Despite her resignation from the underground movement, Aguilar was arrested in August 1984. She was accosted by men in several vans which stopped the jeepney she was riding, and then threw her onto the backseat of a waiting car. Based on their actions, she said she realized they probably did not yet know that she had resigned from the CPP. Aguilar was held in solitary confinement as a
political detainee at Camp Crame, where she was subjected to psychological, mental, emotional, and sexual abuse. During this time, however, Aguilar continued to write, and she later described her writings from her time in prison as being part of her "purple period," and labeled it as a period where "the questions start." University of the Philippines critic Mary Grace R. Concepcion notes that: "By this time, Aguilar had already severed ties with the party and was questioning the proletariat, the party dogma, Christian dogma, and even the petty-bourgeoisie. Aguilar said she felt that everyone was “exploiting” everyone else. Thus, unlike the poems from the “Red Period”, the fight was not an outward struggle against the bigger forces of imperialism and feudalism, nor an inward struggle of the self through an ideological remolding. Rather the struggle was towards an individuation of meanings, wherein one struggles to be an individual above any form of social and collective organization." Some of her friends formed the Free Mila D. Aguilar Committee, and they published a collection of the works she had written in prison, titled "Why Cage Pigeons?" to help raise funds for her and lobby for her release. == Release, conversion, and continued activism ==