Throughout seven months locked in immigration detention, 47-year-old Cielo could only see his wife and son through a glass window that was like a barrier between the living and the dying."You can't do anything in there but die slowly," said Cielo, speaking in Spanish in his family's living room, just outside Tucson, five weeks after his release.The no-contact visits at Florence Correctional Center often intensified the pain of separation, said the long-time landscaper, a native of Sinaloa, Mexico who's lived in Arizona for 30 years. "You can't touch your wife, you can't touch your son," he said. "If they’re crying, you can’t give them a hug of comfort. It's sad, it's expensive, it's exhausting."Although he's finally back home, as his family tries to recover financially and physically, Cielo says he isn't yet free. Cielo holds his wife Mari's hand inside their Pima County home in September. Cielo, who has lived in Arizona for nearly 30 years, was released from immigration detention in late August, after seven months in Florence Correctional Center. He was arrested in front of his home in February by heavily armed agents, despite having work authorization, complying with ICE check-ins and having no criminal record. Mamta Popat, Arizona Daily Star Despite having no criminal record and a valid work permit, Cielo was arrested during a February immigration operation at his Pima County home, a terrifying experience from which his family says they're still reeling. (Cielo asked the Arizona Daily Star to identify him and his wife Mari, a U.S. citizen, only by their nicknames, because he's afraid of risking his pending petition for asylum.)While he was in detention, Cielo's work permit was canceled, his driver's license was rescinded and the family's previously stable finances have been upended, said Cielo, speaking at his home in early October.Now unable to work, or afford basic necessities, "It's like you're a prisoner again. A prisoner at home, but still a prisoner," Cielo said.Cielo is among the thousands of noncitizens without any criminal history who have been swept up in President Donald Trump's ever-widening detention net that's splintering families and communities across the U.S.On that February morning, Cielo stepped onto his front porch to find eight armed agents in his front yard, their weapons already trained on him, he said.As Cielo tried to pull his work permit from his wallet, an agent grabbed the wallet and threw it to the ground before putting him in handcuffs, Cielo said.Because he is the primary breadwinner and caregiver for Mari and their son, who are both disabled, Cielo's absence was devastating. Mari couldn't run their busy landscaping business on her own, and her health declined without Cielo to help care for their adult son, who has developmental delays and seizures. Mari shows her feeding tube port inside of her home in Pima County in October. Mari, a U.S. citizen, can no longer eat or drink by mouth, after previous surgical cancer treatments. She used to be able to feed herself intravenously, using a nutrition mix that came in large bags, she said. But after Cielo was detained, Mari became too weak to lift the food bags herself and was losing weight. In May, her doctor gave her a feeding tube instead, so she could feed herself without Cielo’s help, she said. Mamta Popat, Arizona Daily Star "Without him, we just went downhill," said Mari, who can't eat or drink by mouth due to earlier surgical cancer treatments. She now relies on a feeding tube. "My body got weaker and my health got worse because of all the stress."Knowing everything Mari was going through on the outside was like torture, Cielo said."Knowing that she's sick and I can't be with her, I can't do a thing to help her ... It's hell on earth," he said. "It's like you're being stabbed inside. It kills you, little by little by little."Mass-detention strategyAdvocates say Cielo's experience exemplifies the dramatic, and unwarranted, expansion of Trump's mass-detention net, now ensnaring long-time residents with deep community ties, as well as those with valid work permits or some form of protected status."They didn't have to detain him, but they chose to," said Tucson immigration attorney Siovhan Ayala, who is representing Cielo. "It's a complete change of course in terms of their discretion in detaining people."ICE has reversed earlier guidance prioritizing arrests of violent offenders and is increasingly targeting non-criminal working people, advocates say, relying on racial profiling or ICE records of people already in the system, as well as arresting asylum seekers and noncitizens attending court hearings.Even asylum seekers who entered the U.S. with permission, at official ports of entry using the now-canceled CBP One appointment-scheduling app, are being detained by Trump's DHS. Many waited nearly a year in Mexico for their appointment through the app, determined to do things "the right way," advocates say.But once detained — a