ICE’s extensive use of solitary confinement in Batavia

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Lansine Sidibe serves a coconut to a child in Sao Paulo, Brazil, prior to his emigration to the United States. Photo via Kathleen Maynard.

Like many migrants, Lansine Sidibe came to the United States in 2022 seeking asylum, first fleeing war in his home country Mali and later threats of violence in Brazil.

But instead of finding a new home, Sidibe spent every single day of the last 32 months in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, much of that time at the agency’s Batavia facility.

For 10 of those months, Sidibe was held in solitary confinement. 

Such treatment is common, Investigative Post found.

ICE operates in 126 detention centers and jails across the country. Only five of those locations locked up detainees in solitary confinement more often than the facility in Batavia, according to data analyzed by Investigative Post. 

Confinements at Batavia average 25 days. Anything over 15 days is considered torture, according to the United Nations and New York state law, and prohibited. Those restrictions do not apply to the Batavia facility, which is subject only to federal law.

Between November 2017 and September 2023, 673 people were held in solitary confinement at the ICE detention center. Only facilities in Pennsylvania, California and Texas held more. That’s despite the Batavia facility being half or one-third the size of the others.

Additional data suggest that ICE’s use of solitary confinement will increase as President Donald Trump makes good on his pledge to detain and deport more immigrants. The latest ICE figures show that between 27 and 40 people were held in solitary at the Batavia facility at any given time throughout 2024. Those numbers spiked after Trump won the November election, to 69 in December and 63 in January.

For Sidibe, solitary confinement was only part of the abuse he sustained during his two-and-a-half years in Batavia.

He was also severely beaten, kicked, handcuffed and dragged through the halls by ICE guards, according to a civil rights complaint his attorney filed with the Department of Homeland Security in December. He further alleged guards broke several of his fingers and then denied him medical treatment for a month.

Sarah Decker, an attorney representing Sidibe, described the facility as “inhumane” and “not able to operate in a way that complies with civil rights and human rights law.” Civil rights investigators with Homeland Security opened a wide-ranging probe into abuses at the facility in 2023, Decker said, though the status of that inquiry is unclear.

“The level at which Batavia wields solitary confinement against people is disproportionately high,” said Decker, an attorney with the nonprofit organization Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights. “I would characterize it as a highly punitive and carceral setting for immigration detention.”

An ICE spokesperson did not respond to questions from Investigative Post regarding Sidibe or the agency’s use of solitary confinement.

At present, it’s not clear where Sidibe is. Decker said Wednesday she lost contact with him and believes he’s either en route to another ICE facility or has been deported back to Mali. She said Sidibe has resisted deportation because he fears his life could be endangered.

“I don’t know where he’s at,” Decker said. “He believes that he will be tortured and killed if he's returned to Mali.”

ICE’s use of solitary confinement

In ICE’s solitary confinement, detainees spend up to 23 hours per day in a cell with a bed, small desk, sink, toilet and a window that does not open.

If a person spends a significant amount of time in such conditions, their mind and body begins to deteriorate, said Steve Hart, chair of the Western New York Campaign for Alternatives to Isolated Confinement.

“People who have been in solitary for a long time will never come back fully, just like torture victims never come back fully,” he said. “Their mental health is impaired forever.”

According to data released last year by researchers with Harvard University and Physicians for Human Rights, 77 percent of solitary detainees in Batavia are held in such conditions as a form of punishment. Others are held by themselves for protective custody or for medical reasons.

Solitary stays in Batavia, the data show, range from just a day to more than a year. One former detainee told Investigative Post that it was common for new arrivals to the facility to spend several days in solitary confinement as part of a medical quarantine before joining the general population. 

Over recent years, the data show ICE has used solitary confinement more and more frequently. In 2018, just 49 people were held in solitary over the course of the year. That increased to 104 in 2020 and 167 in 2023. 

The length of solitary confinement varies widely. A little more than one-third of detainees spent a week or less in confinement; another third spent eight days to two weeks there. In seven cases, detainees spent more than a year in solitary. Some of those men were listed as being held in “protective custody,” while at least one was there for disciplinary reasons. 

