Ryan Schwenk

This whistleblower, Ryan Schwenk, will tell you proudly that he's a public servant.

Doesn't make policy and doesn't want to, thanks very much.

Not that he always agrees, but he's fine executing whatever the people in charge want to do, as long as it's legal.

He started working for the government under President Biden.

He'd been representing immigrants, but now he was representing ICE in the Department of Homeland Security, prosecuting immigration cases.

The way he saw it, he was fulfilling the same purpose in both roles, ensuring procedural fairness.

Due process, making sure the system worked the same for everyone and worked smoothly.

It bugged him if things got mucky or slow, like when the Biden administration was dragging its feet on immigration cases.

But then, last May, under the Trump administration, all ICE lawyers got instructions that Ryan found alarming.

They were told to ask for their cases to be dismissed when they went to court, which allowed ICE agents to arrest immigrants right there and then, often as soon as they walked out the door.

Ryan was like, how could people have due process if there's no time to make their case and then they're getting immediately arrested?

He wasn't sure what to do, but he's such a rule follower that he didn't tell anyone about these new instructions.

Not even his wife.

That's kind of the problem with being a lawyer, right?

I can talk to her about generalities.

I can't talk to her about specific policies.

Oh, so you were just like, I'm generally feeling this?

Kind of, yeah.

I try to be very careful with what I would say to not give away agency practices, but...

I kind of explained to her like, you know, this, this kind of thing happening.