The Capricious Use of Solitary Confinement Against Detained Immigrants
Contraband sugar packets, calling a border guard a “redneck,” menstruating on a prison uniform, kissing another detainee, identifying as gay, requesting an ankle brace—these are just some of the reasons Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have placed detained immigrants in solitary confinement.
ICE and Department of Homeland Security documents obtained by The Atlantic provide one of the clearest snapshots to date of what immigrant-rights advocates say is the agency’s excessive, arbitrary, and punitive use of this form of isolation. Spanning from 2014 through 2018, the documents—which include tens of thousands of pages of internal emails, facility-inspection reports, summary reports on detainee conditions, written complaints filed by immigrants and their lawyers, and statistics on the general detainee population—also offer a rare accounting of the number of immigrants held in solitary confinement.
The documents demonstrate that both the Obama and Trump administrations used solitary confinement extensively and that both administrations struggled to adequately track when and why people were being isolated. The data also indicate that while the number of immigrants in solitary confinement has
