ICE’s use of solitary confinement surges under Trump, study says. ‘Torturous’
UPDATE: This article was updated the morning of Sept. 18 to include comments from the White House and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
The number of people held in solitary confinement at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement centers has reached “unprecedented” levels in the past decade — and numbers are surging under the second Trump administration, a new study found.
With the U.S. having the world’s largest immigration detention system, the co-authors of the report “Cruelty Campaign: Solitary Confinement in U.S. Immigration Detention” write that ICE’s increasing use of solitary confinement, when a person is isolated for at least 22 hours a day, is a “crisis.”
ICE put at least 10,588 people in solitary confinement from April 2024 through May 2025, according to the report published Sept. 17. That is nearly 10 months under President Joe Biden and nearly five months under President Donald Trump.
Once Trump began his second term Jan. 20, the rates started rising, the study says.
“In the first four months of the second Trump presidency, the monthly increase in the use of solitary confinement was twice the rate observed between 2018 and 2023, and more than six times higher than during the end of the previous administration,” the report notes.
The study by Physicians for Human Rights, the Peeler Immigration Lab and Harvard Law School experts is based on data made public by ICE and records obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests. The research is limited, the authors note, because the way ICE gathers and reports data is flawed.
“Our report is likely just the tip of the iceberg as it relies in part on ICE’s self-reported data, which is known to be incomplete and unreliable,” Arevik Avedian, a co-author and Harvard Law School’s director of Empirical Research Services, said in a news release.
The study is calling for the Trump administration to end solitary confinement at immigration detentions, warning vulnerable populations are particularly at risk.
In an emailed statement to McClatchy News on Sept. 17, White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said “ICE detention facilities have highest standards.”
“They are safe, clean, and hold illegal aliens who are awaiting final removal proceedings,” Jackson added. “They play a critical role in fulfilling the President’s promise to get criminal illegal aliens out of America as fast as possible.”
On Sept. 18, Department of Homeland Security Assistant Public Affairs Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told McClatchy News via email that “any allegation that ICE is ‘weaponizing’ solitary confinement against illegal aliens is DISGUSTING and FALSE.”
“These types of smears peddled by the media are leading to a 1000 percent increase in assault against our brave law enforcement,” McLaughlin said. “Ensuring the safety, security, and well-being of individuals in our custody is a top priority at ICE.”
Study co-author Dr. Katherine Peeler, a medical adviser at Physicians for Human Rights and assistant professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, said in a statement that “solitary confinement placements lasting longer than 15 days meet international criteria for torture.”
“But during the final months of the Biden administration and amid the Trump administration’s escalating attacks on immigrants, ICE’s own records show that the agency has subjected people to these torturous conditions — which cause devastating physical and psychological health harms.”
Types of solitary confinement
At ICE detention centers, the report says the agency uses different terms for solitary confinement, including “segregation,” “segregated housing” or “Special Management Units.”
Immigrants locked alone in cells were either put on “administrative segregation” or “disciplinary segregation,” the study’s authors said.
ICE holds people in “administrative segregation” when officers believe they are a danger to themselves or others, according to the report. Those in “disciplinary segregation,” meanwhile, are punished over alleged misconduct.
McLaughlin told McClatchy News that “any detainee scheduled for removal, release, or transfer is also placed into administrative segregation for 24 hours” and that immigrants “are placed into disciplinary custody only after they are found guilty by a disciplinary hearing panel.”
Nearly 30 days in solitary
Along with nationwide findings, the study includes regional findings specific to New England based on a review of cases at six detention centers contracted with ICE in Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Rhode Island.
In those states, the researchers found ICE has used solitary confinement “for arbitrary and retaliatory purposes, including punishing people for filing grievances; requesting basic needs like showers; sharing food; or reporting sexual assault.”
On average at the six New England ICE detention centers analyzed in the study, immigrants spent 29 consecutive days in solitary confinement between 2018 and 2023, according to the researchers.
One person with “mental illness” was in solitary for 225 days while another person was held in solitary for 400 days because they were “(r)efusing housing,” the study says.
According to a federal lawsuit filed in July, a woman was wrongly put in solitary confinement at the Baker County Detention Center in Macclenny, Florida, after she asked for feminine hygiene products and couldn’t understand officers’ English commands, McClatchy News previously reported.
Her mental health deteriorated in solitary as a result, the lawsuit says, after she came to the facility with a medical history of hypothyroidism, PTSD, depression and anxiety.
In her statement, McLaughlin said “ICE is regularly audited and inspected by external agencies to ensure that all ICE facilities comply with performance-based national detention standards.”
Solitary confinement can be deadly
In warning that “the effects of prolonged solitary confinement can be lethal,” the study authors point to Charles Leo Daniel, a man who spent more than 13 years in it.
Nearly four of those years were spent in solitary at ICE’s Northwest Processing Center in Tacoma, Washington, where Daniel died on March 7, 2024, the report says.
Daniel had “significant mental illness,” the study’s authors wrote.
The study’s authors are concerned that Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” which “more than quadruples ICE’s detention budget,” will contribute to an increase in solitary confinement rates.
“This analysis reveals that ICE has not only failed to address documented abuses, but it has allowed them to intensify,” the report concludes.
This story was originally published September 17, 2025 at 3:14 PM with the headline "ICE’s use of solitary confinement surges under Trump, study says. ‘Torturous’."
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