Dear Friends, A recent report on solitary confinement in immigration detention, by experts from Physicians for Human Rights(PHR), Harvard Law School and Harvard Medical School, is making the rounds in Congress. I believe it is the first time there has been significant buzz in Washington, DC around the torture of solitary in immigrant detention. It’s about time. An opinion piece published this week in The Hill, a widely-read news source on Capitol Hill, cites the PHR/Harvard report which determined that the average time for an immigrant to spend in solitary confinement is a month, and that some immigrants in detention have had stays of two years. The report estimates that over the past 5 years, "Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and its contractors placed immigrants in solitary confinement over 14,000 times in approximately 125 immigrant detention facilities across the United States." The use of solitary in immigrant detention mirrors the basic human rights violations of solitary confinement for the more than 120,000 people in the U.S. who are being held in solitary. Under the guise of protective custody, LGBTQ immigrants and those with documented health concerns draw longer stays in solitary. And, the mere punitive threat of solitary confinement is being used by ICE and its contractors to dissuade people from reporting or protesting sexual abuse, prison conditions, and anything else that would lay bare the inhumanity of their detention. The solution to ending the torture of immigrants in the U.S. falls squarely at the feet of the U.S. Congress and President Biden. The PHR report’s principal recommendation to Congress is to: "Pass binding legislation banning the use of solitary confinement in immigration detention and legislation that will significantly decrease the number of people in immigration detention, including the End Solitary Confinement Act (H.R. 4972 / S.3409) and Dignity for Detained Immigrants Act (H.R. 2760 / S.1208)." NRCAT is one of the initiating organizations of the federal End Solitary Confinement Act, which is a comprehensive reform bill banning all forms of long-term solitary confinement in the U.S Bureau of Prisons and federally-contracted immigration detention. Help us add more co-sponsors to the legislation. TAKE ACTION: Write to your Representative & Senators today, urging them to sign on as a co-sponsor of the End Solitary Confinement Act. Sincerely, Rev. Ron Stief
Executive Director | 
