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New York Times: Immigrants In Solitary Confinement, Often for Weeks

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Eye-opening piece by Ian Urbina and Catherine Renz in the New York Times this weekend, about immigrants who are put into detention and then—for various reasons—are held in solitary confinement.

The United Nations has likened long-term solitary confinement to torture, and has called for a ban on the practice except in limited situations.  The US is particularly singled out for its reliance on the method (more so than any other democratic nation in the world), and for how many people they subject to it (80,000 the last time official numbers were released).  What is particularly heinous about putting immigrants into solitary confinement—as the New York Times piece notes—is that they are not supposed to be punished in detention.  Detained immigrants are held on civil, not criminal, charges, and are only being confined to ensure that they appear for administrative hearings.

Yet the time they wait in detention is often indefinite, stretching into weeks or years, until they voluntarily sign deportation papers or others decide whether they can stay or must be deported.  Which means solitary confinement, when they are put into it, can also be indefinite—despite, again, the fact that they have often not committed criminal actions and are not supposed to be punished.  The number of immigrants put into detention has grown nearly 85% since 2005, which means that the number of immigrants kept in solitary confinement has also grown.  The NYT estimates that 1% of all detained immigrants are kept confined at any given time, with nearly half of them isolated for 15 days or more, with 10% of them having mental health problems.

The article notes that immigrants kept in solitary confinement are routinely kept alone for 22 to 23 hours a day, sometimes in windowless 6-foot-by-13-foot cells, and granted one hour of recreation a day, in an area likened to an “indoor dog kennel.”  The authors also write that “solitary confinement is widely viewed as the most dangerous way to detain people, and roughly half of prison suicides occur when people are segregated in this way. Deprived of meaningful human contact, otherwise healthy prisoners often become deeply troubled. Paranoia, depression, memory loss and self-mutilation are not uncommon. No data is available on how many of the 18 suicides out of 133 deaths of detained immigrants since 2003 occurred in solitary units.”

Why immigrants are put into solitary confinement in the first place can also be unclear, though the reasons range from having unapproved materials to being separated for their own “protection” simply because they are gay.  The piece notes a few—disturbing—cases:

After federal immigration authorities caught up with him, Rashed BinRashed, an illegal arrival from Yemen, was sent to a detention center in Juneau, Wis. He was put in solitary confinement, he says, after declining to go to the jail’s eating area and refusing meals because he wanted to fast during Ramadan….he had been in the United States for five years after fleeing his civil-war-ravaged country in 1999. He arrived as an asylum seeker, but was detained in 2005 for having falsely listed his country of origin as Somalia. He was held for nearly three years in immigration detention, but he won his case in court against being deported and now lives in Chicago with his fiancée and her son. He recounted his time in solitary confinement as the most awful experience of his life.

Federal officials confined Delfino Quiroz, a gay immigrant from Mexico, in solitary for four months in 2010, saying it was for his own protection, he recalls. He sank into a deep depression as he overheard three inmates attempt suicide. “Please, God,” he remembers praying, “don’t let me be the same”… When he was caught driving drunk in 2010, Mr. Quiroz had been living in the United States waiting for legal status from an application that his father, an American citizen, submitted 12 years earlier.

While his legal status was being determined, Mr. Quiroz was not required to leave the country, but his probation officer handed him over to the immigration agency, which sent him into detention in Houston. Against his objections, Mr. Quiroz, like many other gay, lesbian and transgender detainees, was placed in solitary. He was released from detention in March 2011…

In exit interviews and case documents, immigrant detainees describe varying reasons for being sent to solitary. At Pinal County, Ariz., for example, a detainee reported being sent to solitary for nearly three months after allegedly arguing with a guard. He said guards denied his request for a video review of the situation before sentencing him to solitary. Another detainee in Sherburne County, Minn., said she was isolated after guards found some peanut butter and a Kool-Aid packet in a bag in her cell, a violation of the rules…

Trauma experts say the psychological impact of solitary may be more acute for immigrant detainees because many are victims of human trafficking, domestic violence or sexual assault or have survived persecution and torture in their home countries.

For example, Ronal Rojas-Castro, a Honduran immigrant, was detained for eight months after entering the United States illegally last April. He was caught after being held captive by smugglers for five days with more than 100 other people in a house in Texas near the Mexico border. When one of the immigrants managed to call for help, the immigration agency was alerted, and Mr. Rojas-Castro broke his ankle trying to run away.

He was later caught and put in solitary, he says, because guards said his crutches could be used as a weapon. Mr. Rojas-Castro was kept in complete darkness for four days, wearing only his underwear.

Dr. Terry Kupers, a psychiatrist at the Wright Institute at the University of California-Berkeley, said: “Immigrants have the worst situation. They have no advocates. Their family is afraid to complain.”

Last week, Rep. Spencer Baucus, a Republican from Alabama, called for fewer immigrants to be kept in detention—an expensive way to keep track of immigrants who could much more easily be allowed to stay at home and monitored with electronic devices.  Less immigrant detention would most likely lead to less solitary confinement—as would more rights for immigrants, as a Senate due process hearing noted (also last week).  An infographic from the American Immigration Council compares the rights that Americans expect from the criminal justice system to the almost total lack of such rights for immigrants:

Read the full New York Times piece here.

And sign the National Immigrant Justice Center’s petition to end solitary confinement in immigrant detention here.