ICE Under Fire for Solitary Confinement of Immigrants Amid Suicide Attempts

By Mike Ludwig / Truthout

The 61-year-old man who was recently found dead of suspected suicide at a privately run Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) prison in Washington state served the second-longest stretch in solitary confinement of any person in ICE custody since 2018, according to a new analysis by human rights experts.

Charles Leo Daniel, a citizen of Trinidad and Tobago, was found dead while in solitary confinement on March 7 after being incarcerated at the Northwest Detention Center (NWDC) near Tacoma for about four years. Between April 2020 and September 2023, Daniel was held in solitary confinement for a total of 1,244 days divided between two stints, according to internal ICE records obtained by the University of Washington (UW) Center for Human rights.

According to migrants rights group La Resistencia, at least five suicide attempts have occurred at NWDC and more than 300 people have gone on hunger strike since Daniel’s death. Two of the attempts occurred just days after Daniel’s death, and the others could not be immediately verified. NWDC is run by GEO Group, a private prison company that over the years has been accused of human rights abuses and exploiting prisoners to turn a profit at immigration jails and prisons across the country.

The UW Center for Human Rights report on Daniel’s death is a research update to a multipart investigation into dangerous conditions at the NWDC. It’s part of a national effort by researchers to shine a light on what activists say amounts to torture: the “egregious overuse” of solitary confinement in immigration jails and prisons run by ICE and its contractors.

“While there is still a lot we don’t know about Mr. Daniel’s death, the findings we are presenting today show that his rights were violated for years at the hands of ICE and GEO, and these abuses may have contributed to his death,” said Angelina Snodgrass Godoy, director of the UW Center for Human Rights and author of the report, in a statement.

Immigration prisons have faced criticism and protests over inhumane conditions and the use of solitary confinement for years. Meanwhile, politicians put images of migrants crossing the southern border at the center of a sensationalist and often racist debate over immigration policy. Immigrant rights activists say the level of carceral violence would explode if former President Donald Trump is reelected and carries out his plans for mass detention camps and deportations.

Even short stays in solitary confinement increase the risk of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), self-harm and suicide, while prolonged confinement can lead to lasting brain damage, hallucinations and reduced cognitive function.

These harms are well-documented, and in 2013 ICE issued a directive to limit the use of solitary confinement in immigration detention, particularly for people with health vulnerabilities. ICE more recently updated requirements for reporting how long people with mental health conditions are held in solitary, highlighting the need for oversight over private prison contractors, according to a study released last month by Harvard Law School and Physicians for Human Rights. However, the study found that immigration jails and prisons “fail to comply with ICE guidelines and directives regarding solitary confinement.”

ICE oversaw more than 14,000 placements in solitary confinement between 2018 and 2023, according to the study. Many of these people reported being placed in solitary for small infractions or in retaliation for participating in hunger strikes. Many also reported inadequate access to medical and mental health care in solitary, which led to or exasperated symptoms consistent with depression, anxiety and PTSD.

The study also found that NWDC has one of the highest average length of stays in solitary confinement in the nation, ranking ninth out of the 125 immigration jails and prisons across the U.S. that make up the world’s largest system for incarcerating noncitizens.

La Resistencia said the rash of suicide attempts at NWDC comes as 143 detainees reached their 11th day on a hunger strike on Monday. Several activists camped outside the facility are also on hunger strike to amplify the demands of those inside.

“We are calling for an end to the cruel practice of solitary confinement; an independent investigation of the death of Mr. Daniel, and everyone who has suffered at the hands of ICE and GEO; an accountability and reparations process; and we call for the complete shutdown of the Northwest Detention Center,” said La Resistencia co-founder Maru Mora Villalpando in a statement while on hunger strike.

Hunger strikes are nothing new at the NWDC, one of the nation’s largest immigration prisons run by ICE and its contractors. With support on the outside from La Resistencia and other activists, prisoners at NWDC have undertaken a series of hunger strikes over the years in protest of solitary confinement, allegations of medical neglect and inhumane living conditions that public health researchers have called “abysmal.”

