politics

Under Biden, ICE's use of solitary confinement violates its own policies and constitutes torture according to the standards published by UN experts:

This report – a joint effort by Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), Harvard Law School’s Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program (HIRCP), and researchers at Harvard Medical School (HMS) – provides a detailed overview of how solitary confinement is being used by ICE across detention facilities in the United States, and its failure to adhere to its own policies, guidance, and directives.

The study reveals that immigration detention facilities fail to comply with ICE guidelines and directives regarding solitary confinement. Despite significant documented issues, including whistleblower alarms and supposed monitoring and oversight measures, there has been negligible progress. The report highlights a significant discrepancy between the 2020 campaign promise of U.S. President Joseph Biden to end solitary confinement and the ongoing practices observed in ICE detention. Over the last decade, the use of solitary confinement has persisted, and worse, the recent trend under the current administration reflects an increase in frequency and duration. Data from solitary confinement use in 2023 – though likely an underestimation as this report explains – demonstrates a marked increase in the instances of solitary confinement.

This report exposes a continuing trend of ICE using solitary confinement for punitive purposes rather than as a last resort – in violation of its own directives. Many of the people interviewed were placed in solitary confinement for minor disciplinary infractions or as a form of retaliation for participating in hunger strikes or for submitting complaints. Many reported inadequate access to medical care, including mental health care, during their solitary confinement, which they said led to the exacerbation of existing conditions or the development of new ones, including symptoms consistent with depression, anxiety, and PTSD. The conditions in solitary confinement were described as dehumanizing, with people experiencing harsh living conditions, limited access to communication and recreation, and verbal abuse or harassment from facility staff.

In the last five years alone, ICE has placed people in solitary confinement over 14,000 times, with an average duration of 27 days, well exceeding the 15-day threshold that United Nations (UN) human rights experts have found constitutes torture. Many of the longest solitary confinement placements involved people with mental health conditions, indicating a failure to provide appropriate care for vulnerable populations more broadly.

The treatment of people in immigration detention facilities and the excessive, punitive use of solitary confinement is not only contrary to ICE’s own policies and guidance but also violates U.S. constitutional law and international human rights law.

Under Biden, ICE has ignored the documented unsafe conditions in detention facilities it contracts with leading to multiple deaths of detainees:

During the first year of the Biden administration, DHS worked with oversight agencies to review facilities with substandard conditions.... The administration closed out or reduced capacity for some of the worst facilities following this review, but these actions were the “barest minimum” compared to what officials involved in the review had envisioned.[50] In August 2022, another internal DHS study recommended closing or downsizing nine immigration detention centers.[51] However, ICE only ended contracts with two of the detention centers mentioned in that review.[52]

ICE refuses to comply with recommendations from oversight bodies, such as the DHS OIG, when they issue scathing reports about life-threatening conditions. For example, the OIG issued a report in March 2022 on Torrance County Detention Facility which had already failed one Nakamoto inspection in 2021, recommending that ICE immediately stop detaining people there.[54] ICE rejected the recommendation, and continued to keep hundreds of people detained in Torrance.[55] That same month, ICE’s contracting officer also issued a report finding that violations of federal standards continued in Torrance.[56]

Later that year, in August 2022, a young man from Brazil named Kesley Vial, died in the Torrance facility.[59] ICE’s review of Kesley’s death addressed similar failures identified in the OIG report that contributed to his fatal suicide attempt.[60]

At another ICE detention facility in Port Isabel, Texas, the OIG reported in February 2023 on “unsafe conditions,” and found the facility did “not meet standards for detainee segregation.”[61] Months later, on October 8, 2023, Julio Cesar Chirino Peralta died in ICE custody after being detained at Port Isabel.[62]

Under Biden, 12 people have died in ICE custody.[64]

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Continuing to fund ICE’s detention system is inhumane and misguided. For fiscal year 2023, U.S. taxpayers paid $2.8 billion for ICE detention.[66] Following the end of the Trump-era Title 42 mass expulsion policy in May, the Biden administration adopted a more hardline approach, implementing new “sweeping” enforcement measures, including increasing detention capacity.[67] In doing so, the administration chose to ignore years of evidence showing that punitive enforcement measures do not lead to decreases in migration numbers.[68] Detention numbers spiked, from 22,000 in May to over 39,000 by the end of October 2023.[69] In continuing to expand the incarceration of people facing administrative removal proceedings, the administration ignores clear evidence showing that legal representation and community-based support services are a more humane and effective method of ensuring compliance at immigration court hearings.[70]