Tag
The holding of individuals in government custody, particularly immigration detention. Covers conditions of confinement, duration of detention, access to legal counsel, and treatment of detainees under domestic and international law.
3 incidents
Grade 4 of 5: Critical Rights and Rule-of-Law Concern
Florida immigration detention centers are sites of documented torture including a punitive cage device, prolonged solitary confinement, unsanitary conditions, and enforced disappearances facilitated by the absence of any tracking system. At least six people died in Florida ICE facilities since October 2024.
Grade 3 of 5: Serious Rights Violation
The DHS Inspector General's July 2, 2019 management alert documented conditions at Border Patrol facilities in the Rio Grande Valley: some single adults held for over a month in overcrowded cells, standing room only conditions, limited access to showers and clean clothing, insufficient food, and inadequate medical care. The Clint facility conditions, documented by attorneys visiting to conduct interviews, included children sleeping on floors, a 2-year-old with dirty clothes, limited access to soap and toothbrushes, and sick children not separated from healthy ones. The administration's response was that the facilities were overwhelmed by a surge in arrivals and that Congress needed to provide additional funding.
Grade 3 of 5: Serious Rights Violation
The CBP Border Patrol stations along the southern border were designed for 72-hour holding. Under the Trump administration's enforcement surge, they held children for days and weeks, sometimes in chainlink-fenced areas — the 'cages' — without adequate food, water, sleep, or sanitation. At least six children died in or shortly after U.S. immigration custody between September 2018 and May 2019, after roughly a decade without a child death in CBP custody. The DHS OIG described overcrowding presenting an immediate risk to detainee health and safety.