At ICE Facilities, Solitary Confinement and Forced Labor

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Shoaib Ahmed arrived at the Texas border in the spring of 2016. The 24-year-old was travelling from Bangladesh, where he fled because of fear of political persecution, and had made his way through Bolivia to the U.S. border seeking asylum. He was stopped at the border, and since then, he’s been in Lumpkin, Georgia, at the Stewart Detention Facility, a private ICE detention center run by CoreCivic.

This past November, Ahmed says that he was put into solitary confinement for 10 days because a guard overheard him say that he didn’t want to work in the facility’s kitchen the following day.

Ahmed’s story is among a growing chorus of ICE detainees alleging that they have been threatened with solitary confinement for refusing to work in for-profit ICE facilities.

Spencer Woodman is a reporter for the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, and wrote about the growing practice of solitary confinement in ICE facilities for The Intercept.

This segment is hosted by Todd Zwillich