ICE is detaining thousands of immigrants in solitary confinement in U.S.

Newly obtained documents show that under the administration of Donald Trump, thousands of ICE detainees who are mostly from Central America are sometimes forced into extended periods of solitary confinement for reasons that have nothing to do with rule violations.

In other words, not as punishment or corrective measure, but just for cruelty. Just to dehumanize and torture.

Reports out today on the documents from an NBC News team including @HRappleye @lehrennbc @spencerwoodman @Vanessa_Swales.

There's a separate and related report at the Intercept.

"I began to scream and scream when they locked me up," said Joselin Mendez, a transgender woman from Nicaragua about the time ICE agents locked her in solitary confinement. "I told them, 'Release me. I can't stand it. I am short of breath."

Mendez is one of many immigration detainees who have been placed in solitary confinement while in ICE detention.

Solitary confinement is widely recognized as a form of torture. The practice is rightly increasingly seen around the world as a human rights abuse that offers no benefit to the public. The people who are applying for asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border like Joselin Mendez are not criminals. The way you present your case for asylum to the United States is to present yourself physically at the border. What Trump's ICE is doing is performative cruelty.

Thousands of immigrants suffer in solitary confinement in U.S. detention centers, an @NBCInvestigates report shows. https://t.co/ccQ1wi6nLd@GabeGutierrez has the story tonight on @NBCNightlyNews pic.twitter.com/BTbctkhMTE

— NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt (@NBCNightlyNews) May 21, 2019

Ellen Gallagher spent years trying to bring information about solitary confinement in immigration detention centers to light.