Trapped in “el Pozo”: As Overcrowding in ICE Detention Increases, So Does Solitary Confinement

submitted by Powderhorn to usnews 1 points | 0 comments https://www.thenation.com/article/society/overcrowding-ice-detention-solitary-confinement/ > Angel Lemus-Linares, a 32-year-old migrant from El Salvador seeking political asylum, recalls ICE officers shoving him into a filthy, cramped solitary confinement cell and beating him after another detained individual attacked him while in ICE custody. He remained for seven consecutive days in what’s known as “el pozo”—the hole—at the T. Don Hutto Detention Center, a notorious, privately run facility in Taylor, Texas. > > “They beat me a lot,” Lemus-Linares said in a phone interview from inside Hutto. “They had left my ribs and sides all bruised.” > > On three occasions from October 2023 to December 2025, he said, officers at the facility locked him in the solitary unit without giving a satisfactory reason other than that they don’t like him. He spent 24 hours a day isolated in the cell with virtually no access to medical care or even a bathroom until officers decided his punishment was over. > > Lemus-Linares is one of thousands of individuals that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement has locked in solitary confinement in its custody—a practice that has soared during the Trump administration’s nationwide crackdown on illegal immigration. More than 10,500 detained migrants were thrown into solitary confinement in the 14 months ending in May 2025, according to a recent report by Physicians for Human Rights (PHR). Land of the free, home of the brave. Let’s lock you up and be cruel. History will not recall this as a triumph.