discretionary decision by DHS — they face mandatory detention under existing law, Ayala said."They followed the rules and entered lawfully, and then the government just switches its policies and is detaining and deporting them," she said. "It's very unjust."Another escalation began in July, when the Department of Homeland Security issued a policy memo to ICE employees, requiring mandatory detention for anyone facing deportation who entered the U.S. "without inspection," even decades ago.It's a dramatic departure from long-standing precedent, potentially subjecting millions to mandatory detention and blocking immigration judges from even considering alternatives, like release on bond with an ankle monitor and monthly ICE check-ins.Advocates say the mass-detention strategy is not about public safety nor enforcing the law, but rather represents fuel for the lucrative immigration-detention system, which under the latest budget bill got an infusion of $45 billion over the next four years."I see this as part of a multi-pronged attack," said Tucson immigration attorney Luis Campos. "They go hand and hand: these new directives, with the construction of new detention facilities."The strategy also aims to demoralize noncitizens with legitimate pathways to stay in the U.S., coercing them to leave voluntarily rather than face an extended detention while fighting their case, said Setareh Ghandehari, advocacy director at Detention Watch Network, which advocates for the end of immigration detention."It's very much being used as a way to convince people to self-deport," she said. "Make the (detention) conditions so awful that people give up and leave, even if there may be a path for them to stay."Although Cielo previously took a voluntary departure in 2006, he returned to the U.S. that year after he was threatened by criminal groups in his home state of Sinaloa, Ayala said. He's now in the process of applying for asylum protection and has been complying with required check-ins with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, she said.But that compliance meant ICE had his home address on record, and because he had a previous removal order, it was a matter of government discretion whether to detain him, Ayala said."It's just indicative of this current administration and the fact that humanitarian factors are not being considered," she said.Communities "ruptured"Historically, immigration detention wasn't big business in the U.S., with capacity for just 5,000 immigration-detention beds in the 1980s, according to Nancy Hiemstra and Deirdre Conlon, co-authors of "Immigration Detention Inc.: The Big Business of Locking Up Migrants," published in June.Capacity has grown to 41,000 and with the recent infusion of federal funding, that figure is set to climb to 100,000 beds, Ghandehari said."When you think about what it would look like to detain all these people, we’re talking about rupturing family and community networks across the country," she said.That expansion could soon involve Pima County: In May, the state of Arizona sold the former Arizona state prison in Marana to Management and Training Corp., for $15 million.A few months ago MTC informed the Marana Town Council that "the facility may be used as an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center," but hasn't confirmed that officially, town spokesman Vic Hathaway said in an email. "As a municipality, we have always been in favor of a facility use that would generate local employment and create opportunities for collaboration on essential public services, such as road and street cleaning that could be performed by inmates," he said. "Ultimately, any decisions regarding the future use and operation of the facility would fall under MTC."An MTC spokeswoman said in an email that "no final decisions have been made."Civil, not criminal, detentionOften lost in the public discourse on immigration detention is that it's civil in nature, and is not intended as punishment for any crime, attorneys say.Criminal acts by noncitizens and citizens alike are handled by the criminal-justice system, while the immigration court system handles the administrative question of immigration status.Yet for immigrants in detention, their experience is indistinguishable from criminal incarceration — without the protections built into the latter, like the right to legal counsel, Campos said. Tucson immigration attorney Luis Campos, pictured talking to Homeland Security Investigations agents in February, said he hasn't been taking on bond cases lately because there's such a slim chance for success. After a DHS issued a policy memo in July that said anyone who crossed the border without inspection at any time is subject to mandatory detention, "I've told clients, don’t even bother spending your money to hire me" for a bond hearing, Campos said. Grace Trejo, Arizona Daily Star "It is tantamount, effectively, to being in jail," Campos said. "Yet immigration proceedings are not criminal; they're