On March 27, 2013, a detainee held at Essex County Correctional Facility in Newark was sent to solitary confinement for 15 days for refusing to obey an order to close a door.
On Sept. 24, 2014, a detainee was sent to solitary for six days for hiding a clear bag with chopped-up fruit in his cell.
According to the officer, the detainee “admitted the liquid-filled bag belonged to him and continued to say, ‘I’m sorry.’”
Skipping breakfast can also result in solitary.
An investigation by New Jersey Public Radio into how immigrant detainees are disciplined at the largest immigration facility in New Jersey reveals a system of punishment with very little rules. Detainees are placed in solitary confinement for non-violent — and at times perplexing — reasons. And the length of time a detainee spends in solitary seems to be arbitrary.
New Jersey Public Radio read every incident report that led to “disciplinary segregation” at the Essex County jail in 2013 and 2014. The reports include the detainee’s account of what led to solitary, and the officer’s account.
According to thousands of pages of records, 222 immigrant detainees spent more than 2,200 days in solitary confinement.
And more than half of the 287 prohibited acts they were accused of committing were non-violent — meaning they were not fights or assaults.
The Behavior That Led To Solitary in Newark
- Yelling: 1
- Offering an officer a bribe: 1
- Tampering with equipment: 1
- Tattooing: 2
- Refusing to transfer housing: 2
- Unauthorized conduct: 3
- Making a sexual proposal/indecent exposure: 3
- Stealing/destroying property: 3
- Throwing bodily fluid: 3
- Using abusive language: 5
- Being in a unauthorized area: 5
- Refusing to obey an order: 6
- Weapon: 11
- Hiding food, tobacco, alcohol, money, drugs, cell phone: 12
- Encouraging others to riot/demonstrate: 14
- Making a threat: 29
- Assaulting another person: 49
- Conduct which disrupts: 54
- Fighting: 83
A former detainee in New Jersey, Mike, skipped a meal one morning. “I didn’t want to eat breakfast and they said, 'Oh you on hunger strike?'” he said. “I wasn’t violent, I didn’t say anything. They threw me in solitary confinement for nothing.”
Detainees who didn't eat a meal in immigration detention were sent to solitary for “encouraging others to riot," or for "conduct which disrupts or interferes with the security or orderly running of the correctional facility."
Mike was given just a blanket, he said.
“That blanket — that is everything. That blanket is everything that you have in there,” he said.
Another former detainee, Reuel Nwuiyoh, spent 23 months and three weeks in detention before being released. He's now completing a PhD program in education leadership at Rutgers University.
Nwuiyoh, a political refugee from Cameroon, had never been to jail and was in the country legally when he was picked up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The police had been called to his home for domestic disturbances in the past, which required he be investigated for possible deportation.
One day, he wrote a thank you note to a sergeant who brought him medication that he had been without for a couple days.
“There was nothing else in the note except, ‘Thank you so, so very much for doing that. And that was just it. Nothing else. It was just a paragraph,” he said. “This is a guy who has been out in the world. I didn’t know I’m not supposed to write a note to any officer.”
Nwuiyoh spent one day — 23 hours — in a small cell with his Bible and a window just high enough to prohibit looking out.
“No visitations. No access to telephone. No access to the library," Nwuiyoh said. “All you do is just walk down the hallway back and forth.”
He said there were more than 5 inches of buildup on the toilet. He asked for cleaning supplies but guards told him they couldn't give him anything.
"I didn’t know how long I was going to be in there and this thing is right in my face," he said. "And mind you, they serve your food in there."
Punished Differently for the Same Behavior
According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, detainees cannot be sent to solitary for more than 15 days for a single violation, and no more than 30 days at a time. Beyond that, immigration officials say the punishment depends on the circumstances.
“Every disciplinary incident is looked at separately by a trained correctional professional based on the incident's specific circumstances,” ICE officials said in a statement.
ICE officials say they ensure “the right disciplinary action is applied to the right person/situation.” A person who starts a fight, they said, might get more days in solitary than a person who didn't start a fight.
But our investigation revealed that detainees are being punished differently for the same behavior.
For example, refusing to eat sometimes resulted in five days in solitary confinement, and other times in 15 days.
For one detainee, hiding a sharpened pen — considered a weapon — resulted in three days in solitary. Hiding a sock filled with broken pieces of soap resulted in eight days for another. In both cases, the weapons were found during routine cell searches and neither detainee used the weapon.
Our investigation also found that guards and detainees often have two different accounts of what led to solitary.
Three county jails in northern New Jersey have a contract with Immigration and Custom Enforcement to house detainees awaiting deportation hearings. About 1,000 detainees are held on any given day, according to ICE. They're separated from inmates on the criminal side of the facilities, but they’re guarded by the same corrections officers.
A panel of county jail staff determines how long federal detainees spend in solitary confinement. But immigration officials say they oversee the process.
“We don’t let Essex County do whatever they want,” said John Tsoukaris, the director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Newark.
If the punishment seems excessive, Tsoukaris said, “We go to the director of the jail… and if we have to, we pull the video.”
His office did not provide information about how often ICE has reversed a punishment.
Advocacy Groups Question the Fairness of the Process
Alix Takouezim with the American Friends Service Committee looked at segregation practices among immigrant detainees at Hudson and Bergen county jails, and published the report, 23 Hours in the Box.
“There’s no real impartiality,” she said. “Detainees were not allowed to bring in a witness or to call a witness and we found that over and over in the hundreds of cases we reviewed.”
Takouezim wants county jails to follow international standards set by the United Nations that say solitary confinement should only be used when there’s a serious safety threat.
“If there’s a serious fight, someone should be punished whether they’re in prison or not,” she said.
But Takouezim said solitary confinement shouldn’t be used to punish minor offenses — even low-level pushing and shoving — that don’t pose a serious safety threat.
"To find out that it was for talking back to the officers, asking an officer to change the channel on the TV, that triggers us to look more closely,” she said.
Guards can take away TV privileges or recreation time. And they do. But the director of ICE in Newark said their practice is to remove the person causing the problem. He said a riot can break out in an instant.
Khalil Cumberbatch, a former detainee, said the threat of solitary is enough to deter bad behavior.
He spent eight years in prison for armed robbery before getting out, getting married, having kids and being picked up by immigration years later.
He never went to solitary, but he saw others go.
“Whether somebody is directly impacted by solitary confinement or indirectly impacted, nevertheless it is a way to keep people in line,” he said.
He heard that one detainee got 20 days for cutting up his shirt, which violated a rule against destroying property. Correction officers told him that.
“It’s a form of social control, right? So they want you to know he got 20 days for that,” he said.