FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Government Accountability Project Applauds Senate Judiciary Committee Members’ Letter to ICE Regarding Overuse of Solitary Confinement
On August 1, 2022, Senator Dick Durbin, along with several members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, sent a second letter to Acting Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Tae D. Johnson, pressing Acting Director Johnson for answers regarding ICE’s misuse of solitary confinement. This letter follows repeated demands for accountability from ICE after a 2021 report of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG) found failures by ICE to collect, retain and report data about its use of solitary confinement and called for enhanced oversight of segregation used in ICE detention facilities.
The systemic audit by the DHS OIG and the resulting report in 2021 were spurred by the whistleblower disclosures of Government Accountability Project’s client, Ellen Gallagher. Beginning in 2014, Ms. Gallagher, then with the DHS Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (CRCL), sounded the alarm internally around ICE’s widespread misuse and overuse of solitary confinement, particularly on medically vulnerable and mentally ill detainees. Ms. Gallagher’s pleas for oversight, which were elevated to then DHS Deputy Secretary Mayorkas, were largely met with silence until she made her whistleblowing public in 2019. The resulting OIG audit and report validated Ms. Gallagher’s disclosures first...
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