For three years, Andrew Osborne helped his bosses promote the idea that good design could make imprisonment more humane. As a public relations specialist at DLR Group, one of the largest architecture firms in the world, he crafted campaigns for multimillion dollar projects, like the construction of a “youth campus for empowerment” in Nashville. Or the rebuild of San Quentin state prison—former home of California’s death row—into a “rehabilitation center.” It wasn’t about simply adding more windows, he argued in marketing material. Prisons could be revamped to prioritize education; jail space could be set aside to help people through mental health crises instead of booking them into the system.

“I was selling the shit out of it,” Osborne says. “I genuinely was a convert.” A 34-year-old creative type, he’d taken the job at DLR Group after earning master’s degrees in philosophy and English literature. He truly believed the design firm, which has over 30 offices and rakes in at least $500 million in annual revenue, was committed to the stated ethos of its Justice Civic division: to pursue “healing, equity, and transformation for the individual and community” as “stewards of the built environment.”

“I think what ICE is doing is the worst thing America has probably done since the internment camps during World War II.”

So when he found out on February 4 that DLR Group held a current contract to turn an old private prison in Oklahoma into a new detention center used to hold the immigrants swept up in the Trump administration’s escalated, increasingly deadly ICE operations—the sense of betrayal was instant. “I think what ICE is doing is the worst thing America has probably done since the internment camps during World War II,” he tells me, comparing the agency’s use of racial profiling in arrests to the mandatory incarceration of Japanese Americans. “It’s horrific, they’re shooting people, and here I am hating that in my heart of hearts. And it turns out my company is involved in it.”

Osborne was working from home that day, and he felt “the maddest I’ve ever been in my life.” So he picked up the phone, called his supervisor, and said he intended to quit. He gave notice two days later.

His wasn’t a lone act of protest. That week, it had become widely known among DLR Group’s 1,800-some employees that the firm had connections to ICE through its deals involving the private prison company CoreCivic. The resulting outcry has thrown DLR Group into turmoil, according to interviews with three current employees—all of whom requested anonymity for fear of retaliation—as well as a review of posts on the firm’s internal message board and a recording of a mid-February call between executives and hundreds of workers, provided by an anonymous employee. In an emailed response to questions, senior principal and brand communications leader Andy Ernsting disputed that there has been “unrest” among DLR Group workers. “A small group of employees had questions and we had a firmwide, open dialogue about our justice work,” he wrote.

Yet amid the turmoil, on February 9, CEO Steven McKay wrote to employees that “moving forward, DLR Group will not do work—be it upgrades, modernization, or new construction—for ICE detainment or deportation facilities.” DLR Group wouldn’t walk away from its existing contract, or commit to ending its relationship with private prisons, executives communicated to employees. But it would donate the estimated $300,000 in profits from the Oklahoma job to immigration-related causes.

McKay might have been expecting the announcement to appease disgruntled workers and close the door on the controversy. But employees say the revelations about the firm’s business ties have caused them to lose faith in company leaders and thrust them into an ongoing crisis of conscience—and more are considering departing.

The uprising within DLR Group isn’t the only example of workers pushing back on their employers’ business dealings with ICE—but it may be one of the more successful ones. Since the surge of ICE enforcement in........

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