University of Arizona student shares details of ‘cruel’ experience in ICE detention

Yassine Halhoul came to the US to study at the University of Arizona on a student visa. The Trump administration detained him anyway.

When Yassine Halhoul woke up to federal immigration agents banging on his door bright and early on Oct. 21, he wasn’t sure what to think. 

Still dressed in his pajamas, he opened the door to a swarm of agents with Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), the investigative arm of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE),  who told a half-awake Halhoul that he’d have to come with them to clear up some issues with his immigration status.

Because he has a valid F-1 student visa, and the officers were dressed in what he believed to be plainclothes, aside from the HSI jackets, Halhoul didn’t think he was being detained by ICE. According to Halhoul, the officers kept repeating that things would be fixed quickly if he came with them. 

Believing it’d be a simple fix, he agreed, but asked officers to allow him to change out of his pajamas first, Halhoul said. The officers agreed, but followed him into his home without permission, he said.

Halhoul maintained a calm demeanor, walking back into his bedroom, where one of his roommates shouted at HSI agents that they didn’t have permission to enter their home. 

In response, Halhoul said the officers became increasingly aggressive and yanked him outside before he could change out of his pajamas. They shouted at him not to resist, he said.

Halhoul was baffled—he wasn’t resisting. He was complying, he thought.

“I was truly trying my best to not do any type of resistance,” he explained. “I was walking with them and everything, and while I’m walking, they were screaming, ‘don’t resist.’”

HSI agents took him to their vehicle and placed him in purple handcuffs, Halhoul said. His fiancée, who was inside the home when agents arrived, was able to bring him a pair of clothes that he put on, despite the handcuffs. In the car, he managed to take photos and post one of them to social media to alert his friends about what had occurred. 

The photo Yassine Halhoul posted to alert friends and family that he had been detained by ICE. Photo courtesy of Yassine Halhoul

In Halhoul’s mind, this was merely a bureaucratic issue and wouldn’t be more than a one- or two-day thing. As time passed, he began to understand that he shouldn’t have trusted the words of those HSI officers, who he says tricked him into compliance. 

“I wish they were honest at the beginning and just said the truth, because there [were] a lot of mind games that kept going on,” Halhoul said. 

Halhoul spent hours at the Tucson Field Office and was then transferred to the Florence Correctional Center later that day, he said.

What he thought would be a simple fix led to a nearly month-long stay in ICE detention.

Life in the US

Halhoul is your typical University of Arizona Student. He attends class, is heavily involved in campus culture, works a job, and lives in a house near campus with his roommates. Originally from Qatar, Halhoul made his way to North America, starting in Canada and then eventually moving to Arizona in 2021.

Since the UofA had a strong Aerospace Engineering program, he applied for a student visa to come study under America’s much-revered higher education system. When the Trump administration began cracking down on immigrants, Halhoul didn’t think he was at risk—his student visa wasn’t set to expire until June 2026, and he’d already lived here for years. He’d never done anything to put a target on his back, he thought.

Wanting to make the most of his time here in the US while attending the UofA, he immersed himself into campus life, becoming a student orientation leader, serving as a mentor to college freshman, and acting as the finance director for a club that fundraises for a children’s hospital. 

He worked as research assistant, a sports supervisor, and other university-affiliated jobs. For individuals on an F-1 visa, like Halhoul, they are limited to working jobs offered by the university, a restriction he carefully followed. 

He made sure never to break any laws or act in a way that would cause him to lose his visa status, but it didn’t matter. 

Under President Donald Trump, 8,000 students have had their visas revoked, creating a culture of fear for many students who are trying to immerse themselves in campus life while ensuring they do not break any of Trump’s rigid rules for international students.

Halhoul’s final semester was supposed to be Spring 2025, but he didn’t complete all of the necessary requirements. Since his visa was set to expire in 2026, he figured he’d continue taking the classes until he completes his studies and graduate at a later time.

That’s why he thinks ICE came after him.

