Immigration advocacy groups allege abuse of solitary confinement and discrimination against people with disabilities at the Aurora immigration detention center in a complaint submitted Thursday to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s oversight entities.

Immigrant detainees reported solitary confinement being used wrongfully and arbitrarily as punishment; that guards frequently used the threat of solitary for control; and that those with disabilities were mistreated.

The Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network, the American Immigration Council and the National Immigration Project for the National Lawyers Guild detailed accusations by eight people who have pending immigration cases and were previously or are currently detained. They called for the Aurora facility’s immediate closure. Until that happens, they wrote, the federal agencies should launch an investigation and recommend systemic reforms and corrective actions.

“Despite a clear record of abuse and repeated deaths of people detained at the Aurora facility, the facility and ICE continue to fail to keep people safe,” the complaint stated.

The detention center in Aurora is operated by private prison company The Geo Group via a contract with ICE. Immigrants arrested by ICE officers are incarcerated there on pending or recently concluded immigration cases, or as they await deportation.

In a written statement Thursday, The Geo Group said all of ICE’s processing centers “are governed by performance-based national detention standards set by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security” and that assignment in a special management — such as solitary confinement — is never used in a retaliatory manner or without adhering to the detention standards.

ICE officials issued a written statement Friday, saying the agency is “committed to ensuring that all those in its custody reside in safe, secure, and humane environments under appropriate conditions of confinement.”

“The agency takes allegations of misconduct very seriously – personnel are held to the highest standards of professional and ethical behavior, and when a complaint is received, it is investigated thoroughly to determine veracity and ensure comprehensive standards are strictly maintained and enforced,” a spokesperson wrote.

In a June 22 interview with The Denver Post, Kelei Walker, the acting field director for ICE in Denver, said the agency has “layers and layers of oversight,” including audits, inspections and an investigative body, with “zero tolerance” for misconduct. She said she has been working to expand engagement with the community and immigration advocates about the agency’s work.

“At the end of the day, we have a mission, and I know that the mission is not supported necessarily by everybody,” Walker said. “But our mission is important and it’s valuable. There’s a real public safety element to it. So the more that we can have conversations with people that are in the community, the better.”

But the immigration advocates behind the 18-page complaint document say ICE in Aurora has repeatedly demonstrated a system that places detainees in unsafe conditions. They alleged violations of ICE’s own policies and standards and wrote that the complainants’ “health and safety have been jeopardized and the facility has failed to protect complainants fearful of or who have suffered violence,” including by overusing and misusing solitary confinement.

Detainees, identified by pseudonyms in the complaint, recounted situations of getting locked up in solitary confinement over false accusations or with little evidence of wrongdoing. The Denver Post was not able to independently verify all of the accounts.

While in solitary, one man described being stuck in a cold, small room, “mostly naked” and shackled, and only being let out once a day for showers. The first time he was placed in solitary, he said it was because he was eating too slowly. He spent time in solitary confinement another 10 times.

At one point, he tried to kill himself by jumping from a second-story landing, and fell on his neck, causing significant injuries, according to the complaint. He said he wasn’t allowed to talk to his lawyer in solitary or at the hospital, and he was placed back in isolation after leaving the hospital.

“If I spoke too loudly, solitary. If I climbed on top of a table to get a guard’s attention, solitary,” the man identified as Felix said. “If I had suicidal thoughts, solitary. When the guards would tease me about being deported back to my home country and make airplane sounds at me and gesture like a plane was taking me away, I would become upset and then get solitary for being upset.”

Many of the accounts in the complaint were from women. In one incident, a woman reported being placed in solitary after she was wrongly accused of spitting on another woman’s head and telling guards she didn’t do it. After she was let out, she said she was threatened with solitary confinement again and turned to self-harm.

For Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network’s Laura Lunn, the allegations weren’t surprising. But what struck the director of advocacy and litigation is how many women were targeted for “punitive segregation for verbal disagreements.”

“The way in which they were being sent to segregation felt infantilizing as if they were being treated like children in a way that is different than what typically plays out for the people detained in the male dorms,” she said.

Some of the allegations detailed were also related to overall mistreatment of detainees, including those with medical conditions. One immigrant said staff put her in a “suicide unit” for several hours where she reported feeling uncomfortable naked and that a guard told her “not to worry because she had already watched [her] on camera while [she] was taking a shower.”

Another woman, a sexual assault and trafficking survivor with diagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder and depressive disorder, said she was placed in a dorm where she felt unsafe and requests for adequate medical care were ignored.

“It’s like living with your own predator,” the woman identified as Emilia said. “It’s a nightmare, a torture.”

Others reported being mocked by psychologists, not getting medically-necessary treatment or being given the wrong medications.

Although the complaint shares the stories of only eight people, Lunn said the problem is widespread. Guards have relied more on the use of solitary confinement in Aurora, and even across the country, she said, after they started separating people for COVID. But now, according to Lunn, it’s focused on controlling behavior.

One detainee reported that guards placed him in solitary for 15 days after he defended himself in a fight, despite recordings corroborating his story. A woman with a psychological disability, according to the complaint, described being sent to solitary after screaming when guards searched her possessions at midnight for a crochet hook.

The American Immigration Council and its partners also filed complaints against the Aurora facility in 2018, 2019 and 2022, alleging inadequate medical and mental health care, and in 2022, alleging racial discrimination and excessive use of force.

Since 2012, three people have died while in custody. “Each death was avoidable and stemmed from the poor medical care provided by the contract medical provider, GEO,” according to the complaint.

It noted the 2012 death of Evalin-Ali Mandza, the 2017 death of Kamyar Samimi — held in solitary confinement in his last 16 days of life — and the 2022 death of Melvin Calero Mendoza. Official reviews of Mandza’s and Samimi’s deaths found problems with treatment and medical staff responses.

“With Aurora, because there is such a documented history of these specific problems around medical neglect, particularly around the abuse of people with mental health conditions, we’re hopeful that we could get a strong finding from these oversight bodies that this facility is significantly out of compliance,” said Rebekah Wolf, senior policy counsel at the American Immigration Council.