Karla Sáenz showed up to her routine immigration check in good spirits March 9, looking forward to being fingerprinted so she could obtain a Social Security clearance, she said.
But this check-in would be unlike the others. When Sáenz arrived at a US Citizenship and Immigration Services office in Midtown Phoenix, immigration officials promptly took her into a back room and informed her she was being detained, she said.
Sáenz, an organizer with Trans Queer Pueblo — a Phoenix-based a LGBTQ+ migrant advocacy group — asked to see a warrant, but officials did not produce one, she said. A Trans Queer Pueblo volunteer who accompanied her, Cristen Pointer, corroborated the account. ICE officials have claimed Sáenz missed prior check-ins, but she and her supporters dispute that.
ICE said it was unable to provide a statement prior to publication.
From there, Sáenz, a 26-year old transgender woman from Venezuela, was detained and held in a men’s unit at the Eloy Detention Center, about 60 miles southeast of Phoenix in rural Pinal County, in what she described as “horrible” conditions. She said she was unable to shower for a week, faced medical neglect, and was subjected to mistreatment by staff at the facility.
“The guards made my life hell. They went out of their way to call me man as many times as they could to humiliate me,” Sáenz said through an interpreter. “I am a politically conscious woman, and I know they do this as a way to break people’s mental health.”
Advocates with Trans Queer Pueblo argue Sáenz’s detention was retaliatory, tied to her public campaign for the release of another detained queer migrant, according to LOOKOUT News.
LGBTQ+ people in immigration detention face elevated risks of sexual and verbal abuse because of their identity, according to the Center for American Progress, a progressive thinktank. The Trump administration stopped tracking the number of trans people in ICE custody in early 2025, making it harder for advocates to monitor conditions or push for protections, the Vera Institute for Justice reported.
After a month in detention, a federal judge — US District Judge Krissa M. Lanham, a Biden appointee — ordered Sáenz to be released from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody in April, after government officials conceded her detention was “arbitrary and capricious” and violated her due process rights.
Now, Sáenz is calling for the release of Arbella “Yari” Rodríguez Márquez, a queer Phoenix woman with leukemia who has been in ICE detention for more than a year.
Márquez, a former legal permanent resident whose status was revoked by a federal immigration judge, has not received proper medical care for her chronic lymphocytic leukemia at the CoreCivic-run facility, according to her family. Her health has deteriorated rapidly: she’s lost more than 70 pounds, now needs a walker to move and requires assistance to shower. She is vomiting blood regularly, advocates say.
Patti Serrano, an aide to Phoenix City Councilwoman Anna Hernandez, said that Marquez’s condition has grown critical.
“ICE’s treatment of Yari, and their intentional efforts to let her suffer and die in detention, are cruel and inhumane, and point to a clear pattern of ICE intentionally letting our neighbors die from medical neglect,” Serrano said.
For Sáenz, the medical neglect was not surprising.
During her month at Eloy, Sáenz said she did not receive hormone therapy or medication to treat a chronic illness. The lack of treatment “caused severe pain in my body, in addition to serious harm to my mental health,” she said.
She also recalled receiving a medication that left her “foggy and confused” which she stopped taking to regain her mental clarity. Sáenz said she is unsure what medication they were giving her, but was told it was a medication for treating anxiety. Sáenz recalls it feeling like a sedative, and said that the guards later said it was given to her in error.
ICE did not respond to specific questions about her treatment before publication.
“CoreCivic, who runs the Eloy Detention Center, are not prepared to care for anybody, of any gender,” Sáenz said through an interpreter.
The Eloy Detention Center, a 1,550-bed facility operated by the private prison company CoreCivic under contract with ICE, is one of the deadliest ICE facilities in the country. Since opening in 1994, it has recorded at least 16 deaths, including five suicides. A January 2026 report by the Florence Immigrant & Refugee Rights Project, based on accounts from more than 60 people detained at Eloy between June 2024 and November 2025, documented medical neglect, guard abuse, broken air conditioning during Arizona summers and invasive strip searches. ICE and CoreCivic did not respond to the Tucson Sentinel’s request for comment on the report.
So far this year, 17 people have died while housed in ICE detention, including from alleged medical neglect and suicide. At the same time, oversight has been gutted: the Trump administration laid off hundreds of staff at three DHS offices that investigate detention conditions, and ICE reduced facility inspections by 36% in 2025, according to the Project on Government Oversight. In Congressional testimony, Todd Lyons, the acting director of ICE, attributed the high number of deaths to a natural result of the high number of individuals in detention.
“It is the highest because we do have the highest amount in detention that ICE has ever had since its inception in 2003,” Lyons said.
Under the Trump administration, more than 73,000 individuals are currently housed in ICE facilities across the country, the highest it’s ever been.
That number could get higher. In 2025, ICE received $70 billion as part of President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” with about half of it dedicated to expanding detention ability across the country.
The American Civil Liberties Union has warned that mass detentions lead to human rights violations and death, citing historical parallels to the World War II-era internment camps of Japanese Americans and the mass detention of Jewish people during 20th century Europe.
Back in Phoenix, Sáenz said she is focused on winning freedom for Marquez and others still inside ICE facilities.
“The Eloy Detention Center kills migrants through medical negligence,” Sáenz said. I am here to demand the immediate release of my sister, Yari, and of everyone inside that horrible place. Shut down Eloy.”
