The United States government has placed detained immigrants in solitary confinement more than 14,000 times in the past five years, and the average duration is nearly double that, to 15 days threshold According to the United Nations, it may constitute torture a new analysis of federal files by researchers at Harvard and the nonprofit group Physicians for Human Rights.

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

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

An ICE spokesman, Mike Alvarez, said in a statement that 15 facilities monitor ICE detention facilities to “ensure that detainees are housed in safe, secure and humane environments and under appropriate detention conditions.” He added that detained immigrants can file complaints about facilities or staff behavior by telephone or through the Homeland Security inspector general.

“Placement of detainees in segregation requires careful consideration of alternatives, and placement in administrative segregation due to special vulnerability should only be used as a last resort,” he said, using the agency’s terminology for solitary confinement. “Segregation will never be used as a retaliatory measure.”

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“, says Physicians for Human Rights. It declined again in 2021 but has increased since the middle of the year throughout the Biden administration, the report said. According to ICE’s quarterly reports, solitary confinement placements were 61 percent higher in the third quarter of 2023 than in the third quarter of the previous year.

The average length of solitary confinement over the past five years has been 27 days, almost twice the length of time the United Nations considers torture. According to the records, isolation lasted at least three months in more than 680 cases; 42 of them lasted longer than a year.

The researchers’ work began more than six years ago when faculty members of the Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program began requesting documents from the Department of Homeland Security through the Freedom of Information Act. You finally suedby obtaining some documents on the orders of a federal district court judge in Massachusetts.

The documents included copies of emails and surveillance reports exchanged between officials at ICE headquarters, as well as records of inspections of facilities by independent groups and the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general. Researchers also obtained a table containing data from the Segregation Review Management System, a database of solitary confinement cases at 125 facilities maintained by ICE headquarters staff, including the reasons, dates, duration and location for each case.

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

ICE arrests and detains immigrants in facilities across the country run by private companies. Some of these individuals were convicted of serious crimes in the United States and turned over to immigration authorities after serving their sentences; They remain in custody until they are deported. Others crossed the border illegally and are not released into the country, but are instead taken to a detention center, where they will remain at least until the outcome of their deportation or asylum hearing.

Solitary confinement is also used for convicted criminals controversial. Longer isolation was connected lead to brain damage, hallucinations, heart palpitations, poor sleep, reduced cognitive function and increased risk Self-harm and suicide. Just last week, New York City abolished solitary confinement in the city’s prisons.

While civil detention is not intended as punishment, state records show solitary confinement is used as punishment for petty crimes or as retaliation for disclosing problems, such as filing complaints or participating in hunger strikes. An immigrant received 29 days in solitary confinement for “use of profanity”; According to an email from the Department of Homeland Security, two of them were given 30 days to have a “consensual kiss.”

“I wanted to die”

Legal complaints and interviews with former prisoners showed that humiliation was a common tactic against solitary prisoners. Immigrants reported being called vulgar insults, strip-searched and 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 with his feet and hands tied and in the presence of at least five officers.

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

A 40-year-old former detainee from West Africa who was held in ICE custody for four years, including a month in solitary confinement, said guards chose the early morning hours as an opportunity to leave his solitary cell when it was too early to do so be that he can reach his lawyer or his family by phone. He said they also left fluorescent lights on in the ceiling all night, preventing him from sleeping.

Another, 39-year-old Muslim from Africa, said he was denied halal meals during 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 talk to the walls,” he said in an interview. “At some point you no longer know anything about the outside world – it’s as if you were 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 is constantly forcing immigrants to question how long their isolation will last would. He said a guard told him it would take seven days, but then another seven days 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.”

Detainees also reported extreme gaps and delays in medical care. More than half of the people surveyed by the researchers who had asked to see a doctor while in solitary confinement said they had waited a week or longer to see a doctor, citing chest pain and head injuries, among other symptoms. In one case, an inmate said he had to perform CPR on a fellow inmate “while a guard was in shock.”

Steven Tendo was a pastor who suffered torture in his home country of Uganda, including being put in an underground prison cell with a python and gradually losing two fingers to wire cutters.

He arrived in the United States to seek asylum, but instead of finding freedom, he was detained by ICE for 26 months, including repeated stays in solitary confinement. He was denied medication for his diabetes and his health deteriorated, but he was unable to reach a lawyer, he said. He was placed in a full-body restraint called a “wrap” for so long that he soiled himself.

Mr. Tendo has since been released from custody and is living in Vermont, where he is still seeking 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 be so evil.”

‘Serious consequences’

Records show that the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties and the Office of General Counsel operate internally documented more than 60 complaints in the last four years in relation to people with serious mental illnesses who were held in solitary confinement. In some cases, only their circumstances were cited as reasons: an immigrant who exhibited “unusual body movements” and “irrational responses” was placed in solitary confinement for 28 days.

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

“It is widely known the serious consequences of holding vulnerable populations in solitary confinement,” said Sabrineh Ardalan, director of the Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program, who contributed to the analysis. “That’s why the lack of compliance with our own guidelines is really noticeable.”

Mr. Alvarez, the ICE spokesman, said the agency does not isolate detainees solely for mental illness unless they are asked to do so by medical personnel. He added that facility managers and medical staff meet weekly to discuss cases of people with mental illness who are being held in isolation.

The report’s authors recommended creating a task force to develop 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 short term, they offered a number of other recommendations, including a formal justification for any detention, More explicit facility standards and financial penalties for any prison contractors who fail to comply.

Since there is “much less oversight” in the immigration detention area than in the criminal area, the findings “should serve as a reminder to ICE and the general public,” said Tessa Wilson, senior program officer for the asylum program at Physicians for Human Rights Look and see , what happens.