Event Description 

Legal scholars, immigrant rights advocates, and health professionals have been calling for the end of solitary confinement in immigration detention for more than a decade. But the use of this inhumane treatment has only increased. In a recently published report, researchers from Harvard Law School, Harvard Medical School, and Physicians for Human Rights exposed the expansion of this practice in U.S. immigration detention through evaluation of litigated FOIA data and interviews with formerly detained immigrants who experienced solitary confinement. Between 2018-2023, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) used solitary confinement more than 14,000 times, with placements lasting an average of 27 days. Survivors described this experience as one that causes “your mind and body [to] break into little pieces.”

Report authors and local immigrant rights experts and advocates were joined for this half-day symposium featuring talks about the report findings, efforts currently underway to reduce and ultimately eliminate solitary confinement in immigration detention, and the importance of conducting interdisciplinary research that informs real-time public policy.

Panelists  

More information on the event schedule and panelists can be found here. 

This event is co-sponsored by the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School, the Edmond & Lily Safra Center for Ethics, and the Harvard Medical School Center for Bioethics.