NWDC has been locked in a court battle with Washington state over an attempt by lawmakers to hold GEO Group accountable for inhumane conditions at the facility. On March 10, just days after Daniel’s death, a federal judge in Tacoma blocked the state from enforcing most a state law meant to improve living conditions and oversight at NWDC by allowing state regulators to make unannounced inspections and issue fines.

“Charles Daniel’s death is, without a doubt, tragic. Yet after years of efforts to address abuses at the facility through litigation, lawmaking, and public advocacy, none of us can pretend it is a surprise,” Godoy wrote in conclusion of the research update on Daniel’s death.

Preliminary reports from Tacoma first responders list Daniel’s cause of death as unknown, and local police handed the investigation into his death over to ICE.

In a statement, ICE said Daniel was convicted of murder in 2003 and served his 18-year sentence in a state prison. After his sentence, he was transferred to ICE custody in March 2020 after a federal immigration judge ordered him to be deported. Immigrant rights advocates call it “double punishment” when immigrants serve out their sentence in the U.S. and are then incarcerated on immigration charges due to their criminal records.

“ICE remains committed to ensuring that all those in its custody reside in safe, secure and humane environments,” the statement from ICE reads. “Comprehensive medical care is provided from the moment individuals arrive and throughout the entirety of their stay.”

Professor Godoy, the human rights expert who authored the new report on Daniel’s death and time in solitary, would beg to differ.

“This underscores the need for a full, independent investigation,” Godoy said. “We have no confidence in the current plan for ICE to investigate itself.”

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By Zehra Imam / Mondoweiss

As Palestinians are slaughtered by the thousands in Gaza and violently attacked during night prayers in the al-Aqsa Mosque by Israel, the West Bank endures massacres that at times go unnoticed during this holy month. I have spent my Ramadan in conversation with a friend from Jenin. 

Much has changed since I visited Aseel (not her real name) in August 2023. There are things I saw in Jenin that no longer exist. One of them is my friend’s smile and her spark.

Usually, they say Jenin is a small Gaza. During Ramadan, because the attacks generally happen at night, people are an easy target because they are on the streets late at night. In the past, it was rare for the IOF to enter during the day. Now, they attack during the day; their special forces enter, and after people discover them, their soldiers come within minutes. 

Every 2-3 days, there is a new attack in Jenin. In our minds, there is a constant ringing that the IOF may come. We don’t know at what time we will be targeted or when they will enter. There is no stability in our lives.

Even when we plan for something, we hedge it with our inshallahs and laugh. There are a lot of ifs. If they don’t enter the camp. If there are no martyrs. If there is no strike.

On the second day of Ramadan, they attacked my neighborhood again. We thought it was a bombing because it started with an explosion, but the house was shaking. We were praying fajr, and everyone was screaming outside. The sound of the drone was in our ears. “No, these are missiles,” we realized.

There was panic in the streets. Women fainted. People had been walking back from praying at the mosque, and some were still in the street. Alhamdulillah, no one was hurt, we say.

The balcony to the room at my uncle’s house where we slept had fallen. It no longer had any glass, and a bullet entered my uncle’s bedroom and reached the kitchen. The drone hit the trees in front of our house. The missiles destroyed the ceiling, and the rockets reached my neighbor’s house on the first floor, exactly in front of our house.

Since October 7, Jenin has become a target. There is a clear escalation in the camp and the city. The IOF has used many different weapons to kill us here. They have even been aggressive toward the infrastructure, as though every inch of our city was resisting them.

They destroyed much of the camp, and there is no entrance now. The arch is gone, and there is no sign reminding us that Jenin refugee camp is a temporary place. There is no horse. Only the street is left. You have the photographs. You were lucky. They changed the shape of the camp, and everything has been destroyed.”Aseel

The first time Aseel and I met in person was in Nablus at the Martyrs Roundabout. As we caught up, we ate a delicious concoction of ice cream, milk, nuts, and fresh fruit that was a perfect balm to the heat. She took me to some of her favorite places nestled within the old city of Nablus. A 150-year-old barber’s shop that felt like you had entered an antique store where plants reached the ceiling and where the barber was a massive fan of Angelina Jolie. A centuries-old house now called Tree House Cafe looked like a hobbit home from Lord of the Rings, where we hid away as she sipped her coffee and I drank a mint lemonade. We visited one of the oldest soap factories in the world with ingredients such as goat’s milk and olive oil, jasmine and pomegranates, even dates and Dead Sea mud.

