The Arizona Daily Star's website has no paywall for the 4th of July weekend. Catch up on the Star's reporting on immigration detention with the following news stories:
• 'They’re torturing me': ICE uses solitary confinement to scare people into self-deporting: U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement's use of solitary confinement violates detainees' rights and the U.S. Constitution, according to the first of two stories in an Arizona Daily Star and Lee Enterprises investigation, published in May.
Iranian dissident Narges Dehghani, pictured here in a video call from Eloy Detention Center in November 2025, spent three days locked alone in a room the size of a parking space after admitting to Eloy officials that she'd thought about hurting herself.
• She was suicidal after being sexually assaulted in Iran. ICE’s solution? Solitary confinement: ICE uses solitary confinement as a 'quick fix' for mental health issues, a Star and Lee Enterprises investigation found. Read the second of two stories in the investigation.
People are also reading…
• ICE detained grandmother with dementia, who uses wheelchair, for nine months in Arizona: Cuban asylum seeker Julia Benitez, 79, often didn't know where she was, nor why she was detained, during her nine months at Eloy Detention Center. ICE ignored her family's pleas to let them care for Benitez as her health deteriorated in detention, her daughter told the Star.
Julia Benitez, a 79-year-old Cuban asylum seeker, gets to talk to her daughter from the back seat of the vehicle that picked her up the night of Feb. 26, 2026 from the Eloy Detention Center after her release. Benitez was held nine months by ICE as her physical and cognitive health deteriorated.
• 'La abuela' released after Star investigation: Julia Benitez, 79, whom Eloy detainees knew as la abuela — the grandmother, in Spanish — was released on humanitarian grounds in February, 11 days after the Arizona Daily Star published an investigation into her extended detention and worsening dementia.
Cuban asylum seeker Alexander Hernandez, pictured here at Eloy Detention Center, on a video call with the Arizona Daily Star, said in April that he'd been suffering from excruciating back pain for eight months.
• ICE mum as detainee hospitalized after solitary stay: Cuban asylum seeker Alexander Hernandez, who is detained at Eloy Detention Center, said he was put in solitary confinement in April after demanding treatment for excruciating back pain. Soon afterwards, his family and the Star received worrying messages from Hernandez indicating he intended to hurt himself. The Star later confirmed Hernandez is alive, but had been hospitalized after trying to hang himself in a solitary cell. ICE shared no information with his family, nor the Star.
• 'They treat us like animals': Inside a Tucson woman’s 18-day battle against wrongful detention: Isa Maluenga Avila was kidnapped and tortured by the Maduro regime in Venezuela, before she fled to the U.S. seeking asylum. But despite being lawfully admitted at the Nogales port of entry in 2023, having no criminal record and an ongoing asylum petition, Isa still wasn't safe from masked government agents pulling her into an unmarked vehicle and locking her up in Eloy Detention Center for weeks, without explanation, Isa and her family told the Arizona Daily Star in February.
Contact reporter Emily Bregel at ebregel@tucson.com. On X, formerly Twitter: @EmilyBregel
Emily Bregel
Border reporter
