Two and a half years later, ACLU attorney Victoria Lopez says, the federal government has changed nothing about the way it handles immigrant detainees in Arizona.
"Certainly the detention bed space is equal to two years ago," Lopez says. "The quality of facilities and the quality of care that people may or may not receive in these facilities is the same."
Gregory Pratt
The cell block where immigrants live at the county jail.
Gregory Pratt
Immigrants find a sliver of sunlight inside the Pinal County Jail, which doesn't allow such detainees to go outside.
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Detainees are still kept indoors and denied access to their families at the Pinal County Jail, which, she says, is the "perfect example" of how detention facilities punish immigrants for deciding to fight their civil cases.
Walking through the county jail, ICE field officer Marty Zelenka lists a bevy of federal officials assigned to track the facility's problems.
Some are the same people who think immigrants who are locked in a room are actually outdoors.
Zelenka refuses to say the Pinal County Jail is a bad place for immigrants, but he admits it does not fit the model established by Florence Detention.
"Can I compare the Pinal County [Jail] to the ICE detention center?" Zelenka asks. "No, it's a contract facility we use. Does it meet all of our standards [and] exceed some? Absolutely. Is it appropriate? They're housing people in accordance with [federal detention] standards."
ICE officials will not directly address the fact that the Pinal County Jail is the only immigrant-detention facility in Arizona that denies detainees the right to visit with family members in person or go outdoors.
They simply say ICE is constantly evaluating its programs to ensure compliance with government standards.
For Victoria Lopez, this is hardly enough.
If ICE were serious about reforming its detention system, let alone protecting immigrants' rights, she says, it would end its detainee-incarceration agreement with Pinal County.
So why doesn't ICE take that step, given that (whether it will admit it or not) the jail obviously fails to live up to the federal standards the agency touts?
Lopez thinks the feds are simply unwilling or, perhaps, too lazy to go through the process of finding a more humane facility.
"It's a matter of beds," she answers. "The Pinal County Jail has a lot of beds."
