Federal data shows increasing use of solitary confinement for immigrants

The United States government has placed detained immigrants in solitary confinement more than 14,000 times in the past five years, and the average length is nearly twice as long as 15 days threshold value which the United Nations has said could constitute torture, according to the United Nations a new analysis of federal data by researchers at Harvard and the nonprofit Physicians for Human Rights.

The report, based on government data from 2018 to 2023 and interviews with several dozen former detainees, notes cases of extreme physical, verbal and sexual abuse of immigrants held in solitary cells. The New York Times reviewed the original data cited in the report, spoke to the data analysts and interviewed former inmates to corroborate their stories.

In total, Immigration and Customs Enforcement is detaining more than 38,000 people – an increase from about 15,000 at the start of the Biden administration in January 2021, according to an independent tracking system maintained by Syracuse University. An increasing proportion of detainees are being held private prison facilities with few resources for accountability, and preliminary data from 2023 indicate a “significant increase” in the use of solitary confinement, the report said.

An ICE spokesman, Mike Alvarez, said in a statement that 15 entities oversee ICE detention facilities to “ensure that detainees reside in a safe, secure and humane environment, and under appropriate conditions of confinement.” He added that detained immigrants can file complaints about facilities or staff behavior by telephone or through the Homeland Security Inspector General.

“Placing inmates in segregation requires careful consideration of alternatives, and placements in administrative segregation for particular vulnerability should be used only as a last resort,” he said, using the agency's terminology for solitary confinement. “Segregation is never used as a method of retaliation.”

ICE issued guidelines in 2013 and 2015 to limit the use of solitary confinement, saying it should be a “last resort.”

But the use of solitary confinement increased during the pandemic in 2020.”under the guise of medical isolation,” said Doctors for Human Rights. It fell in 2021 but has risen across the Biden administration since the middle of that year, the report found. According to ICE's quarterly reports, solitary confinement placements in the third quarter of 2023 were 61 percent higher than in the third quarter of the previous year.

The average length of time in solitary confinement over the past five years was 27 days, almost twice what the UN considers torture. The data shows that more than 680 cases of isolation lasted at least three months; 42 of these lasted longer than a year.

The researchers' work began more than six years ago when faculty members from the Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program began requesting documents from the Department of Homeland Security through the Freedom of Information Act. Them eventually indictedobtaining some data through an order from a judge of the Federal District Court in Massachusetts.

Among the documents were copies of emails and monitoring reports exchanged between ICE headquarters officials and records of inspections of facilities by independent groups and the Homeland Security inspector general. The researchers also received a spreadsheet of data from the Segregation Review Management System, a database maintained by ICE headquarters staff on solitary confinement cases in 125 facilities, including the rationale, dates, duration and location for each case.

Data analysts used Excel and Stata to calculate the average length and total number of incarcerations, and to compare the data across years and facilities.

ICE arrests and detains immigrants in facilities across the country operated by private companies. Some of these people have been convicted of serious crimes in the United States and turned over to immigration authorities after serving their sentences; they remain in custody until deported. Others have crossed the border unlawfully and, rather than being released into the country, are transferred to a detention center where they will remain at least until the outcome of their deportation or asylum hearings.

Even in the case of convicted criminals, the use of solitary confinement is controversial. Long-term insulation is linked to brain damage, hallucinations, heart palpitations, poor sleep, reduced cognitive function and increased risk of self-harm and suicide.

Although civilian detention is not intended to be punitive, government documents show that solitary confinement is used as punishment for minor crimes or as retaliation for exposing issues, such as filing complaints or participating in hunger strikes. One immigrant was given 29 days of solitary confinement for “using profanity”; two were given 30 days for a “consensual kiss,” according to an email from Homeland Security.

'I wanted to die'

Legal complaints and interviews with former detainees showed that humiliation was a common tactic against people in solitary confinement. Immigrants reported using vulgar insults, being searched, and being asked to perform oral sex by guards. One inmate said that when he asked for water, he was told to “drink water from the toilet.” Two described being filmed and photographed naked – one of them with their feet and hands tied and with at least five officials present.

