Study shines light on growing numbers of vulnerable people being placed in solitary confinement in migrant jails
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) put more than 10,500 people in solitary confinement between April 2024 and May 2025, and use of the practice has quickly increased under Donald Trump’s administration, according to new research.
A report from Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), the Peeler Immigration Lab, and Harvard Law School experts, published on Wednesday, sheds light on what’s happening inside US immigrant detention facilities and how increasing numbers of vulnerable people are being subjected to solitary confinement for longer periods of time.
The United Nations has found that solitary confinement, which is defined within the report as keeping people in small cells without “meaningful human contact” for at least 22 hours a day, amounts to psychological torture when such placements last longer than 15 days.
The report spans a period of time that includes the Biden and the second Trump administration, but shows a spike in the use of solitary confinement in recent months. It comes comes as the president enacts his mass deportation agenda and rapidly expands US immigration enforcement activities and detention facilities.