We happened to chance upon a Sufi zawiya as we walked through a beautiful archway decorated with lanterns, light bulbs, and an assortment of potted plants, after which we saw a cobalt blue door on our left and an azul blue door with symmetrical red designs, and Quranic ayat like incantations on our right as doors upon doors greeted us.

The air was welcoming yet mingled with the memory of martyrs whose memorials took over the landscape, sometimes in the form of larger-than-life portraits surrounded by complex four-leafed magenta-white flowers; posters above a water spout next to a heart-shaped leaf; a melted motorcycle that, too, was targeted in the neighborhood that hosted the Lions’ Den. We stopped to pray at a masjid, quiet and carpeted.

After a bus ride from Nablus to Jenin, on our walk before entering Jenin camp, Aseel showed me the hospital right outside the camp. She pointed out the barricades created to keep the occupation forces from entering specific streets. This is the same hospital that the occupation forces blocked during the July 2023 attack, which now seems like a lifetime ago. 

What caught my eyes again and again were the two Keys of Return on top of the entrance of Jenin Camp that symbolized so much for Palestinians.

“This is a temporary station,” Aseel read out loud to me. “That’s what it says. We are supposed to return to our homes.”

“Netanyahu said he is planning another big attack, so the resistance fighters are preparing because it can happen any day,” she had told me that evening as we shared Jenin-style knafeh, baked to perfection. Then she stopped, looked at the sky, and said humorously, “Ya Allah, hopefully not today!” And we both laughed because of its potential reality. 

Dinner on the terrace at her uncle’s home was a delicious spread of hummus, laban, fries, cucumbers pickled by her aunt, and arayes — fried bread stuffed with meat. Then we moved the furniture to sleep on mattresses in a room that extended to the rooftop terrace with a breeze, overlooking Jenin Camp and the rest of Jenin City. We could hear gunshots in the distance. The drones were commonplace, and the heat did not relent. Temperatures soared, and the electricity was out when we woke up at 5 a.m. I heard her pray, and later, as we sipped on coffee and had wafters in the early morning at her home, my eyes went to a piece of tatreez, or embroidery, of a bird in flight framed on the wall. Her eyes followed mine and when I said I loved it.

“It used to be my grandfather’s,” she told me. “Of course it’s beautiful — the bird is free.” 

Unexpectedly, Aseel’s mother gifted me a Sprite bottle full of olive oil beholding the sweet hues of its intact health, which I would later ship secretly from Bethlehem all the way to Boston. And then Aseel came to me with a gift, too: a necklace that spoke succinctly about the right to return and live on this earth. Mahmoud Darwish’s poetry was held together with intricate calligraphy carved in the shape of Palestine’s landscape, and I was completely overwhelmed. 

“You are in Palestine, my dear,” she had smiled. “And you are now my family. This is your country, this is your second home, really.”

When I ask her about what brings her hope these days, Aseel tells me about her eight-year-old nephew.

He wanted to eat two meals. I told him that in Gaza they don’t have food. He was complaining about the food, and I told him, they don’t have water. And he heard me because he said, “today, we will only have one meal.” 

I’m amazed at how mature he is. He even said, “We won’t make a special cake on Eid because of the Gazans.” For me, this is a lesson to be learned. He is only eight years old, but he knows. 

We have lost a lot of people in Gaza, but here in the West Bank, we are succeeding because our new generation knows a lot. Ben Gurion would not be happy. He said of Palestinians, “the old will die and the young will forget.” No, the young ask even more questions. The new generation brings us hope. Hope is the new generation.

/sp

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