Introduction
The Florence Immigrant & Refugee Rights Project (The Florence Project) is a 501 (c)(3) non-profit organization that provides free legal and social services to the thousands of adults and children detained in immigration custody in Arizona. The Florence Project was founded in 1989 to provide free legal services to asylum seekers and other migrants in a remote immigration center in Florence, Arizona where there was no meaningful access to counsel.
In our more than 30 years of experience, we have expanded significantly, and we now provide free legal and social services to detained adults and unaccompanied children throughout Arizona. The expansion of free legal and social services has given the Florence Project the capacity to hear and file complaints to the Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman (OIDO) and the Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (CRCL) on behalf of our detained clients. The Florence Project has placed a priority on tracking complaint trends and systemic issues in detention. This report is meant to expand upon the various issues within Arizona detention centers that Florence Project clients have encountered. While we hope that these complaints and report allow the oversight agencies to enact policy changes, our ultimate goal is to demonstrate the inherently inhumanity of immigration detention and the need for a new system that promotes dignity and safety.
Data
The following report includes data related to the number of complaints that the Florence Project filed on behalf of adults detained in the Eloy Detention Center (run by CoreCivic), the Central Arizona Florence Correctional Center (CAFCC) (run by CoreCivic) and the Florence Service Processing Center (SPC) (run by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE), between March 2024 and August 2024. It is important to note that these complaints do not represent even a fraction of the issues that individuals experience in these detention centers but are what the Florence Project had the capacity to help file. We have included quantitative data regarding the number and types of complaints filed, and qualitative data explaining the subject matter of many of the complaints and examples of egregious cases. Many of these complaints suggest that ICE and CoreCivic are in violation of the 2019 ICE National Detention Standards and that ICE continues to detain people in unhealthy and inhumane conditions. All names have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals who filed complaints
Inadequate Medical Care
Like what we have seen over the past several years, the past six months also showed that poor medical care was one of the top complaints in the detention centers. From March to August, the Florence Project filed medical care complaints ranging from changes to prescription medication made without the individual’s knowledge or consent, missed medication dosages, denial of medication, violations of medical privacy, long delays in receiving medical records, issues with receiving glasses for vision loss, excessive wait times outside in the heat in the line for pills (in SPC specifically), to improper wound care.
Two individuals in SPC and CAFCC diagnosed with HIV filed complaints regarding issues with their medication.
In SPC, we filed a complaint for Juan, a man with HIV who said that detention center medical providers changed his HIV medication for two days without his knowledge or consent. Although the medical record from the facility states that he was informed of the medication change afterward and was very happy with his treatment, he stated that he never received notice and that the statement in the records was false. Juan continued to report to medical staff his frustration with the medication changes for several months. Additionally, the complaint alleged that Juan began to develop flu-like symptoms and submitted multiple sick call requests to see medical staff. However, he was not seen for four days. Given his HIV diagnosis Juan was exceptionally anxious about having untreated flu-like symptoms and the rapid risk for deterioration of his health. Juan submitted a grievance on the facility tablet regarding the changes to his HIV medication and lack of attention to his health, as well as the resulting stress and anxiety that it caused. He claimed that ICE responded to the grievance by stating that it was not ICE or the government’s fault that he contracted HIV in his country.
In another complaint, Bernardo, a man living with HIV, was transferred from SPC to CAFCC. After arriving at CAFCC, medical records confirmed that Bernardo was not given his medication for HIV, anxiety, and sleep issues for two days, violating ICE’s National Standard 4.3 (“Medical and pharmacy personnel shall ensure that all Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved medications currently approved for the treatment of HIV/AIDS are accessible. Medical and pharmacy personnel shall develop and implement distribution procedures to ensure timely and confidential access to medications… Medical and pharmacy personnel shall ensure the facility maintains access to adequate supplies of FDA-approved medications for the treatment of HIV/AIDS to ensure that newly admitted detainees are able to continue with their treatment without interruption.”).[1] One day after his transfer Bernardo submitted a sick call request noting that he had not received his HIV and medicine for anxiety for over 24 hours. The response to the sick call request was marked as ‘not urgent.’ Bernardo did not receive his medications until the following night, two days after his arrival. Bernardo reported that during these two days without his medication he experienced severe anxiety, insomnia, and emotional distress.
Another complaint submitted on behalf of Norma alleged improper wound care at the Eloy Detention Center. Norma arrived at Eloy with surgical wounds on her inner thighs from a prior surgery. Norma noted that her stitches opened, the wounds became red and painful, and occasionally bled. Medical staff told her to use a feminine hygiene pad for any blood and drainage from her wounds. Norma continued to submit multiple sick call requests asking for help because she was terrified of an infection. Norma noted that medical staff became rude and aggressive with her when she submitted multiple sick call requests. After more than a month of pain and sick call requests she was finally given antibiotics. Norma also said that she was especially scared of infections because of the unsanitary conditions in Eloy. Most notably, she said that the laundry did not fully dry in the dryer, resulting in damp clothes that smelled like mildew. Given that her wounds were on her inner thighs she believed that they did not heal and became more infected because of the damp underwear and pants that she was forced to wear.
