IMMIGRATION
Since 2018, in the wake of the Trump administration’s “zero-tolerance” immigration policy of deterrence which separated children from their families at the border, Government Accountability Project has provided legal representation and advocacy support to more than two dozen federal and contractor whistleblowers working within the U.S. immigration apparatus. These employees of conscience have spoken up despite the risk of retaliation to issue warnings and expose systemic abuses, gross mismanagement, illegality, and harm to immigrant children and adults, workers and communities caused by illegal and dangerous immigration policies, practices, and conditions in the United States, exacerbated by layers of oversight failures.
Whistleblowers have been vital to catalyzing oversight and accountability measures and to bring about an end to some of the immigration system’s worst abuses. Government Accountability Project, using the power of credible information provided from the uniquely valuable perspective of employee whistleblowers, has helped fuel activism from immigrant justice organizations and professional associations, prompted congressional and agency investigations, supported lawsuits, driven policy changes, and even ended some of the worst abuses, including the sterilization of immigrant women, perpetrated on vulnerable people in detention.
Government Accountability Project is proud to represent immigration whistleblowers, who help hold our immigration system accountable to the public and to high standards of human rights. If you are an employee or contractor in the U.S. immigration system and are considering blowing the whistle, fill out our secure intake form here.
Focus Areas
Harm to children and adults in immigration detention
Through the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the United States operates an extensive civil immigration detention system which imprisons both noncitizens arrested in communities in the interior of the U.S. and those who have recently entered the country, including people seeking asylum protection. Many adult immigration prisons are operated by private corporations motivated by profit incentive in a system defined by dehumanization, xenophobia, and minimal transparency.
Additionally, across both Democrat and Republican administrations, children have been imprisoned in various iterations of DHS detention facilities. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) also has authority to hold children who enter the U.S. without their parents in custody and maintains both an extensive “shelter” system along with, beginning in 2021, “emergency” sites to house large numbers of unaccompanied migrant children.
Whistleblowers represented by Government Accountability Project have spoken up to expose some of the worst abuses in the immigration detention system:
Solitary Confinement: Attorney Ellen Gallagher has for more than eight years been blowing the whistle on ICE’s widespread use of solitary confinement on medically vulnerable and mentally ill immigrants in civil detention, which is recognized as torture by the United Nations.
Child Detention: Drs. Scott Allen and Pam McPherson, both medical experts contracted with the DHS Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, have spoken out, through multiple administrations, about the harm to children caused by immigration detention. Beginning in 2021, multiple whistleblowers have also raised concerns about HHS operations at an emergency tent site built to hold immigrant children at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas.
Medical Mistreatment & Failed Covid Response: Immigration prisons have a long history of medical neglect toward those in their custody. In 2020, nurse Dawn Wooten spoke out about medical mistreatment of immigrant women in immigration detention at the Irwin County Detention Center in Ocilla, Georgia. Along with calls for accountability from detained women, Nurse Wooten’s disclosures prompted multiple agency and congressional investigations and led DHS to sever the contract between ICE and the private prison operator, LaSalle Corrections. Nurse Wooten, along with multiple anonymous LaSalle employees at the Richwood Detention Center in Richwood, Louisiana, also spoke out about the failures of LaSalle and DHS to ensure the safety of noncitizens in custody, workers at the prisons, and local communities during the COVID-19 pandemic. These failures occurred despite warnings from Dr. Scott Allen with Dr. Josiah “Jody” Rich that immigration detention centers would be “tinderbox[es]” of contagion during the pandemic
Illegal and Harmful Immigration Policies
An ever-fraught political issue, immigration policies and enforcement priorities shift with each administration. As noncitizens, immigrants are frequently scapegoated and used as political pawns to varying degrees across both Democrat and Republican administrations. When new, harmful, and often illegal policies are enacted, whistleblowers consistently stand ready to speak out against them.
Whistleblower Profiles
Whistleblowers play an essential role in the environmental movement and in shaping public policy and corporate practices.
