AAt the Northwest Ice Processing Center in Tacoma, Washington, about 1,500 people in immigration detention centers are waiting for their day in court. Most are held captive for months, living not at sunrise and sunset 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 in the facility and whom the Guardian did not name for fear of retaliation from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) and Geo Group, the private company that runs the detention center. “The lights were on 24/7. We probably saw the sun twice a week.” He remembers the windows being covered in dark paint, and people making eye masks with their socks.
Similar stories echo from other ice amenities. Migrants detained inAlcatraz crocodile“, cruel immigration detention center in the Florida Everglades; on 26 Federal Plaza, New York City’s main detention facility; At the federal courthouse in Los Angeles on Spring Street, a detention center known as B-18, they declared in class-action lawsuits against Ice Department and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials that their cells lacked windows or were flooded with constant artificial light. So do migrants held at Guantanamo Bay, the notorious US naval base in Cuba that was exploited earlier this year to hold detainees on ice. “We lost track of time,” one of the migrants who was detained at Guantanamo said in court documents. “It felt like hell.”
As Donald Trump ramps up his anti-immigration campaign, tens of thousands of immigrants in detention across the United States face an insidious threat: malfunctioning internal clocks.
Conditions vary between ice facilities, but accounts from detainees and advocates point to a commonality: in many centres, detainees have limited daylight and are exposed to excessive light throughout the night. This poses a problem for the human body, as its biological timekeeping system relies on bright, rich blue light during the day and darkness during the night. Distinguishing between day and night disrupts circadian rhythms and the important aspects of physiology they regulate: digestion, immunity, sleep, and more.
“Light at night is bad, but it gets worse if you’re not exposed to bright light during the day,” said Horacio de la Iglesia, a biologist at the University of Washington in Seattle. “Our biological systems and sleep regulation have evolved to respond to extreme contrasts between dark nights and bright days.”
Christopher Ferreira, a spokesman for Geo Group, said, “The Northwest ICE Processing Center provides high-quality support services that adhere to ICE’s detention standards and contract requirements, and which provides ample access to pre-scheduled recreation opportunities indoors and outdoors. Individuals at the center are in no way deprived of natural light nor are they exposed to excessive artificial light.”
“GEO strongly rejects these baseless allegations, which are unreasonable and outlandish,” Ferreira said.
Access to healthy light and darkness has a murky history that has become more transparent over time. When England imposed a tax on windows in the 17th and 19th centuries, many homeowners, especially landlords, simply bricked them up. An 1845 editorial in The Lancet to caution: “Light is as essential to the optimal growth and nourishment of the human body as air and food; whenever it is deficient, health fails and disease appears.” A century later, George Orwell depicted round-the-clock illumination as torture in his book 1984. A federal court in Oregon reached the same conclusion in 1990, deeming constant illumination unconstitutional. In 2018, while children were being held under constant light in a Texas warehouse during the previous Trump administration, the New England Journal of Medicine warned of “profound” consequences.
“Unfortunately, not much has changed,” said Steve Lockley, a circadian neuroscientist and visiting sleep researcher at the University of Surrey in England.
But science and technology related to the biological clock have advanced significantly. Studies now show that disruptions to the internal clock and sleep can increase the risk of heart disease, diabetes, infertility, depression, dementia, cancer, and more. Early death. Concerns have skyrocketed on another federal agency’s radar: More than a decade ago, Lockley began advising NASA on the International Space Station’s biological lighting to help astronauts adjust to the 16 daily sunrises and sunsets they experience in orbit.
At the Tacoma Ice facility, it remains difficult to achieve a healthy contrast between bright days and dark nights. Inside, lighting levels vary slightly over the course of 24 hours, according to former and current detainees, as well as attorneys who represent immigrants at the various ice facilities. Zahid Chowdhury, the current detainee at the Tacoma facility, reported having no windows and spending rare time in the yard. “Last week, we got an hour [of yard time] He said: “It was raining. One of the two bright overhead lights in his room was switched off at around midnight and then switched on again at 4.30am. When he spent a week in a more restrictive unit, there was a constant, unchanging bright light shining above his head. He said: ‘I had no idea whether it was morning or night.’ “It wasn’t even an hour.”