Detention Conditions
During this report period, the Florence Project continued to hear about unsanitary and inhumane conditions related to the cleanliness and habitability of the detention centers. As in previous years, we continued to file complaints regarding lack of recreation time, unappetizing and innutritious diet, damp and mildewed laundry, and no working air conditioning (during the hottest summer ever recorded in Arizona).
In Eloy, we submitted two complaints from two individuals, both reporting that the air conditioning did not work in their individual housing units, with one person noting that in his housing unit the air conditioner did not work since at least March.
One woman, Yessenia, noted that the air conditioning in her unit did not work in individual cells. When women in her unit brought up the excessive heat in their cells to staff, she stated that staff simply stated that the air conditioning didn’t work with no further details. Another man in Eloy, Ramon, reported that the air conditioning in his housing unit also did not work in several individual cells. Ramon noted in his complaint that facility maintenance workers had been in his unit but stated they didn’t have the parts to fix the air conditioning and that CoreCivic needed to buy the parts. At the time that the complaint was filed, on August 28th, Ramon noted that nobody from maintenance had been back to fix the air conditioning. With temperatures in Eloy often reaching 110 degrees or more in the summer, these two individuals indicated that the lack of air conditioning made the summer months unbearable inside their housing units. Lack of appropriate air conditioning suggests that ICE is violating their National Detention Standard, 1.1; “The facility shall ensure appropriate temperatures, air and water quality, ventilation, lighting, noise levels, and detainee living space, in accordance with any applicable state and local jail/prison standards.”[2]
Disability Accommodations
In June, the Florence Project submitted a complaint for a 66-year-old man in CAFCC who had severe hearing loss and was detained since February without hearing aids. Ernesto was also diagnosed with a serious mental illness, which made it exceedingly difficult for him to advocate for himself or make his needs known in detention. Instead of giving him hearing aids or any other accommodations to address his disability, facility staff gave Ernesto a bright blue vest to alert those around him that he was hard of hearing (a potential violation of his medical privacy rights).
By July, Ernesto still did not have hearing aids, and his legal team at the Florence Project resorted to shouting directly into his ear to communicate with him. On July 12th, his attorney contacted his ICE Deportation Officer to request hearing aids as a reasonable accommodation under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. Despite requests from his attorney and intervention from both CRCL and OIDO throughout July and August, Ernesto still did not have hearings aids by the end of August. ICE was not able to inform his legal team if or when Ernesto would have hearing aids. ICE and CoreCivic have violated several of the ICE 2019 Performance Based National Detention Standards in Standard 4.7 Disability Identification, Assessment, and Accommodation,[3] related to auxiliary aids and disability accommodations for individuals with disabilities, as well as potentially violating Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act (“No otherwise qualified individual with a disability in the United States, as defined in section 705 (20) of this title, shall, solely by reason of his or her disability, be excluded from the participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance or under any program or activity conducted by any Executive agency or by the United States Postal Service.”).[4]
Dental Care
The Florence Project also continued to see the lack of timely and efficient dental care. In SPC, we filed an additional complaint for Juan, who was living with HIV. Upon his arrival to SPC in October 2023, Juan noted dental pain and was told by medical staff that he needed to wait six months for a cleaning (per ICE’s own detention standards) and had to wait to see a dentist. Juan had to wait for three months, until January 2024, to see a dentist about his dental pain. However, Juan noted in his complaint that the dentist would not repair his tooth and the only remedy that was offered was the extraction of his tooth. ICE’s National Detention Standard 4.3 notes that Juan should have had access to a variety of treatments (“Routine dental treatment may be provided to detainees for whom dental treatment is inaccessible for prolonged periods because of detention for over six months. Routine dental treatment includes amalgam and composite restorations, prophylaxis, root canals, extractions, x-rays, the repair and adjustment of prosthetic appliances, and other procedures required to maintain the detainee’s health”). [5] Given Juan’s HIV status and the negative health consequences that could arise from a dental infection, he was very upset that he had to wait months for dental care and that he was not offered any treatment besides extraction of the damaged tooth.
Legal Access
In both CAFCC and Eloy we filed complaints on behalf of individuals regarding barriers to legal access, particularly concerning access to the law library, which individuals rely on to help them during their immigration cases. In CAFCC, one man reported that the computers were very old and often databases that are used to look up legal information did not function well on the outdated machines. At the time of the complaint, he also noted that only two of the computers in the law library were operational. He noted that when their housing unit of 50-60 men are allotted a short amount of time to use the law library, dozens of them may not have time to access the computers for their legal cases.
