the border illegally are ineligible for release on bond by an immigration judge.
Still, ICE has discretionary power to release people from detention, often for medical reasons or under agency supervision. That practice has sharply declined under the second Trump administration, according to a report by the American Immigration Council.
During the last months of the Biden administration, more than 6,000 people were being released from detention each month at ICE’s discretion. That number steeply dropped to well under 1,000 under Trump, the report found.
“There are certain cases where there should be consideration of someone’s medical condition and how they’re doing,” Grijalva said after her Eloy visit.
She said the facility appeared clean and adequately staffed, and that she observed people receiving medical care, though the facility doesn’t offer specialized dementia care. A medical officer inside the facility told Grijalva it’s recently seen an increase in detainees over the age of 65, Grijalva said.
ICE detentions of elderly people have spiked under the second Trump administration, according to the Lee Enterprises Public Service Journalism Team.
“It’s just cruel and inhumane,” Grijalva said.
Visits to ICE facilities by members of Congress have become a controversial practice under the second Trump administration.
Earlier this month, a federal judge blocked the Department of Homeland Security from forcing lawmakers to register seven days in advance to visit ICE facilities. The lawsuit against the department was brought by several Democrats who had made surprise visits to ICE facilities.
“We have the obligation and responsibility of oversight, not just the right to come,” Grijalva, who is not one of the plaintiffs, said in Eloy.
But last week, government lawyers told the court that DHS was again enforcing the seven-day ruling, arguing that because Congress has not appropriated funds to the department during an ongoing partial government shutdown, its members have lost oversight powers, Fox News reported.
Grijalva said she scheduled her Eloy visit seven days in advance with DHS because her priority was to meet with people detained in the facility.