Chrissy Cutitta, a spokeswoman for Ice, said the agency “follows strict standards,” and pointed to Ice Official detention standardsa 226-page document updated in 2025. It contains no mention of how light is regulated at night. The sole reference to “access to natural light” does not define what qualifies as access. Cuttita also said that “contrary to any preposterous notion that ICE keeps detained illegal aliens in the dark recesses of detention facilities, ICE’s high standards of living provide ample time for outdoor recreation on prearranged schedules.”
In fact, detainees in Tacoma said they spent a maximum of one hour in the sun per day — often enough to meet minimum outdoor recreation requirements. However, that’s only if their allotted time in the yard falls during daylight hours and doesn’t conflict with a legal meeting or mealtime, says Elizabeth Behnke, managing attorney at the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project. Ice’s spokesperson acknowledged a potential conflict: “If an attorney shows up during the alien’s allotted entertainment time, the alien must make that choice for the loss of the fresh air of legal counsel.” Construction work has cut that time recently, according to the attorney.
Many of Ice’s detention centers are not run by the agency itself, but by private companies such as Geo Group.
No set of standards applies to all detention centers run by the government or the private sector. “Even ice standards are not consistent between facilities,” said Eunice Chu, senior counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Prison Project. “It’s a mixed bag, and it’s constantly evolving.”
The latest ICE standards, revised in 2025, state that facilities “shall ensure adequate temperatures, air and water quality, ventilation, lighting, noise levels, and detainee living space, in accordance with any applicable state or local jail/prison standards.” Where such state or local standards exist, the emphasis is generally on light for observation or sufficient vision for reading, writing, or caring. Some local authorities are upfront about access to daylight, such as in New York City, where Guidelines for new facilities It calls for the total area of windows in each residential neighborhood to be “at least one-tenth of the floor area of that room.” However, aside from court orders segregating individual facilities, there are currently no federal standards specifying how much light or how much darkness an incarcerated or immigration detained person should have.
Recognizing this gap, the Illumination Engineering Society, an internationally recognized body in the field of lighting, is currently drafting standards for indoor spaces that it hopes will be adopted by authorities. The document will be calculated for Significant differences in how the visual and circadian systems process lightsaid Patricia McGillicuddy, director of arts content at the nonprofit community. A room that appears bright to the eye, for example, may be biologically dark. “The criteria will not be symbolic,” she said. “But it can be approved by an authority having jurisdiction.”
The American Bar Association has also proposed standards for civil immigration detention. Their document states that residents should be able to “turn off lights that may interfere with sleep.” It also calls for “abundance of natural light.” However, the standards have no binding legal authority, said the ACLU’s Chu.
Most people in the United States and Europe live with some circadian disruption, largely due to the modern indoor lifestyle. With the days shortening rapidly at this time of year, many people commute to work or school in the dark and return home in the dark. Their worlds are lit almost solely by artificial light. However, the burden falls unevenly.
People living in poverty disproportionately live in basement flats or social housing built to comply with minimum lighting standards. They often work in warehouses, kitchens, or cubicles away from any windows. Their children are more likely to study in windowless classrooms and lack safe spaces to play outside. Then, after a dimly lit day, the whole family can be bathed in the glow of street lights and headlights. Some public housing complexes in London and New York City are illuminated such as building sites or prison yards.
Studies confirm That low-income residents and people of color are exposed to more light at night than their wealthier white peers. The consequences include not only health risks, but also behavioral issues as well as lower wages and test scores – all of which helps perpetuate cycles of inequality and incarceration.
Deprivation of natural light has been a long-standing concern in American detention facilities. Nearly two million people in the United States wake up every morning in jails or prisons. Lockley served as an expert witness in a class action lawsuit brought by Vermont prisoners regarding the constant lighting of their prison cells. After years of litigation, the two sides reached a settlement: Correctional facilities would keep cell lights dimmed and sleep masks would be available to inmates.
Zhu said the standards of immigration detention centers should be higher than those of prisons. She added: “These are civilian detainees. They cannot be subjected to any punishment, let alone cruel and unusual punishment.”
Solutions can be simple and cheap, whether in detention or prison settings. Daylight is free. Scientists say safety does not require bright lighting at night. Dim, warm lights can provide visibility while protecting health and reducing costs. Providing free eye masks can protect individuals from any necessary residual light.
“We need to put the issues of light and dark alongside the issues of nutrition and access to clean air and clean water,” said Leah Osborne, a Seattle-based lighting designer and founding member of the nonprofit Light Justice. “The people most affected are the least able to identify the problem as a problem and demand change.”