The United States (US) is currently experiencing its highest rate of immigration detention deaths in over a decade, with human rights groups warning that without independent oversight and enforced legal penalties, systemic abuses across more than 200 active detention centres will continue with impunity.<\/p>\n
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The warning from Human Rights Watch (HRW) follows official oversight findings released by the US Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General (DHS OIG), which corroborated reports of widespread abuse, severe medical neglect, and substandard conditions in US custody.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The government oversight report documented non-compliance with federal health, medical, and use-of-force standards, including the use of small metal enclosures to confine detainees for up to two hours as an unauthorised disciplinary measure.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The inspections also uncovered improper physical restraints, such as chokeholds and excessive force by officers, at facilities including Florida’s Krome North Service Processing Center and the now-closed Florida Soft-Sided Facility.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
HRW highlighted that gutted oversight bodies must be fully restored and granted real enforcement power to hold operating agencies and contractors accountable for deaths and physical abuses in custody.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
–ChannelAfrica\/HRW–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":45947,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"news-type":[26],"class_list":["post-45938","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-general_news","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"HRW warns of unpunished abuses as US Immigration Detention deaths hit decade high","published_date":"2026-09-19 14:20:02","news_description":"HRW warns of unpunished abuses as US Immigration Detention deaths hit decade high","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/45938","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/45938\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45948,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/45938\/revisions\/45948"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=45938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}