Arbella “Yari” Rodriguez Marquez has spent more than a year in ICE detention.
Throughout her time at the Eloy Detention Center, her partner, state legislators and members of Congress have called for her release, citing Marquez’s medical condition — chronic leukemia.
This week, three dozen members of the state legislature’s LGBTQIA caucus penned a letter to ICE’s Office of Professional Responsibility, calling for Marquez to be released expeditiously on humanitarian grounds. Marquez currently faces a host of medical complications at Eloy, including weight loss, anemia, and vomiting blood, the legislators said.
“Yari deserves humanitarian parole,” Arizona State Sen. Analise Ortiz told AZPM Wednesday. “She deserves the opportunity to be home, getting proper treatment for her cancer, while she continues to follow through with her case.”
ICE has denied reports that Marquez has not received proper medical care. In a statement to AZPM, an agency spokesperson said Marquez has been seen by medical professionals 13 times during her time in detention, which has surpassed a year.
“Further, she has an upcoming medical appointment next month at an offsite medical facility,” the spokesperson said. “As such, any allegations that (Marquez) isn’t receiving appropriate care is completely incorrect.”
Advocates and lawmakers have been highlighting Marquez’s case for months. U.S. Rep. Yassamin Ansari visited Marquez at the Eloy facility in September; she later sent a letter to Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons, calling for Marquez’s release.
“I saw a woman who was physically weakened, struggling to walk, and visibly unwell,” Ansari said, noting that Marquez had lost 60 pounds in a matter of months.
Florence Project: ICE detaining more people with serious medical conditions
Civil rights organizations say a more widespread trend is at play under the second Trump administration: ICE is detaining more people with severe medical conditions.
Laura St. John works as the legal director of the Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project, a non-profit that provides legal representation and other services to immigrants who are detained in Arizona.
In recent months, she said, the Florence Project has flagged examples of people struggling with severe conditions and disabilities while detained by ICE.
“Just off the top of my head right now, I can tell you that we have women who are seven-plus months pregnant in custody,” St. John said. “We have a gentleman who is undergoing active cancer treatment while in custody right now.”
That man, the Florence Project said, receives chemotherapy at a hospital for weeks at a time, his ankle cuffed to the hospital bed. When he returns to the detention center, he remains in medical isolation.
“His immune system is completely compromised by his cancer treatment,” St. John said.
Through multiple presidential administrations, the Florence Project has reported instances of medical neglect in detention facilities. But in previous years, people with serious medical conditions typically wouldn’t spend months in a detention center as they’re doing now, St. John said. Instead, they’d remain in society while pursuing their cases in immigration court.
“Unless they had an extremely serious criminal history, the odds are that those folks would likely go through the process on the non-detained docket,” she said. “They’d be allowed to live in the community, receiving their treatment.”
The National Immigration Law Center, an advocacy group for low-income immigrants, says ICE is detaining people more indiscriminately under the current administration. Over the past year, the Department of Homeland Security has drastically reduced opportunities for detained immigrants to seek and access bond. As a result, NILC said in a report last October, medically vulnerable people with conditions like cancer are winding up in the detention system.
In its statement to AZPM, ICE said federal agents had arrested Marquez for attempting to smuggle an undocumented person through a Nogales port of entry. No criminal case against Marquez appears in online federal court records. ICE did not immediately respond to a follow-up inquiry asking whether such a case existed.
“The U.S. Attorney’s Office is not actively pursuing charges at this time,” a public affairs officer for the Department of Justice told AZPM in response to a similar query.
Congresswoman Ansari said Marquez is a green card holder who lacks a criminal history.
“(Marquez) has no criminal history, is not a danger to the community, and certainly not a flight risk,” the state legislators’ letter said this week. “She must be released so she can pursue proper and life-saving medical care.”
More people are dying in ICE detention facilities, according to the agency’s data
In March, AZPM sent a media inquiry to ICE seeking comment on the cases St. John had described — including detainees who are pregnant and have cancer. An agency spokesperson did not respond.
In its statement to AZPM this week, however, ICE said it provides comprehensive medical care to people in custody.
“For many illegal aliens, this is the best health care they have received their entire lives,” the spokesperson said.
Deaths in ICE facilities have surged under the second Trump administration, according to federal data. In 2025, ICE recorded 33 deaths — the highest rate in years, marking a threefold increase from 2024, when 11 people died. So far in 2026, 17 people have died in ICE custody. The Kaiser Family Foundation, a non-partisan organization that researches health policy, analyzed 46 of those deaths last month. Thirty-two of the 46 deaths — about 69 percent — involved people with existing medical conditions that appeared to worsen over time in ICE custody.
Pointing to recent deaths in ICE facilities, Ortiz — one of the state legislators who signed Wednesday’s letter — called Marquez’s continued detention “alarming.”
“No matter how someone feels about immigration laws, it should not be a deadly system,” Ortiz said. “And that’s exactly what is happening right now.”
Read more on AZPM.
Español 
English 