‘A catastrophic human rights violation’: Trump’s ICE puts 10,000 immigrants in solitary confinement, because of course they do

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has put more than 10,500 people in solitary confinement over a single year, with the use of the practice increasing rapidly under the Trump administration, according to some shocking new research. A recent report from a team of researchers from Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), the Peeler Immigration Lab, and Harvard Law School, published this past Wednesday, is shining a light on what’s been happening inside US immigrant detention facilities.

They found that an increasing number of vulnerable people are being subjected to solitary confinement for longer periods of time. The report, titled Cruelty Campaign: Solitary Confinement in US Immigration Detention, found that the use of solitary confinement grew by an average of 6.5% each month during the first four months of Trump’s second term. That is a significant increase of more than six times the average monthly increase seen during the final months of Joe Biden’s administration.

This is happening as the president is pushing his mass deportation agenda and rapidly expanding US immigration enforcement and detention facilities. According to Arevik Avedian, a Harvard Law School lecturer and one of the authors of the report, “We certainly have seen an increase in solitary confinement over the last years, but we’ve seen a significant increase from month to month during Trump’s first four months.”

Trump’s ICE has treated humans as animals

What’s really disheartening is how this is affecting the most vulnerable people in the system. The research shows that the number of people with health problems or mental health conditions who were placed in solitary confinement rose by a staggering 56% in fiscal year 2025 compared to 2022. Not only that, but these placements “lasted more than twice as long as they did in the first fiscal quarter of 2022,” according to the report.

Avedian also stated, “Perhaps one of the worst findings was that people with vulnerabilities are being placed in solitary confinement twice as long as they would be placed when I started providing this data back in 2021.” It seems like things are just getting worse, despite policies that are supposedly in place to limit these placements to only when there is “no other choice.”

The report’s figures are based on the government’s own statistics on the use of solitary confinement, from publicly available ICE data and public records requests. The researchers were helped by new federal reporting requirements that went into effect last December, which gave them an “unprecedented window into the scale and scope of solitary confinement.” But the authors are quick to warn that the report still probably understates the true scope because of what they describe as ICE’s “flawed data and reporting systems.”

Since Trump took office in January, authorities have arrested more than 210,000 people and deported more than 216,000, according to data from Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection. The number of people in detention has also climbed to a record high, with almost 60,000 people still in custody as of September 8.

It seems like the system is set to expand even more now that Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” was signed into law back in July. This bill dedicated $170 billion to immigration and border operations, making ICE the largest and most heavily funded federal law enforcement agency.