New this week from Solitary Watch: 

Solitary Watch’s tenth fact sheet, entitled “Solitary Confinement and Prison Activism,” details how solitary confinement is used “as a way of deterring people in prison from stepping out of line.” The fact sheet documents the history of solitary as punishment for incarcerated people who protest the carceral system in many ways, such as by filing grievances, contacting the media, participating in strikes, and serving as jailhouse lawyers. It also provides readers with information and resources on supporting prison activism. Solitary Watch | All ten Solitary Watch fact sheets can be found here.

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This week’s pick of news and commentary about solitary confinement:

Over 250 Venezuelan men, many of whom have no criminal record, were deported from the U.S. to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT)—one of the world’s most notorious prisons. Many of the men were placed in pitch-dark isolation cells with almost no air, known as “La Isla,” after they participated in a hunger strike to protest the repeated beatings from staff and restricted access to medical care. However, detainees reported experiencing worse abuse from the staff in “La Isla,” including sexual assault and physical torture. One survivor stated that “the American Dream became a nightmare” during his detention at CECOT. Washington Post | Leon Rengel, another survivor of CECOT, is suing the Trump Administration on allegations that he was detained and deported without reason or due process. Rengel’s testimony to the brutal beatings and torture he experienced while at the facility is just one of many such accounts from Venezuelans who were released from CECOT in an agreement between Trump and Venezuela’s leader, Nicolas Maduro. Latin Times | Trump has also deported five immigrants to the main maximum security prison in Eswatini in southern Africa, after they served criminal sentences in the U.S. There, the men are being held in solitary confinement and unlawfully denied access to legal representation. Washington Post

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Rodney Taylor, an ICE detainee in Georgia, was placed in solitary confinement for three days after complaining that the inch of water outside his cell, caused by a faulty air conditioner, was dangerous for his electronic prosthetic legs. While in solitary, Taylor was handcuffed with no access to drinking water or a charger for the battery in his prosthetic legs. As the article notes, these “problems illustrate how ill-prepared the Trump administration is to meet the needs of immigration detainees with disabilities as they carry out mass deportation plans.” The Guardian 

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“Hell” is how incarcerated writer Christopher Blackwell describes the time he spent in solitary confinement at the Pierce County Jail in Washington State while awaiting resentencing. Blackwell was held in 3-South of the old jail—an isolation unit mainly reserved for people on suicide watch—where he was deprived of essential items, such as toilet paper and hand soap, in a cell with “walls [that] had what looked to be food and other bodily fluids smeared all over them.” The Nation

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Tyrone Walker spent 14 years in solitary confinement in New York state prisons for attacking a corrections officer. Immediately following his release from disciplinary segregation, Walker was placed in administrative segregation, another form of solitary confinement, for another five years. In a split ruling, the Second Circuit Court of New York stated that Walker was denied a “meaningful review” of his detention classification, despite having no record of violent behavior since the original incident took place in 2000. Although the court said the due process clause of the U.S. Constitution requires prison officials to conduct a fair review, they took no stance on whether Walker should be allowed to reenter the general population. Courthouse News 

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For the third time in two years, Federal inspectors have found that guards at the ICE detention center in Batavia, New York, improperly used force against detained immigrants. The same June audit report also found a litany of other issues, including a failure to provide outdoor recreation to immigrants in solitary confinement. Solitary at Batavia is used at a rate that rivals the largest detention centers in the country. Investigative Post

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Action Alerts: 

KPFA, a community-powered radio station in California, is partnering with Unlock the Box and Look2Justice to host a public conversation and book launch for Ending Isolation: The Case Against Solitary Confinement. The event will take place September 4th from 6-9 pm at St. John’s Presbyterian Church in Berkeley. The event will include a special remote appearance by Angela Y. Davis and is a stop on the national Journey to Justice bus tour, which includes a model solitary cell, immersive VR experiences, and exhibit of Solitary Watch’s Photo Requests from Solitary project. Tickets are available here. | KPFA

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Featured Image: The Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, in El Salvador. Photo from Encyclopedia Britannica.