A new joint report from Harvard University and Physicians for Human Rights says U.S. immigration detention facilities are "systematically torturing" detainees through the prolonged use of solitary confinement — often for weeks at a time — in what the United Nations defines as psychological torture.
Between April 2024 and August 2025, nearly 14,000 people were placed in solitary confinement in immigrant detention centers across the country, according to data cited in the report. Those labeled "vulnerable," including individuals with mental health conditions, spent an average of 38 days in isolation during the first quarter of 2025 — nearly triple the 14-day average recorded in 2021.