Each F-1 visa is tied to an academic program’s duration, meaning individuals on an F-1 visa are eligible to stay so long as they maintain student status and comply with visa terms. Under existing rules, a student’s legal stay ends 60 days after their program end date. However, a recent proposal by the Department of Homeland Security seeks to change that rule to a fixed year limit restricting how long international students can stay in the US on a student visa.

Halhoul believes the clerical issue put a target on his back.

It likely wouldn’t have raised flags in previous years, but the Trump administration has made it a priority to go after undocumented and documented immigrants alike. Halhoul thinks he got caught in the crosshairs of Trump’s mass deportation agenda.

‘The Florence Detention Center was really a mess’ 

Inside the Central Arizona Florence Correction Center are multiple pods separating detainees, Halhoul said. He was put in the second pod, which he said had an “insane amount of people,” who were waiting to be processed or transferred. Those detainees received “plastic beds on the ground,” to rest on as they awaited processing.

Once processed, he was moved to another area where there were about 60-80 bunk beds filled with detainees, either sitting or sleeping all day, he said. 

When Halhoul was finally able to call his mother in Qatar, 24 hours after arriving at Florence, she was relieved to hear from him. But she’d seen the footage online of immigrants being thrown around by ICE agents and felt “hopeless” and devastated that her son was being targeted by the Trump administration. 

He didn’t spend long in Florence. After three exhausting days, he was transferred to the Eloy Detention Center. 

Inside Eloy

While initially glad to be transferred out of Florence due to the overcrowding and poor conditions, Halhoul quickly learned that he landed somewhere much worse. 

The Eloy Detention Center is managed by CoreCivic, a for-profit private prison operator. The center has drawn scrutiny over the past year for its poor treatment of detained immigrants, prompting US Rep. Yassamin Ansari (D-Phoenix) to make numerous trips to the facility on behalf of her detained constituents. 

Halhoul grew up watching a lot of crime shows, including Orange is the New Black and 60 Days In, and he thought he knew how dark detention could be. Actually living through it taught him that those shows don’t begin to capture the inhumanity of detention, especially under the Trump administration. 

“It’s just way more cruel,” he said.

Halhoul felt there were elements of psychological torture deployed against detainees like himself. 

The first meal of the day was at around 4 a.m., he said. 

“We’re just sleeping,” he recounted. “They yell at you that it’s breakfast time and then you have to get up and walk to a different building where there’s food.”

What was striking to Halhoul was how warm it felt when he exited the building. His cell was extremely cold, and the average temperature outside at 4 a.m. was about 58 degrees, much warmer than his sleeping accommodations. Halhoul said officers would intentionally turn up the air conditioning at night to make the conditions even worse for detainees. 

“As soon as we go to our dorms to sleep, you can immediately hear the AC turning up, and then you can feel the cold air hitting you the whole night. You can’t really escape from it,” he said.

Detainees tried to block the vents with books to prevent the cool air from flowing in all night, but Halhoul said officers caught on and began nightly checks to make sure nobody was blocking the airflow.

“They deliberately wanted us to be tortured,” he said.

The food was bad, too. Halhoul couldn’t even make out what it was, describing it as a “sloppy—a white type of cereal and a block of bread.”

There was one jug of coffee for hundreds of detainees to share, and Halhoul said it would often run out before most of them could get a cup. After breakfast, he’d go back to his cell until around 11:30 a.m., when they’d usually be fed lunch—a makeshift soup comprised of canned vegetables and broth, devoid of protein and thereby nutrition.

Dinner was served around 4:30 p.m., and would often be the same meal as lunch. Soup and “a big round ball of butter that nobody eats,” which Halhoul believes was just a way for officials to meet calorie requirements.

“It’s just disgusting,” Halhoul said.

Despite the poor nutritional value, Halhoul ate every single meal to maintain his energy levels and health, yet he still ended up losing 10 pounds during his 23-day stay in detention. 

