Leticia is on the verge of losing her house after falling behind on her mortgage payments because of her long incarceration. ICE granted her a temporary work permit, but her previous employer wouldn't rehire her, and she has not been able to find employment since her release from federal custody.
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Hector spent nearly six months at Florence Correctional.
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Leticia was detained at the Pinal County Jail, Central Arizona Detention Center, and Eloy Detention Center.
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The federal government stopped housing female detainees, such as Leticia, at the Pinal County Jail in early 2010 after human-rights groups complained about their treatment, the ACLU says in its new report.
Detainees sent letters to various groups detailing medical negligence and abuse. The University of California-Davis Immigration Law Clinic began compiling information on the jail in 2007.
In September of that year, the Law Clinic released a report alleging that 60 detained immigrants went on a hunger strike after they were transferred from the Florence Detention Center to the county jail.
It noted that several detainees scheduled final contact visits with their families in anticipation of the transfer to the more repressive facility but were moved before they could say their farewells in person.
The Law Clinic supplemented its earlier findings with a 2008 report focusing exclusively on women.
It said women at the county jail had no privacy while showering and were often watched by male guards. The guards responded, according to the report, that it was the inmates' responsibility to hide themselves, even though the shower was out in the open.
The ACLU received a letter from female detainees alleging that medical requests from women were ignored regularly by jail authorities.
One detainee recalled approaching a nurse with an earache and getting told to request a medical appointment, which she did. After a few days, she requested another. And then another.
Finally, the nurse told the detainee to stop bothering her and asked, "What would you do outside of jail?"
When the detainee responded that she would go to the emergency room, the nurse said she would be turned away.
One female detainee reported that medical complaints often were dismissed by authorities who recommended water as a miracle cure. Detainees complaining of everything from headaches to nausea and high and low blood pressure were treated with water by jail guards.
"There isn't much we can do," a detainee reported one guard responding to her medical complaint. "You're going to be deported anyway."
Last year, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights came to Arizona for a tour of the Pinal County Jail and released research titled "Report on Immigration in the United States: Detention and Due Process," in which it criticized conditions there.
It singled out bad food and the lack of family visits and outdoor recreation as serious problems, as well as what it claimed was inadequate access to legal materials and healthcare for detainees.
The commission also pointed out that the refusal to grant outdoor recreation to detainees at the county jail is in violation of the federal government's detention standards.
All this pressure and negative publicity pushed ICE to take women out of the Pinal County Jail, the ACLU insists.
ICE denies that the jail is inappropriate for female detainees. All ICE facilities in Arizona can hold women, government officials say. Otherwise, they say, ICE would not contract with them.
ICE claims that the women were transferred from the Pinal County Jail to the Central Arizona Detention Center, a private prison, and to the Eloy facility for reasons related to "operational efficiencies."
They decline to elaborate on this bureaucrat-ese.
Hector is a University of Arizona graduate from Mexico who was adopted by American relatives in Tucson when he was 5 years old.
Now 25, he has an Arizona birth certificate and a Social Security number. But because his adoptive parents didn't file for automatic citizenship, he technically lacks legal status.
He wound up in ICE custody last summer on a traffic violation. The Pima County Sheriff's Department waved a document in front of him that called for his deportation to Mexico. Deputies told him he could fight his case from there.
The alternative to signing, they said, was "going to Florence." He thought they were referring to the maximum-security prison.
Scared to death, Hector signed and filled out an affidavit explaining why he believes he is a United States citizen. He was placed in ICE custody, where he remained for nearly six months.
Hector was housed in a 15-man cell at Florence Correctional with an untreated schizophrenic who walked around rocking and shouting "Chido!" ("awesome," in Spanish), which became his nickname among prisoners.
One night, Hector was in bed and noticed Chido standing over a sleeping detainee nicknamed Chiquileen ("Little Man," in Spanish), who was 6-foot-4.
"Don't look at me, don't look at me!" Chido warned, gesturing wildly. "I'll kill you! Don't look at me!"
Hector and his cellmates signed a request asking that Chido be moved, pending psychiatric treatment. Hector took the request to the guard in charge of his unit, whom he remembers chuckling and saying, "That's funny."
For three weeks, Chido went without meds, Hector recounts, and the detainees took turns watching him at night.
Chiquileen and another detainee, nicknamed Marvin the El Salvadoran, would alternate staying up at night. Every so often, they would give Chido a thumbs-up. If he returned it, they knew he was still awake. If not, they knew he was asleep and everybody in the unit might sleep safely.
