‘Worst nightmare of my life’: Solitary confinement rises at Houston-area ICE detention center Houston Landing / by Anna-Catherine Brigida / Aug 12, 2024 at 4:06 AM MONTGOMERY DETENTION 0322 Sitting in a small, windowless cell at the Montgomery Processing Center, Salvador Bautista was ready to give up.

Bautista was placed in solitary confinement for disciplinary reasons for six weeks, a length in isolation considered torture by the United Nations.

“They are driving me crazy here,” he wrote in Spanish in a letter sent from his cell in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention to his sister, Mayra Bautista Cerda, dated Feb. 18.

Bautista, 40, prepared to abandon his immigration appeal and be deported to Mexico. His plan included divorcing his wife — to free her of the burden of having a deported husband — and leaving behind his three children, ages 2, 5 and 8, and the country he called home most of his life, he wrote his sister from his cell.

Despite an oversight policy implemented by ICE in 2013 meant to prevent detainees like Bautista to be placed in isolation as a last resort, the Montgomery Processing Center, has had the highest number of cases of solitary confinement in the Houston area, according to the most recent data released by ICE.