Tag
The incarceration of individuals for immigration violations, often in facilities with conditions below constitutional and international standards. Covers the expansion of the detention system, private prison contracts, and detainee rights.
5 incidents
Grade 3 of 5: Serious Rights Violation
Human Rights Watch and the ACLU documented beatings, medical neglect and coercive deportations at Camp East Montana, the ICE tent camp on Fort Bliss and the largest US immigration detention facility. Three men died there within weeks, one in a death ruled a homicide. ICE's own inspection found unreported uses of force. DHS denies all of it.
Grade 3 of 5: Serious Rights Violation
The administration told ICE it may arrest and hold refugees, who were vetted for years before admission, simply because they have not yet obtained green cards a year after arrival, even though the government itself has frozen many green-card applications. Refugees and resettlement agencies sued; as of mid-September 2026 the case was at cross-motions for summary judgment, with no final ruling.
Grade 3 of 5: Serious Rights Violation
DHS reopened a disused punitive unit inside the largest maximum-security prison in the US to hold civil immigration detainees, and said the prison's fearsome reputation was the point. One former detainee's account describes harsh conditions, which ICE denies; that detainee was deported in breach of a court order. ACLU Louisiana is challenging detentions there in court.
Grade 4 of 5: Critical Rights and Rule-of-Law Concern
At least 10,588 people were subjected to solitary confinement in immigration detention over 14 months spanning two administrations, with usage surging under the Trump administration. PHR reports that from 2018 to 2023 nearly three in four placements lasted 15 days or longer, the duration beyond which the UN Special Rapporteur on torture considers solitary confinement prohibited and capable of amounting to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment; whether a given placement amounts to torture depends on its purpose and severity, assessed case by case. DHS oversight offices were simultaneously decimated from 150 to 22 staff.
Grade 2 of 5: Major Abuse of Power
The first Trump administration wrote a regulation to end the court settlement that limits how long migrant children can be detained, so that families could be held together in ICE-licensed facilities for the length of their cases. Federal courts blocked the family-detention provisions before they took effect, holding that they contradicted the settlement's core presumption in favour of release.