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Human Rights and the Trump Administration’s Family Separation Policycompiled by Roger W. SmithApril 2020*****************************************************Civil & Human Rights Groups File Emergency Request to Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to Stop Family Separations, Reunite Familiespress releaseTexas Civil Rights ProjectMay 31, 2018, Texas -- Today, the Texas Civil Rights Project, the Women’s Refugee Commission, the University of Texas School of Law Immigration Clinic, and Garcia & Garcia Attorneys at Law, P.L.L.C., filed an Emergency Request for Precautionary Measures with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (“IACHR”) on behalf of parents systematically separated from their children at the United States-Mexico border.The civil and human rights groups represent five parents and their young children who were separated by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials (“CBP”) in South Texas. Federal agencies have not provided the parents with any information regarding their children’s whereabouts. As a result, the parents are suffering extreme harm; many broke down sobbing recounting the separation from their children. In many cases, the parents were not told that their children were being taken. In one instance, Border Patrol agents told a mother they were taking her daughter to give her a bath, but they never returned the child.In response to this horrific practice, the groups are requesting that the IACHR adopt measures requiring the United States to immediately stop the practice of separating families and reunite the petitioners with their children. Under the Commission’s Rules of Procedure, the Commission can adopt measures requiring Member States to take action in cases of serious, urgent, and life-threatening human rights abuses.The separation of families at the border by federal agents has become the norm under United States Attorney General Jefferson Sessions. On April 6, 2018, Sessions announced the adoption of a so-called “zero tolerance” policy at the United States-Mexico border regarding immigrants and even asylum-seekers who cross into the country without authorization. In the city of McAllen, Texas, this zero-tolerance policy has been implemented en masse -- leading to children being separated from their parents for indefinite periods of time and reportedly held in facilities under the custody of the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement (“ORR”).There is no process in place for the children to communicate with their parents, or for the parents and children to know each others’ whereabouts. There is likewise no process in place to guarantee that the separated children will be promptly and safely reunited with their parents.The groups are requesting the IACHR to adopt Precautionary Measures requiring the United States of America to, among other things:* Reunite the five Petitioner parents with their children immediately, and ensure that, if ordered removed, no parent is removed from the country without being allowed to decide whether the child will return to the home country with the parent or remain in the United States to seek relief;** Immediately cease the systematic practice of prosecuting parents and separating children from their parents at the United States border.*Efren Olivares, Racial and Economic Justice Director for the Texas Civil Rights Project, issued the following statement:“This administration has taken American Exceptionalism to a whole new level: no developed democracy in the world systematically separates children from their parents simply for coming into the country. There is a human rights catastrophe happening at our doorstep as a direct consequence of this administration’s callous disregard for families fleeing violence and death. For the past week, we have spoken to and taken declarations from inconsolable parents who have no idea where their children have been taken or if they will ever see them again. Toying with the lives of people fleeing violence to send a message is not only cruel, but also a violation of the international human rights and conventions to which the United States is a party. We will not sit idly and watch this crisis unfold -- we have asked the IACHR to immediately require the U.S. government to reunite these families and stop this inhumane and illegal practice. The world’s eyes are on our country.”Denise Gilman, Director and Clinical Professor for The University of Texas School of Law, issued the following statement:“The administration’s practice of separating families is cruel and lawless. It must end immediately. The practice causes devastating and potentially permanent psychological harm to traumatized children. At the same time, it wreaks havoc in the immigration system. Children are forced into separate proceedings apart from their parents and asked to speak for themselves in court while parents must fight for asylum from within remote immigration detention centers. History will judge this moment harshly.”Leah Chavla, Policy Advisor for the Migrant Rights and Justice program at the Women’s Refugee Commission, issued the following statement:“Regardless of the mechanism used, separating children from their parents in order to deter them from seeking protection is horrific, puts children’s well-being at risk, and undermines our legal system. This is our country at its worst. We reach out now to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) to demand that the U.S. government abide by international law and its own domestic laws to protect children and to provide refuge for asylum-seekers and immediately cease this barbaric practice of ripping families apart.”