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Federal Records Show Increasing Use of Solitary Confinement for Immigrants (www.nytimes.com)

submitted 9 months ago by ira@lemmy.ml to c/politics@lemmy.world

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The cages are getting smaller and more abusive.

The United States government has placed detained immigrants in solitary confinement more than 14,000 times in the last five years, and the average duration is almost twice the 15-day threshold that the United Nations has said may constitute torture, according to a new analysis of federal records by researchers at Harvard and the nonprofit group Physicians for Human Rights.

The report, based on government records from 2018 through 2023 and interviews with several dozen former detainees, noted cases of extreme physical, verbal and sexual abuse for immigrants held in solitary cells.

Overall, Immigration and Customs Enforcement is detaining more than 38,000 people -- up from about 15,000 at the start of the Biden administration in January 2021

Solitary confinement placements in the third quarter of 2023 were 61 percent higher than in the third quarter of the previous year, according to ICE's quarterly reports.

More than 680 cases of isolation lasted at least three months, the records show; 42 of them lasted more than one year.

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[-] autotldr 4 points 9 months ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:

The report, based on government records from 2018 through 2023 and interviews with several dozen former detainees, noted cases of extreme physical, verbal and sexual abuse for immigrants held in solitary cells.

The researchers’ work began more than six years ago when faculty members at the Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program started requesting documents from the Department of Homeland Security through the Freedom of Information Act.

Among the documents were copies of emails and monitoring reports exchanged between ICE headquarters officials and records of facility inspections by independent groups and the Homeland Security inspector general.

While civil custody is not intended to be punitive, government records show the use of solitary confinement as a punishment for petty offenses or as retaliation for bringing issues to light, such as submitting complaints or participating in hunger strikes.

An asylum seeker from central Africa who spent three years in ICE custody, including a month in solitary confinement in Mississippi, said that one of the most intense methods of psychological abuse was forcing the immigrants to constantly wonder how long their isolation would last.

“It’s pretty widely understood the severe consequences of putting vulnerable populations in solitary confinement,” said Sabrineh Ardalan, the director of the Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program, who contributed to the analysis.

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this post was submitted on 07 Feb 2024

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