That person, originally from Haiti, spent 652 consecutive days in solitary confinement, more than a year and a half.

Advocates and attorneys who work with detainees decry the practice.

“In an environment that is already hostile, and frankly the whole environment is punitive ... being cut off from their social group, it's actually one of the worst things humans can experience,” said Jennifer Connor, executive director of the nonprofit Justice for Migrant Families.

She and other advocates noted that many other detainees in Batavia spend up to 17 or 18 hours per day locked in a cell, even if they have a cellmate.

“We view that policy itself as a form of solitary confinement,” Decker said. “And we see that our clients who are subject to that policy have experienced really significant mental health and physical impacts from that policy.”

Sidibe’s story

Sidibe, a Malian man in his 20s, came to the United States in the summer of 2022, arriving from Sao Paulo, Brazil. He’d fled a long-broiling civil war in his home country before finding a home in Sao Paulo, where he operated a coconut stand near a park. 

Kathleen Maynard met Sidibe while living in the neighborhood where he operated his stand and said her family grew close with him. She described him as a hard worker, saving money so he could move to Canada or the United States and send home to Mali.

“He would get up at 3:30, 4 in the morning, he would walk two miles to another neighborhood, he would buy the coconuts, he would wheel them back to where he sold them,” Maynard told Investigative Post.

In Sao Paulo, however, Sidibe experienced discrimination and threats, Maynard said. A Go Fund Me campaign she established on his behalf described local police as “unresponsive.”

The complaint attorneys submitted on behalf of Sidibe with Department of Homeland Security.

After failing to immigrate to Canada, he landed at an official port of entry in California in June 2022 and was immediately taken into ICE custody, according to the civil rights complaint his attorneys filed with Homeland Security investigators. 

After failing an interview with U.S. immigration officials, Sidibe’s bid for asylum was rejected, Maynard and Decker, his attorney, said. Sidibe was subsequently transferred to several ICE facilities in the South before ending up at the Batavia facility in October 2022.

According to the complaint, ICE initiated deportation proceedings for Sidibe in February of last year. He was ordered to meet with an ICE officer and sign “deportation papers.” But Sidibe, a French speaker, argued he couldn’t read the documents, which were in English, and wouldn’t sign anything he couldn’t read. ICE provided a translator, the complaint states, but not a translation of the documents themselves. Sidibe again refused to sign the documents.

That’s when guards at Batavia beat Sidibe, according to the complaint. A guard led Sidibe into a holding cell and then called in six more guards. Together, they picked Sidibe up by his neck and “threw him to the ground” and pressed him into the floor with their bodyweight. The complaint states that Sidibe struggled to breathe. 

“The officers then began to repeatedly kick his back and abdomen,” the complaint continued. “Fearing for his life, Mr. Sidibe attempted to resist. Mr. Sidibe was left with severe injuries to his back, abdomen, hands and knees.”

That wasn’t all.

“They tried to handcuff me and they broke my fingers, my knees cut and bleeding,” Sidibe said in the complaint.

The guards then handcuffed Sidibe and dragged him into a solitary confinement cell. It was a month before a doctor X-rayed his broken fingers, then said only that they were badly swollen. 

Sidibe remained in solitary confinement for two months following the beating, according to his complaint. He ultimately spent 10 of his 28 months in Batavia in solitary.

“During his placement in solitary confinement, Mr. Sidibe’s mental and physical health have deteriorated,” the complaint states. “He has experienced chronic headaches, and has developed debilitating anxiety and depression.”

“They were really trying to break his spirit,” Maynard said. “To just prolong and prolong that can be very tortuous to a soul.”

His attorneys, in the complaint to Homeland Security investigators, contend that the beating and solitary confinement violate a litany of laws including the First Amendment (punishment for refusing to sign paperwork); New York’s law against assault; and the United Nation’s Convention Against Torture.

Maynard, speaking from Sao Paulo, expressed anguish over Sidibe's treatment. 

“He was working so hard to seek a better life and I just see him as such a productive, caring, intelligent human that would be an amazing person to have in the U.S.,” she said. “And instead, we're keeping him in a cage and torturing him and trying to get rid of him. And that is devastating.”

J. Dale Shoemaker