Copyright Mechanicsburg Patriot News
Pennsylvania is second in the nation behind Texas with the highest number of ICE detainees held in solitary confinement. Data from a new report by Harvard University researchers and Physicians for Human Rights shows there are 2,370 detainees in ICE centers in solitary confinement in Pennsylvania. Texas leads the nation with 3,429 detainees in solitary confinement. The report explains how the practice of placing detainees in solitary typically unfolds out of public view, and while it spans multiple administrations, solitary confinement has increased both in use and documentation nationwide over the past few years. Axios first reported on the findings, shining a light on Virginia’s ICE facilities, whose solitary confinement ranking between 2023 and this past August is among the nation’s top 10. The findings show that over a span of just 14 months, from April 2024 to May 2025, more than 10,500 people were placed in solitary confinement in immigration detention centers across the United States. The report shows the average number of vulnerable individuals, including people with mental health issues, subjected to solitary confinement nationally, increased by approximately 56% per quarter in 2025 compared to 2022. The report noted an increase in the numbers of individuals experiencing multiple placements. The report comes amid increased scrutiny on the Moshannon Valley Processing Center, the largest detention center in the Northeast. The remote Clearfield County facility is run by the private prison giant GEO Group, and has a capacity of nearly 1,900 prisoners. Most of the individuals arrested by ICE across the mid-atlantic from New York to Maryland spend time in the Phillipsburg facility. Calls to shut down Moshannon have grown in the last several months in the wake of the suicide death of a 32-year-old Chinese man who was being detained at Moshannon. The man had been arrested in Dauphin County on credit card fraud charges in January. Conditions at Moshannon have deteriorated with overcrowding and increased violence and desperation among detainees, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported in September. The report told the story of a police officer from Venezuela now in ICE detention who since Aug. 1 has lived in a “confined space the size of a basketball court, sharing three toilets and six showers with 75 other men from around the world.” The vast majority of detainees held in Moshannon have no criminal convictions in the U.S., advocates say. Moshannon’s population has reached an all-time high even as the Trump administration has eliminated outside oversight and made visitation of detainees by members of the press and even families impossible, advocates say. Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the 30-year-old Maryland man who was wrongly deported to El Salvador and later returned to the U.S. before facing new deportation efforts, was last month transferred to Moshannon. The United States maintains the world’s largest immigration detention system, holding an average daily population of nearly 60,000 people. The number of people being detained has spiked under the second Trump administration as the president attempts to fulfill his campaign promise to deport millions of undocumented immigrants. Solitary confinement is the practice of isolating people in small cells without meaningful human contact for 22 hours or more per day. Advocates say prolonged solitary confinement can lead to a slew of adverse health and mental health risks, including post-traumatic stress disorder, self-harm, elevated suicide risk, lasting brain damage, and hallucinations. Vulnerable populations, including those with medical and mental health conditions, are often subjected to solitary confinement at high rates, the researches found. ICE said it mandates the practice only as a last resort. The national average length of solitary confinement was 26 days, the researchers found. The United Nations says anything over 15 days constitutes psychological torture, Axios reported. Inflicting solitary confinement on individuals with mental or physical disabilities is prohibited under international law, according to the U.N.
