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

Family Detention and “Zero Tolerance” Family Separations: Drs. Scott Allen and Pam McPherson, both medical experts for the DHS Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, conducted 10 inspections of immigration prisons for families between 2014 and 2018, raising concerns about systemic failures to meet minimum standards of care for children. In the aftermath of President Trump’s 2018 “Zero Tolerance” enforcement policy of family separation, Drs. Allen and McPherson raised the alarm that the proposed alternative to separations, detaining families together, was untenable. Drs. Allen and McPherson again raised concern about the harms caused by family detention in 2023 when reports surfaced that the Biden administration, which initially ceased the practice of detaining families in 2021, was considering its re-implementation.

“Migrant Protection Protocols” (MPP) also known as the “Remain in Mexico” policy:  In 2019, the Trump administration implemented MPP which sent asylum seekers at the southern border to Mexico, where they faced targeted violence, to wait for hearings on their immigration case. Asylum Officers were assigned to conduct cursory screening interviews to determine whether an asylum seeker faced a sufficient threshold of harm in Mexico to merit entry to the U.S. Asylum Officer Doug Stephens quickly refused to participate in the program, and with support from Michael Knowles, the Asylum Officers’ union president, spoke out about the unlawful policy.

Title 42 border closure: With the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Trump Administration invoked public health authority under Title 42 of the U.S. Code to close the southern border. Drs. Scott Allen and Pam McPherson spoke out against the administration’s spurious claims that halting immigration was necessary to protect public health. The implementation of Title 42 resulted in minors, exempted from the immigration restriction, entering the U.S. without their parents to seek safety. These children were then sent to the HHS emergency tent site at Fort Bliss where numerous federal employees detailed to support the emergency response effort spoke out about dangerous operations.