U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore visits Kansas ICE facility to check on Milwaukee women

Wisconsin U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore (D-Milwaukee) traveled to Leavenworth, Kansas, on Wednesday to visit an immigration detention facility where two Milwaukee women are being held, interview them and check on their welfare. Reyna Elizabeth Garcia and Estenderly Marte Polanco were both arrested during a surge of arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in early July. 

Their arrests were described as excessive and violent by advocates from Voces de la Frontera, who monitored the surge and who joined Moore on the Kansas visit. Moore said that the Leavenworth ICE facility currently holds 450 people but  is designed to hold more than 1,000. She said she saw signs of rapid expansion. Moore fears that the facility will quickly fill up with more people. “They are building so they can fill this thing up with twice as many detainees,” she said. 

Garcia and Polanco told Moore that they are being treated as human beings, Moore said. Detainees are allowed to leave their cells and be in a common area during the day, and the facility has plans for an area where detainees will be able to exercise and get access to sunlight. Moore observed various meals being prepared including kosher and vegetarian options, indicating that the facility is making an attempt to meet dietary needs, although  the food appeared to be  of  low quality. 

Most of the people held at Leavenworth are not criminals, Moore said. Still, she said, “it is a very depressive setting, it is definitely a prison, and they are aggressively building.”

Officials at the facility denied any medical neglect, Moore said, and the detention center has  doctors on call, but no full-time medical staff within the facility itself. 

“We had some hard questions for the ICE officials,” Moore said. “We were very curious to see where the murders and rapists were, and they were unable to show us that.” 

Garcia was arrested in late May along with her brother and fiance after ICE agents in unmarked vehicles followed them as they were leaving  a local grocery store in Milwaukee. Her fiance, Galo Suárez, was later released and told by ICE agents to walk away and to not look back or else he’d face consequences, he said during a Voces press conference after the arrest. Polanco was arrested the same weekend while driving with her 11-year-old son, who was in the back seat when ICE agents pulled her out of her car. During the arrest, agents split Polanco’s lip, threw her to the ground, and at one point placed her in a position where she couldn’t breathe, she said. In both arrests, agents were described by witnesses as mocking and insulting the people they were arresting. 

After her visit, Moore described Garcia as extremely depressed. Polanco checks on her, Moore said, adding that Polanco has a strong faith in the power of prayer and uses this to help lift Garcia’s spirits.

While Garcia’s fiance was released the same day he was arrested, Moore said that the family later learned that her brother had been deported. Polanco said that she told the agents that she was scared about what  would happen to her child, who was born prematurely. He remains  traumatized after witnessing her arrest, Moore said, and blames himself for his mother’s detention. 

Garcia told Moore that she left Nicaragua because “the politics put me in danger,” only to find herself in a similar situation in the U.S. 

Moore criticized the historic level of funding for ICE in recent budgets — more than $120 billion — and said her Democratic colleagues worked together to stop further allocations in the most recent budget reconciliation bill.  At Leavenworth, she said, she wondered where all the money was going. “I was looking for the sauna,” she joked. The privately run facility is operated by CoreCivic, which sold the facility to the federal government for $238.4 million — about $300,000 per bed. Moore said it is comparable to other prisons that don’t bring in  nearly as much money.