'highly controversial issue' is correct and usable in written English.
You can use it when you want to emphasize that an issue has divided people and is an issue of debate. For example: "The death penalty is a highly controversial issue that divides people on moral and ethical grounds."
Budget revision, however, is a highly controversial issue.
How produce from the West Bank should be labelled – be it from Israeli-occupied or Palestinian territories – has become a highly controversial issue.
The group's work on the Northrop deal offered indirect support of McCain on a highly controversial issue while costing his campaign nothing.
Where exactly medieval romance writers found their material when they were not simply copying classical or pseudo-classical models is still a highly controversial issue.
In the past, ratio scales have been a highly controversial issue between physicists and psychologists as regards the need for an empirical addition operation in order to attain them.
Basement building has become a highly controversial issue in London, where some underground schemes are so cavernous they have been dubbed "iceberg homes" because only a tiny fraction of the property is now visible above ground.
While this accomplishes the goal of binding the Board to a formal open process, it might cause problems for highly controversial issues for which no consensus can readily be determined even with 180 days of negotiations among stakeholders.
The two widely spaced and well-resolved melting peaks (Tm,1 and Tm,2) in PEDEKm offered a unique model for proposing a more advanced interpretation on the complex and highly controversial issues of multiple melting and crystalline morphology commonly seen in semi-crystalline polymers.
The two main treatment approaches extraction and non-extraction have been highly controversial issues, and it mainly depends upon the patient profile.
"It's funny, I work on a lot of different issues, like spotted owls—highly controversial issues," said Bob Sallinger, conservation director for the Audubon Society of Portland.
"I was lead representative on several highly controversial issues for the city, including illegal immigration, day laborers, the massage parlor moratorium and medical marijuana.