In Eloy, we filed a complaint for a woman who noted that, due to understaffing issues, she and the women in her housing unit were not always able to go to the library during their scheduled time. When they were able to go, they were not always allowed to stay for the full hour, potentially violating ICE National Detention Standard 6.3 (“Each detainee shall be permitted to use the designated law library for a minimum of five (5) hours per week during a reasonable time of day.”)[6] Although her housing unit did have 1 computer in their unit for the women to work on their legal case outside of the law library, at the time the complaint was filed she reported that the computer had been broken for four weeks.
Repeated Complaints Show Pattern of Disregard for Health and Wellbeing Despite Oversight
For the past six months, the Florence Project filed many complaints about the same or markedly similar issues that we have documented for years, including unsanitary conditions, delays in medical and specialty care, violations of Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, lack of dental care, and more. Despite complaints and resulting interventions and recommendations from oversight agencies like CRCL and OIDO, ICE and CoreCivic have demonstrated an inability and/or unwillingness to improve conditions.
While oversight agencies have made many necessary recommendations to detention facilities to improve treatment of individuals, those recommendations often are ignored by the agency themselves and the repeated complaints show that the systemic harms and abuses by ICE and CoreCivic cannot be ameliorated. In fact, ICE’s national detention standards themselves often, in practice, result in cruel and inhumane treatment of individuals. For example, as noted above, ICE’s National Detention Standard 4.3 states that those detained only have access to dental care and cleaning after 6 months of detention, meaning people are often left with dental pain and infections for months. Even when dental treatment is offered, we continue to hear individuals are only offered tooth extraction, even when there are other options available to treat and save the tooth. We have seen in medical records that people are often given the choice to extract the tooth in detention or wait indefinitely in pain until they are released for actual treatment of their tooth.
ICE has demonstrated further disregard for individuals’ health and safety over the past six months by failing to fix the air conditioning in Eloy during the hottest parts of the summer and forcing people to stand outside to wait for their medication in SPC when temperatures were routinely in the triple digits. Additionally, the continued egregious delays or denials in dental care, medical care, specialty medical care and disability accommodations demonstrate ICE and CoreCivic’s complete disregard for the dignity and lives of the people in their custody.
While we applaud the oversight agencies’ investigations and policy recommendations, it has become clear that ICE and CoreCivic do not consistently follow these recommendations. In September 2023 CRCL did onsite investigations in Eloy and CAFCC. In May 2024 the Florence Project received correspondence from CRCL noting that based on their investigation in Eloy they made recommendations to ICE regarding staffing, food, clothing, hygiene, legal access, and telephone and tablet access, “among other things.” In CAFCC CRCL made recommendations regarding dental care and staffing, medical records, medical diet, privacy during mental health appointments, adequate language access, access to the law library and legal materials, privacy during disciplinary proceedings, “and others.”
Since the investigation, the Florence Project has received additional correspondence from CRCL related to individual complaints. On July 31, 2023, the Florence Project received correspondence in response to a complaint we filed in CAFCC regarding an individual’s complaint of medication administration, specialty medical care, and disability accommodations. While the response did not specifically note recommendations for disability accommodations, a Section 504 investigation did occur. CRCL has also notified the Florence Project that they have issued recommendations to ICE regarding dental care in CAFCC. The actual recommendations issued by CRCL have not yet been publicly released.
However, a year after the onsite investigation and after several policy recommendations, the same complaints continue to persist. This report demonstrates that oversight agencies, particularly those with only the power to recommend change, but not enforce change, cannot adequately address the inherent inhumanity and systemic violations of people’s rights in immigration detention. Given the ongoing systemic abuses and ICE and CoreCivic’s unwillingness to follow oversight recommendations the Florence Project believes that the only solution to preserve the rights, dignity, and health of immigrants is to close immigration detention facilities in Arizona and create a housing and services-based model of care and support.
[1] US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, “National Detention Standards for Non-Dedicated Facilities,” Standard 4.3,II,N,2 and 7.2, Revised 2019, Available at https://www.ice.gov/doclib/detention-standards/2019/nds2019.pdf
[2] US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, “National Detention Standards for Non-Dedicated Facilities,” Standard 1.1,II,I,1, Revised 2019, Available at https://www.ice.gov/doclib/detention-standards/2019/nds2019.pdf
[3]US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, “National Detention Standards for Non-Dedicated Facilities,” Standard 4.7 Disability Identification, Assessment, and Accommodation, Revised 2019, Available at https://www.ice.gov/doclib/detention-standards/2019/nds2019.pdf
[4] U.S. Department of Labor, “Section 504, Rehabilitation Act of 1973,” available at https://www.dol.gov/agencies/oasam/centers-offices/civil-rights-center/statutes/section-504-rehabilitation-act-of-1973
[5]US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, “National Detention Standards for Non-Dedicated Facilities,” Standard 4.3,II,H,2, Revised 2019, Available at https://www.ice.gov/doclib/detention-standards/2019/nds2019.pdf
[6] US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, “National Detention Standards for Non-Dedicated Facilities,” Standard 6.3,II,F, Revised 2019, Available at https://www.ice.gov/doclib/detention-standards/2019/nds2019.pdf