955 - Mental Health Care in ICE Custody
Public Health On Call
The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
4.6 • 644 Ratings
🗓️ 1 October 2025
⏱️ 14 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
About this episode:
How well do ICE detention centers provide mental health care? In this episode: We first hear from Dr. Solomiya Tsymbalyuk from the University of Maryland about an emergency department interaction that presented legal and ethical questions around treating individuals in ICE custody. Then, Dr. Katherine Peeler of Physicians for Human Rights offers a look at how mental health care should be offered in immigration detention centers and why those protocols are becoming more difficult to follow.
Guest:
Dr. Katherine Peeler, MA, is a pediatric critical care physician and a medical adviser at Physicians for Human Rights. She leads the Peeler Immigration Lab where she researches the health and health rights of immigrants and, in particular, asylum seekers.
Dr. Solomiya Tsymbalyuk is a fourth-year psychiatric resident at the University of Maryland Medical Center.
Host:
Dr. Josh Sharfstein is distinguished professor of the practice in Health Policy and Management, a pediatrician, and former secretary of Maryland's Health Department.
Show links and related content:
-
Psychiatrists and Other Physicians Interfacing With ICE: Legal and Ethical Challenges—Psychiatric Services
-
'People Are Losing Hope' Inside ICE Detention Centers—New York Times
-
California sent investigators to ICE facilities. They found more detainees, and health care gaps—CalMatters
Transcript information:
Looking for episode transcripts? Open our podcast on the Apple Podcasts app (desktop or mobile) or the Spotify mobile app to access an auto-generated transcript of any episode. Closed captioning is also available for every episode on our YouTube channel.
Contact us:
Have a question about something you heard? Looking for a transcript? Want to suggest a topic or guest? Contact us via email or visit our website.
Follow us:
-
Here's our RSS feed
Note: These podcasts are a conversation between the participants, and do not represent the position of Johns Hopkins University.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, |
| 0:05.9 | where we bring evidence, experience, and perspective to make sense of today's leading health challenges. |
| 0:16.3 | If you have questions or ideas for us, please send an email to public health question at jhhhu.edu. |
| 0:23.8 | That's public health question at jhhu.edu for future podcast episodes. |
| 0:31.2 | Hey listeners, it's Lindsay Smith Rogers. |
| 0:34.1 | Today, in this two-part episode, accessing mental health care in ICE custody. |
| 0:39.3 | Dr. Solomia Simbuluk is a fourth-year psychiatry resident at the University of Maryland, |
| 0:43.9 | where she and her team were asked to provide psychiatric care to a man in ICE custody. |
| 0:48.9 | In part two of today's episode, Dr. Josh Sharfstein then talks to Dr. Catherine Peeler, |
| 0:55.9 | a medical advisor for Physicians for Human rights. Dr. Peeler offers an inside look at how health care is provided in ICE detention centers |
| 1:01.9 | and discusses the barriers to mental health care for many in custody. Let's listen. |
| 1:07.5 | Dr. Soleimba, Simbabu, thank you so much for joining me today in Public Health on call. |
| 1:12.6 | Happy to be here. I'd like to ask you to introduce yourself to our audience. |
| 1:18.5 | Of course. I'm a fourth year psychiatry resident at the University of Maryland and Shepard |
| 1:23.3 | Pratt residency program. And if I recall, there are only four years in a psychiatry residency program, so you must |
| 1:31.1 | be well on your way to becoming a full-fledged psychiatrist. |
| 1:34.9 | I'm very close. |
| 1:36.8 | Well, it was in the process of your residency that you became aware of a case that has |
| 1:42.8 | lingered with you, so much that you wrote about it in a medical |
| 1:46.4 | journal. I'd like to ask you first to set the scene. Sure. So this happened in a large |
| 1:52.9 | emergency department in a major U.S. city. We were being asked to evaluate a patient who presented |
| 1:59.8 | in the custody of ICE. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.