Trump Administration Increasingly Places Immigrants in Solitary Confinement, Report Finds
Use of solitary confinement in immigration detention is soaring under the Trump administration, according to a report published by Physicians for Human Rights using federal data and records obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests. Immigration and Customs Enforcement placed at least 10,588 people in solitary confinement from April 2024 to May 2025, the report found. Contributors also included experts from Harvard University’s Peeler Immigration Lab and Harvard Law School. The use of solitary confinement during the first four months of the current Trump administration increased each month, on average, at twice the rate found between 2018 and 2023, researchers found, and more than six times the rate during the last several months of 2024.
‘People Are Losing Hope’ Inside ICE Detention Centers
Daniel Cortes De La Valle had been in immigration detention for more than seven months — sleeping in dirty cells, being mocked by guards for his weight and being denied his epilepsy medication — when, in July 2023, he tried to hang himself. “‘I can’t anymore,’” Mr. Cortes De La Valle, 35, recalls thinking. “‘I don’t want to do this anymore. It’s like a horror movie.’” Officers at the facility, the Central Louisiana ICE Processing Center in Jena, La., soon placed Mr. Cortes De La Valle on suicide watch. This meant solitary confinement, where he fought off biting ants and endured black mold on the wall and feces in his cell, according to a complaint he later filedagainst U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the staff at the detention center. The lights, kept on 24 hours a day, aggravated his seizure condition.
Global Press Freedom Suffers Sharpest Fall in 50 Years, Report Finds
Press freedom around the world has suffered its sharpest fall in 50 years as global democracy weakens dramatically, a landmark report has found. According to the Stockholm-based International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA), democracy has declined in 94 countries over the last five years and only a third have made progress. The International IDEA’s survey – the Global State of Democracy Report 2025 – is published annually and considered the most comprehensive of its kind, covering 174 countries and measuring democratic performance from 1975. The survey found that the freedom of the press had worsened in a quarter of the countries, marking the broadest deterioration since the beginning of the dataset.
‘We’re Still in the Dark’: A Missing Land Defender and the Deadly Toll of Land Conflict on Indigenous People
One day last November, Julia Chuñil called for her dog, Cholito, and they set off into the woods around her home to search for lost livestock. The animals returned but Chuñil, who was 72 at the time, and Cholito did not. Chuñil is one of 146 land and environmental defenders who were killed or disappeared around the world last year, according to a report by the campaign group Global Witness. About a third of those, like Chuñil, were from Indigenous communities – a heavy toll for groups who collectively make up just 6% of the global population.