Bring them home.
Bring them home.
Dr. Cozzo, Dr. Jones, and I came together around a shared conviction: that the medical community has both the evidence and the obligation to speak. As board-certified pediatricians and professors of pediatrics, we have seen firsthand what detention does to children — infectious disease, developmental disruption, toxic stress — and we know the data leaves no room for debate.
That knowledge became action. We authored a letter to DHS that gathered thousands of signatures from medical professionals across the country, giving lawmakers the non-partisan, evidence-based case they need to act. Because ending child detention requires healthcare voices in the room, not as advocates for one side, but as witnesses to what the science unambiguously shows.
Our demands are straightforward:
Accountability from DHS
Adherence to American Academy of Pediatrics guidance on child health
The immediate release of every child in immigration detention
How you can help
How you can help
Release every child in detention now
We have sent a formal letter to federal leadership documenting the medical harms and ethical violations of prolonged detention and thousands of medical professionals have signed on. Add your name to our petition demanding the immediate closure of the Dilley ICE Detention Center.
Fund Direct Relief
Until Congress acts, it’s up to us. Every dollar goes directly to families. Through Each Step Home, your donation funds commissary accounts for detained families, supplies for infants and children, and emergency resettlement support for families released with nothing.
Stick to the Science
The evidence could not be clearer — children do not belong in detention. Text GO ESH to 50409 and Each Step Home will deliver that message directly to your senators and members of congress.
Continued National Coverage
The families in detention are not a headline, they are human beings in crisis that demand sustained attention. Share this, return to it, and refuse to let the news cycle move on without them.
What ICE Detention Does to a Child
These pediatrician moms have a shared message: Release all children in immigration detention
911 calls from ICE detention center underscore concerns about conditions, advocates say
Pediatricians send letter to DHS demanding release of children in ICE detention
911 calls capture kids burning with fever, struggling to breathe at ICE detention center
The Three Pillars of My Advocacy Work
Ending child detention and replacing it with true alternatives.
Detention exposes children to infectious disease, developmental disruption, and toxic stress, with consequences that no treatment can fully undo. The fix requires a coordinated push: healthcare voices delivering the non-partisan, medical evidence directly to lawmakers, keeping affected families visible beyond the news cycle, and building the bipartisan political will to end this through federal litigation once and for all.
Universal health coverage for every child, regardless of who their parents are, what their legal status is, or how much money they have.
We had the infrastructure — CHIP, expanded coverage, protections for undocumented children — and it was dismantled. The fix is to restore what was dismantled, expand access regardless of a child's legal status or family income, and codify these protections into law so no future administration can take them away again.
Protecting evidence-based medicine from political interference.
Public health recommendations should be independent of whoever holds power and the institutions that govern them should be accountable to scientists and physicians, not politicians. The fix is to make evidence-based recommendations truly independent with governing bodies of field-elected physicians and scientists required to approve any changes to federal public health guidance.