Nurse Dawn Wooten
Dawn Wooten Ms. Dawn Wooten, LPN, worked as a nurse at the Irwin County Detention Center (ICDC), an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) immigration detention center in Ocilla, Georgia. As COVID-19 began to spread like wildfire in early 2020, particularly in congregate settings like immigration detention facilities, Ms. Wooten became gravely concerned about failures at ICDC to comply with CDC guidelines and protect immigrants and workers alike from the coronavirus and other misconduct, including shredding detainees’ requests for medical care. In addition, numerous immigrant women detainees began to ask her about gynecological procedures they underwent that made them [...]
Fort Bliss Whistleblowers
Fort Bliss Whistleblowers Government Accountability Project represents ten whistleblowers, both federal employee detailees and contractors, who have raised concerns about unsafe conditions for minors and operational failures, including case management and sponsorship problems, at the HHS Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) emergency site at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas. Our first whistleblower clients were federal employees who volunteered on detail to support efforts to receive unaccompanied minors at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas. Following their volunteer details, they first shared their concerns with HHS OIG in 2021 as they witnessed horrific harms to children, including lack [...]
Dr. Scott Allen and Dr. Pam McPherson
Dr. Scott Allen and Dr. Pam McPherson In July 2018, Government Accountability Project clients Dr. Scott Allen and Dr. Pamela McPherson, medical and mental health subject matter experts for the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (DHS/CRCL), made the brave decision to blow the whistle on the government’s child detention practices. Through their disclosures, they sought to prevent the ongoing risk of harm to children and families posed by the Trump administration’s implementation of its “zero-tolerance” immigration policy at the U.S. southern border. After conducting 10 investigations of family detention centers over the [...]
Dr. Scott Allen and Dr. Josiah “Jody” Rich
Dr. Scott Allen and Dr. Josiah “Jody” Rich In February and March 2020, at the very start of the COVID-19 pandemic, we helped our client Dr. Scott Allen - who had formerly raised concerns with his colleague Dr. Pamela McPherson about the risk of harm to children in ICE detention - and new client Dr. Josiah “Jody” Rich, both national experts in detention health and subject matter experts for DHS’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (CRCL), warn DHS and Congress about the risk to immigrants, workers and the public from the spread of COVID-19 in ICE [...]
Attorney Ellen Gallagher
Attorney Ellen Gallagher Ellen Gallagher is a former policy adviser at the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (DHS-CRCL) and current employee at the DHS Office of the Inspector General (OIG). She has blown the whistle on Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) use of solitary confinement on mentally ill and medically vulnerable adults across the 200+ immigration detention facilities in clear violation of federal laws and detention standards. In 2014, as an attorney working for DHS’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (CRCL), Ms. Gallagher began raising concerns internally about ICE’s systemic [...]
Former Asylum Officer Doug Stephens
Former Asylum Officer Doug Stephens Doug Stephens worked as an Asylum Officer in the San Francisco Asylum office from September 2017 until August 31, 2019. In his two years as an Asylum Officer, he conducted and adjudicated more than 350 Affirmative Asylum interviews, Credible Fear screenings, and Reasonable Fear screenings. Prior to his service in the asylum corps, Mr. Stephens was a Department of Justice (DOJ) staff attorney for the San Francisco Immigration Court from September 2015 to September 2017, and during his time he reviewed 195 cases and drafted 96 judicial decisions. After conducting five interviews under [...]
Our Work
As part of our methodology to ensure that whistleblowers’ disclosures make a difference, we work with our clients to tailor a personalized disclosure strategy that may include the publication of op-eds, press statements, complaints, and letters, along with working with the media and civil society groups to amplify our whistleblowers’ disclosures.
Read about our work with immigration whistleblowers here:
Resources
Government Accountability Project publishes books, articles, reports, white papers, and guides to whistleblowing. We work with journalists and public interest organizations who can use our whistleblower clients’ disclosures to leverage change, and we also support journalists and public interest organizations with information and support when they encounter potential whistleblowers.
We invite whistleblowers, journalists, and public interest organizations to contact us for assistance.