At least three facilities operated by the private prison company CoreCivic systematically use torture as retaliation against immigrants who denounce the conditions of detention, according to advocates, attorneys, researchers, and detainees. Practices such as extreme solitary confinement, medical neglect, forceful transfers, and threats of removal silence immigrants and allow CoreCivic to maintain lucrative government contracts.

Hunger strikes, federal investigations into abuse, and complaints against immigration agencies have made the Biden administration fully aware of the retaliatory practices used at New Mexico’s Torrance County Detention Facility, Georgia’s Stewart Detention Center, and California’s Otay Mesa Detention Center. Still, the federal government maintains more than $100 million in open contracts with CoreCivic to keep immigrants and asylum-seekers in civil detention, often for several years. 

​​These practices—which inflict “severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental,” to punish, intimidate, coerce, or […]