Dim days, bright nights: a hidden cruelty of Ice detention

Tens of thousands of people held across the US amid Trump’s immigration crackdown could face an insidious hazard: broken internal clocks

At the Northwest Ice Processing Center in Tacoma, Washington, about 1,500 people in immigration detention await their day in court. Most are held for months, living not by the rising and setting sun but under the perpetual twilight of fluorescent lights.

“We couldn’t tell if it was day or night,” said one former detainee who spent 10 months at the facility and whom the Guardian is not naming for fear of retaliation from US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (Ice) and the Geo Group, the private company that operates the detention center. “The lights were on 24/7. We maybe saw the sun twice a week.” Windows were coated in dark paint, and people made eye masks with their socks, he recalled.