It’s been a month since Faviola Salinas Zaraté was deported from the U.S., but she still has nightmares about the Louisiana detention center where she said she was locked in a windowless isolation cell with a broken toilet for almost two months, enduring the trauma of solitary confinement in ICE detention. In her dreams, the lights go out and no one saves her, even as she screams “Help!”

Salinas, a mother of three, said she was suffering from postpartum depression when she was detained in February, three months after the birth of her youngest child. Her depression worsened as she moved through detention centers before arriving at the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center in Basile. She felt like everyone wanted to hurt her. Basile medical staff told her she was placed in solitary confinement for her own safety and to prevent her from harming other detainees, she said.

“I cried a lot, and sometimes, from the depression, I urinated in my clothes,” she said in Spanish in a phone call from Oaxaca, Mexico, where she lives now. “I don’t know why they didn’t give me the care I needed.”

As the Trump administration locks up people en masse in immigration detention, officials are also sending more people to solitary confinement, Immigration and Customs Enforcement data shows — raising alarms about the mental health consequences for thousands of detainees. From December 2024 to the end of August, the number of people who spent at least a day in solitary increased by 41%, according to an analysis by The Marshall Project and Univision. August was the peak, with over 1,100 placements in segregation that month.

The Marshall Project and Univision spoke with 10 people held in solitary confinement in ICE centers in Florida, Louisiana, Arizona and Washington, or their relatives and others representing them. Some people said they were held in isolation for protesting against their detention, arguing with officers or refusing to have their blood drawn. They also included a person recovering from surgery who was taken to solitary instead of a medical unit for hours on a weekly basis. One was detained with a second person in the segregation cell.

Read the full article about solitary confinement in ICE detention by Christie Thompson and Patricia Clarembaux at The Marshall Project.