The Times interviewed several people mentioned in the report, who asked that their names and home countries not be revealed out of fear for their safety as they had been deported.

A former detainee, 40 years old, from West Africa, who was held in ICE custody for four years, including a month in solitary confinement, said guards chose the hours before dawn as an opportunity to leave his solitary cell , while it was still too early for him to reach his lawyer or his family by telephone. He said they also left the fluorescent lights on all night, which prevented him from sleeping.

Another 39-year-old Muslim from Africa said he was denied halal meals for a month in solitary confinement. He said he was punched, kicked in the head and even handcuffed in the shower.

“It drives you crazy – you're talking to the walls,” he said in an interview. “Eventually you don't know anything about the outside world anymore – it's as if you're dead.”

An asylum seeker from Central Africa who spent three years in ICE custody, including a month in solitary confinement in Mississippi, said one of the most intense methods of psychological abuse was forcing immigrants to constantly wonder how long their isolation would last. He said a guard told him it would take seven days, but then another seven passed, and another. The guards laughed, he said.

“It was so stressful, I can't even say it,” he said. “I couldn't sleep at all. I thought about killing myself every day – I wanted to die.”

Inmates also reported extreme gaps and delays in medical care. More than half of those interviewed by the researchers who had asked for a doctor during their solitary confinement said they had waited a week or more to be seen, including in cases of chest pain and head trauma . In one case, an inmate said he had to resuscitate a fellow inmate “while a guard stood there in shock.”

Steven Tendo was a preacher who had suffered torture in his home country of Uganda, including being placed in an underground prison cell with a python and losing two fingers, bit by bit, to a pair of wire cutters.

He arrived in the United States to seek asylum, but instead of finding freedom, he was held by ICE for 26 months, including repeated periods in solitary confinement. He was denied medication for his diabetes and his health deteriorated, but he could not reach a lawyer, he said. He was placed in a full-body restraint system called a 'wrap' for so long that he soiled himself.

Mr. Tendo has since been released from detention and is living in Vermont, where he continues to seek asylum.

“I would rather be physically tortured at home than suffer the psychological pain here again,” Mr. Tendo said in an interview. “You wouldn't think that a first-world country that advocates for human rights would have such a venom.”

'Serious consequences'

Records show that the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties and the Office of General Counsel are internal to Homeland Security documented more than 60 complaints over the past four years regarding people with serious mental health problems held in solitary confinement. In some cases, their circumstances were the only reasons cited: an immigrant who showed “unusual body movements” and “irrational responses” was placed in solitary confinement for 28 days.

Nearly a quarter of people surveyed by researchers who sought mental health care said they had never been seen; another 23 percent said they were seen after more than a month. One person experiencing a dissociative episode was not seen for a psychological evaluation for five months, and the evaluations often lasted “maybe five minutes,” one person said, with no privacy through the cell door.

“There is fairly widespread understanding of the serious consequences of placing vulnerable populations in solitary confinement,” said Sabrineh Ardalan, director of the Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program, who contributed to the analysis. “So the lack of compliance with their own guidelines is really striking.”

Mr. Alvarez, the ICE spokesman, said the agency does not isolate detainees solely because of mental illness unless ordered to do so by medical staff. He added that facility leaders and medical staff meet weekly to review cases of individuals with mental illness being held in isolation.

The report's authors recommended the creation of a task force that would create a plan to end the practice of solitary confinement in ICE facilities, submit it to Congress, and then fully implement it within a year.

In the shorter term, they came up with a series of other recommendations, including a formal justification for any use of confinement, more explicit standards for facilities and financial penalties for prison contractors who failed to comply.

Because there is “much less oversight within the immigration detention environment” than in the criminal setting, said Tessa Wilson, senior program officer for the asylum program at Physicians for Human Rights, the findings are intended to “remind ICE and the general public to look and see what happens.”