As Georgia ranks as one of the top states for Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests, immigrants, families, and advocates on the front lines share their fears and the fight for freedom in a series of interviews.
January marked one year since Mildred Danis-Taylor had seen her husband, Rodney Taylor.
“We speak every day if he can; that’s the goal,” Danis-Taylor told Capital B Atlanta. “That’s how he lets me know he’s OK.”
The 47-year-old barber and double amputee from Gwinnett County has been held at Stewart Detention Center since being picked up Jan. 15, 2025. His arrest made national headlines because Taylor, who came to the U.S. from Liberia when he was just 2 years old on a medical visa, is a double amputee.
Taylor has a valid work permit, and his green card was in process. But it was a decades-old criminal charge for which he was pardoned by a Georgia Parole Board in 2010 that got him picked up by immigration agents.
“They picked me up and said I was an aggravated felon. They treated me like I was a criminal,” Taylor told 11Alive. “They told me, automatic deportation. I can’t see a judge; I can’t get a hearing.”
The lack of quality medical care to treat his high blood pressure and bone spurs inside the detention facility have caused his health to worsen over the past year.
“Horrific,” Danis-Taylor said, describing her husband’s inability to receive proper treatment. “[The staff] do the very minimum.”
“There are times he cannot take a shower,” Danis-Taylor said. “He can’t do it with the general population; he has to remove his prosthetics and then he crawls across floors covered with mold and feces to shower.”
Capital B Atlanta reached out to ICE officials, but they did not respond in time for publication.
Taylor’s care was the subject of a hearing Wednesday, when U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristy Noem was questioned at a House Judiciary Committee hearing about his treatment.
“He’s at the mercy of other detainees just to get food, since he can’t get himself to and from the cafeteria,” Rep. Lucy McBath, D-Georgia, told Noem. “This is despicable, Secretary.”
Noem, who told the committee she was unfamiliar with his case, was fired Thursday by President Donald Trump.
Danis-Taylor told Capital B Atlanta in January that her faith is what has kept her fighting for her husband’s release.
“I’m a woman of faith; I believe there’s nothing Jesus can’t do. I strongly believe he’s going to stay in the U.S.” she said. “I believe God will make a way.”
It was her faith that guided her to find a way for the couple, who have been together for four years and share seven children, to get married last November while he was in detention. Because Georgia requires marriage certificates to be processed by both parties in person, she traveled to Alabama instead.
“Rodney notarized [the certificate] through video signing, and I recorded it for my records,” Danis-Taylor said. “I got the marriage certificate.”
While she tries to stay strong for her husband as she advocates for his release, she said things at home have not been easy.
“I’ve been served with four different eviction notices last year [and] had to get a loan for legal bills,” Danis-Taylor recounted. “I’m also dealing with his kids and the mental impact. The two little ones, for months, teachers would call because [the] kids were crying and inconsolable. My son’s grades dropped from being an A-student in 10th grade, and my daughter is depressed.”
When asked what would happen if her husband was deported back to Liberia, she said his mother is in the U.S., along with aunts and uncles. His father is deceased and any siblings in Liberia he’s never met, so if he was deported he would be without family.
So she continues to fight, raising awareness for her husband and other immigrants and pushing lawmakers to help.
During one phone call with her husband, Danis-Taylor recalled, he asked her what a sound was in the background. When she told him it was birds, he said, “I haven’t heard birds in months. I forgot what they sounded like.”
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