*****************************************************Advocates file human rights complaint to stop family separations at borderby Lomi KrielHouston ChronicleMay 31, 2018 Texas Civil Rights Project and other national advocacy groups filed a complaint with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights Thursday, arguing the U.S. government's practice of separating immigrant parents and children at the southern border violates international protocols.The situation is critical and requires an emergency intervention, the complaint argued, particularly in the Rio Grande Valley, where about 60 percent of all immigrant families and children crossing the border were apprehended in April."No developed democracy in the world systematically separates children from their parents," said Zenén Jaimes Pérez, a spokesman for the Texas non-profit. "It's not just cruel. It's a violation of international agreements and conventions."Hundreds of families, many asylum seekers from Central America, have been separated as a result of the White House's new "zero tolerance" policy of prosecuting every border crosser, even those accompanied by minor children, for illegal entry. Parents serve short prison sentences for what is usually a misdemeanor crime before going to immigrant detention facilities, while their children are placed in federal foster care.Advocates say they struggle to find each other later.The complaint comes as concerns about the treatment of immigrant children in government custody has reached a fevered pitch, with national rallies Thursday, fueled in part by a viral, though not entirely accurate, social media campaign.Senior White House officials doubled down on the separations this week, seeking to push blame for the practice to Democrats who they said would not support undoing federal "loop holes" that they argue encourage migrant families to come here.The complaint contends that separating families violates international protocols including the rights of parents, children, families and asylum seekers."Since the United States did not and does not inform the parents of their children's whereabouts, the United States is effectively disappearing hundreds of minor children," it said. "In practice, the State has taken the children, absconded them, and it is accountable to nobody."The U.S. State Department declined to comment on pending litigation.The commission, based in Costa Rica, is an arm of the Organization of the American States, which includes all 35 states of the Americas except for Cuba. The complaint asked the commission to order the U.S. to immediately reunite the five plaintiffs named in the complaint and cease the "systematic practice" of separating families at the border.The commission meets Friday and is expected to ask the U.S. government to answer questions about the complaint before making a decision. The body can only make requests, not enforce action, as the U.S. has not ratified the relevant treaty, the Inter-American Convention of Human Rights."It's really more of a naming and shaming exercise," said Ted Piccone, a senior fellow in Latin American foreign policy at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.The U.S. in the past generally cooperated with and supported the commission, but it has no legal obligation to accept its rulings."We have an administration that is very hostile to human rights, international institutions, and international law," Piccone said. "It will be an interesting test case."The process could, however, reveal more information about a practice that has been largely opaque as the government has provided little information.Prosecuted parents go quickly from Justice Department custody to Homeland Security detention centers and are often speedily deported. Their children, who are not allowed in federal prison, are deemed "unaccompanied" and placed in shelters run by Health and Human Services, with little cross-agency communications about their whereabouts.As the government has ramped up prosecutions of parents in recent weeks, those facilities are at 95 percent capacity and the Trump administration has looked into housing children on military bases, including in Texas."There is no process in place for the children to communicate with their parents, or for them to know where their parents are," the complaint said. "There is likewise no process in place to guarantee that removed children will be promptly and safely reunited with their parents."Sometimes they are not. In one case, a Guatemalan father was separated from his 18-month-old toddler last summer and deported without him three months later. They were only reunified in December.The complaint names four Guatemalan parents and one Salvadoran father but is expected to be expanded in coming weeks. It includes distressing details about what little information is provided to parents on their children.One 29-year-old Guatemalan mother fled her indigenous village after she said her husband was brutally killed. Though she sought help, she said her government could not protect her. In May she and her 11-year-old son crossed the U.S. border illegally and Border Patrol agents took away the boy. They said she was not allowed to see him, but did not tell her why."She was visibly distraught, and extremely nervous about the uncertainty of what might happen to her son," the complaint said. "She broke down crying several times."Another Guatemalan father was placed in a cell while his 12-year-old son was told to stay outside. When he came out, "his son was gone. He was not even able to say goodbye," the complaint said. Agents did not say why they were separated, where his son was sent, or when they may be reunited.A Guatemalan mother with three children, aged 7, 8, and 11, was only told she would "see them again at some point."Lawyers argue the practice violates the rights of asylum seekers, families and minors."Children do not know where their parents are, or if and when they will see them again," the complaint said. "This is a form of torture as it punishes the children for an act committed by their parents."It is the latest legal action taken against Trump's administration for what many see as a hardline policy that in the last week has received mounting pushback as stories of separated families emerged.The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit to block such family separations in February and is expecting a federal judge's ruling soon. The public defender's office for the Western District of Texas in a separate suit argued the practice violates parents' rights to due process as they plead guilty to the crime to reunite with their children.The growing legal reaction suggests the policy could meet the fate of some of the administration's other controversial immigration initiatives. Federal judges blocked the so-called travel ban shortly after it was announced last year and it has been largely tangled up in legal wrangling ever since.