Detainees were also barred from taking food back to their cells and were subjected to a search if officers felt they were taking food from the cafeteria, he said. If Halhoul got hungry in between meals, he’d simply have to wait. With dinner being at 4:30 pm everyday, he’d often end the nights hungry, awaiting the “slop” breakfast to come the next morning.

According to Halhoul, detainees could only order food from the prison’s commissary on Saturdays, using one of the few tablets provided to them. But it took about a week for orders to arrive, Halhoul said. Once he realized how unsustainable the meal schedule was, he began ordering snacks like Graham Crackers and Ramen noodles to keep himself nourished as best he could. 

The employee at the commissary would often talk down to detainees, treating them as if they were children, Halhoul said. 

“The commissary lady treats people there like they’re animals. It’s really demeaning,” he added.

The medical care was inadequate, too. To access medical care, an inmate would have to add their name to the “sick sheet,” the day prior in order to be seen.

Halhoul suffered three injuries during his stay at Eloy, he said. During one incident, after injuring his hand from a fall, he sought medical care from the nurse, who gave him anti-bacterial solution. It didn’t help much, he said, and the pain kept him up at night. 

When he asked officers to take him back to medical, he said they refused him, and he was instructed to simply “wait it out.”

Count time was the worst. Detainees had to present themselves in their cell six different times throughout the day so officers could count them to make sure they were still there, despite no attempts to escape. Each count took about an hour and interrupted daily chores like cleaning cells, calling family, reading, or resting. 

Halhoul thinks count time was a way to psychologically torment the detainees by interrupting their ability to do other things. Despite these obstacles, Halhoul spent most of his time reading and exercising.

During daily yard time, he made friends with two other detainees around his age. One of them was 21-year-old Judas Rivera, whose story The Copper Courier reported earlier in October.

The trio would often play basketball together and became each other’s closest companions inside the facility. They are still in touch today.

Other inmates told Halhoul about the “hole,” which is a solitary confinement cell for detainees who “misbehave.” If an officer writes somebody up, they can be placed in confinement, where they are locked up for 23 hours a day, he said.

“It’s horrible. You hear people screaming there and people yelling because they’re there for months just by themselves, losing their minds.”

‘They were treating us with malice.’

In several instances, officers would come to detainees’ cells at 6:30 a.m. to taunt them, saying things like, “Wakey, wakey, nap time is over,” Halhoul said. Since detainees ate at 4 a.m., a lot of them would go back to sleep after breakfast, but then be woken up by the guards, anyway, according to Halhoul.

He described the officers at Eloy as people on a power trip. 

“A lot of them were not good people. They were treating us with malice,” he said.

While he was locked up in detention, the Tucson community rallied for Halhoul, raising $18,000 to support his legal fight. The conditions in the facility were so grim that he told himself if he was denied bond, which has become increasingly common under the Trump administration, he’d opt for voluntary departure and leave the US.

Finally, on Nov. 13, he was able to obtain a $10,000 bond using the money from the GoFundMe and was released. Halhoul is now back at home in Tucson, stuck with an ankle monitor that tracks his location as he continues his legal battle to remain in the US and complete his studies.

Halhoul is speaking out to raise awareness about the harsh conditions within ICE facilities. While he’s thankful he was there less than a month, he’s determined to raise awareness for the people who’ve been stuck inside for months on end. He’s begun writing a book to detail the harrowing experience and shine light on the conditions within ICE detention.

The poor treatment of immigrants, Halhoul said, is intentional—an attempt to scare immigrants into leaving the US on their own, and to prevent immigration altogether. Halhoul hopes people will keep standing up to the Trump administration, and urges international students to be aware of their rights and status at all times to prevent a similar outcome.

ICE did not respond to a request for comment at the time of publishing.

“They don’t want people to come to the US. They’re trying to make people hate the US,” he said. “They treat you so bad that you just want to leave immediately. They are getting paid for treating us really bad.”