civil-administrative actions. This is the clear inconsistency in all this."Prior to the 1990s, it wasn't widely assumed immigration detention was necessary, researchers say. The idea took hold through years of lobbying and campaigning by stakeholders, of all political stripes, driven by financial motives, said Hiemstra, co-author of Immigration Detention Inc."I think it's important to remember, the idea that detention is necessary and effective is invented," she said. "Through these narratives of criminalizing, and assumptions that people will abscond, it has become normalized and accepted that this works."Non-detained immigrants have high rates of attendance at their court dates, research shows.Overall, 83% of non-detained immigrants attended all of their court hearings, and those who missed court dates often hadn't received notice or experienced hardship preventing attendance, according to an analysis of 2.8 million removal proceedings by the American Immigration Council, a nonprofit research group that advocates for immigrant rights.Of non-detained immigrants with legal representation, 96% attended all court hearings, the analysis found."They want to show up," Hiemstra said. "They want to be documented.""All about money"Researchers say mass immigration detention feeds a system that enriches private-prison operators and their investors, as well as the network of subcontractors that provide services like food service, on-site commissary stores, medical care and e-messaging.But the diversion of billions in taxpayer funding to immigration detention comes at the expense of American communities, and priorities like health care and education, said Geoff Boyce, research affiliate at the University of Arizona's Binational Migration Institute.Lengthy detentions extract wealth and assets from immigrant families, which often include U.S. citizens, Boyce said."I think it's really important for people to understand the collateral effects of this," he said. "It's going to be super beneficial for a handful of companies involved in these industries of detention. But our communities are poorer as a result."If it weren't for personal loans and fundraising efforts by friends, Cielo and Mari said they would have faced foreclosure on their home, both due to Cielo's lost income and the thousands Mari had to spend to support her detained husband.Mari estimates she spent more than $11,000 during Cielo's detention, not including attorney's fees, gas expenses for visits or the recent bond payment for Cielo's release.Her estimate included $200 in weekly car rental fees to visit Cielo, the $50 weekly transfer into Cielo's e-messaging account, so they could communicate, and $100 weekly transfer for Cielo's use at the commissary, which multiple detainees told the Star is the only way to access decent food.For the government, "what's happening right now is all about money," Mari said.Boyce said Mari's calculations are in line with his 2020 research that found families of immigrants in detention longer than one month spent on average $1,800 monthly, including visitation costs and money transfers. Democratic legislators point to financial conflicts of interest for Trump's "border czar" Tom Homan, a former consultant for private-prison company GEO Group. "As Border Czar, you are uniquely positioned to help your former business client reap a huge windfall from the Trump Administration’s spending on immigration enforcement and ICE’s massive budget," according to an Aug. 25 letter to Homan from three Democratic House members.Last year Homan was caught on video accepting $50,000 in cash from undercover FBI agents posing as business executives, after allegedly indicating he could help them get government contracts in Trump's second term, MSNBC reported.ICE targeting non-criminalsICE is now holding 59,762 people in detention, and 71.5% of them — nearly 43,000 people — have no criminal convictions, according to the agency's latest data. And of those with past convictions, many committed only minor offenses such as traffic or immigration violations.The detained population far exceeds ICE's current capacity, causing overcrowded conditions and raising sanitation and safety concerns, advocates warn.In Arizona, ICE arrest data — accessible thanks to a Freedom of Information Act request by the Deportation Data Project — shows more non-criminals targeted for arrest by ICE, which usually operates in the U.S. interior, rather than on the border like U.S. Customs and Border Protection, or CBP.In the first seven months of 2025, the number of people without a criminal record arrested by ICE in Arizona rose by 290% to 1,048, compared with 270 non-criminals arrested during the same period in 2024, under former President Joe Biden, according to an analysis by the Lee Enterprises Public Service Journalism Team.Of those arrested who did have a record, most had only convictions for non-violent crimes.From January to July, the most serious criminal conviction for most peop