Despite initially granting the request, ICE abruptly canceled Arizona Representative Yassamin Ansari's scheduled visit to the Eloy Detention Center, preventing her from seeing three critically ill people.
Rep. Ansari had scheduled a meeting at the facility, an hour south of Phoenix, with three detainees who were having health problems. Many families from her congressional district called her office to voice their worries with the detention center's poor medical care, which caused the visit.
The three individuals Ansari planned to visit included:
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- A female LGBTQ+ legal permanent resident with chronic leukemia.
- An Iranian woman seeking asylum on religious persecution grounds who has a kidney infection.
- A man coughing up blood due to deteriorating health conditions.
All three detainees complained that the facility's medical care was insufficient, according to Ansari.
According to Ansari, the Trump administration has recently put new regulations into place that make it more challenging for Congressmen to visit detention facilities for monitoring.
She pointed out that a number of Democratic politicians had recently been turned away from immigration detention centers.
As ICE increases arrest operations across the country, the congresswoman described these restrictions as limiting oversight and accountability procedures for the immigration detention system.
CoreCivic, a for-profit prison corporation with headquarters in Nashville, is in charge of running the Eloy Detention Center under an agreement with ICE. The facility's medical and mental health services are hired, staffed, and managed by ICE's Health Service Corps.
Immigration enforcement receives substantial funding under President Trump's comprehensive immigration legislation:
- $170 billion total for immigration crackdown efforts.
- $45 billion specifically for ICE to expand immigration detention capacity over four years.
- $29.9 billion for ICE enforcement and deportation operations.
- $46.6 billion for border wall construction.
- $10 billion discretionary fund for the Department of Homeland Security.
The detention spending would raise ICE's daily incarceration capacity to almost 116,000 people, according to the American Immigration Council, and marks a 265% increase to ICE's current budget.
The American Immigration Council criticized the legislation's focus on enforcement rather than addressing structural problems with the immigration system, calling it the biggest investment in incarceration and deportation in American history.
Requests for comment on the postponed congressional visit have not been answered by ICE at this time.