*****************************************************Trump migrant family separations protested as U.S. is accused of violating human rightsThe U.S. is violating "well established Inter-American standards," such as rights to family and to seek asylum and protection," said petitioners.By Suzanne GamboaNBC NewsJune 1, 2018 A Melchor Santacruz hasn’t seen his 16-year-old partially deaf son since the two came to the U.S. border to ask for asylum. Maria Andrés de la Cruz awaits reunification with her three young children that agents separated from her and put in an icy cold cell. Antonio Bol Paau has been unable to find out where his 12-year-old son is for days.Migrant advocates and attorneys accused the United States of human rights violations in an official complaint filed with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights Thursday. The complaint came as activists protested in cities around the country against the Trump administration's latest tactic aimed at curtailing immigration.“The people are demanding to know #WhereAreTheChildren?” Well, the children are not with their parents,” Ana Maria Archila, co-executive director of the Center for Popular Democracy said in a statement about the protests on Thursday and Friday.We're at the @TheJusticeDept demanding that @jeffsessions and @realDonaldTrump stop separating families. 658 kids were ripped from their parents in just the first 13 days of this new program. Stand with our children! #FamiliesBelongTogether pic.b7hVQlFlpu-- #DreamActNow (@votolatino) June 1, 2018The human rights emergency request was filed on behalf of Melchor Santacruz, de la Cruz, Bol Paau and three other parents and the children they were separated from after crossing the border into the United States. The complaint details those parents' and others' separations from their children.Efren Olivares, racial and economic justice director for the Texas Civil Rights Project, told reporters Friday that attorneys were able to determine the whereabouts of children of four of the parents after they called a government 1-800 hotline with names and birth dates. But Olivares said they had not been able to locate Bol Pau's since beginning their search May 24."Maybe he will be in the system today or maybe tomorrow, or maybe he was entered incorrectly ... or ... the nightmare scenario would be he is missing," Olivares said.The Office of Refugee Resettlement, which takes custody of children separated from parents, does not give out information on what shelter children are in but gives information to a caseworker who then must contact the attorney or advocate. NBC News has emailed ORR to request comment.The human rights petition asks for the commission's intervention to “immediately stop a human rights and humanitarian crisis perpetrated by the U.S. government in the Texas-Mexico border."“In one particularly chilling example, immigration agents told two immigrant mothers that they were taking their daughters away to the bath -- but they never returned, and the mothers have not seen them since,” the attorneys and advocates said in the petition.The petitioners complained in the request that dozens of minor children have been taken from their parents in the last month. In addition, parents and attorneys haven’t been told where the children are or whether parents and children will be reunited.The groups want the commission, part of the Organization of American States (OAS), to require the United States to reunite the five parents and their children immediately, to ensure that no parent is removed from the country without being allowed to decide whether to take their child with them and immediately stop prosecuting parents and separating them from their children."The request for precautionary measures is grounded in the current ongoing and future violations of human rights as enshrined in inter-American treaties and instruments that the U.S. is legally bound to," said Leah Chavla of the Women's Refugee Commission. She said one of those instruments is the 1951 Convention on Refugees, which prohibits prosecution or punishment of asylum seekers, she said.The petitioners accused the U.S. government of violating internationally-recognized human rights and "well established Inter-American standards," such as rights to family, to seek asylum and protection, and minimum due process.“Toying with the lives of people fleeing violence to send a message is not only cruel but also a violation of international human rights and conventions to which the United States is a party,” said Efren Olivares, racial and economic justice director for the Texas Civil Rights Project, one of the groups that filed the emergency request.Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced May 7 the administration would separate children from parents as it stepped-up prosecutions of people who cross the border illegally. The administration has set a goal of 100 percent prosecutions of people who illegally cross the border, even if they are doing so to request asylum."U.S. Marshals have not been authorized by Congress to place children in criminal detention facilities with their parents," said Devin O'Malley, a Department of Justice spokesman.Advocates have said that children have been kept from their parents while the parent is in jail awaiting prosecution on the misdemeanor infraction, while they serve their sentence -- which can be time served as they awaited prosecution -- and then while awaiting deportation.Some parents have been able to communicate with children while they are in immigration detention, but detainees are not allowed to receive phone calls unless they are specially arranged making keeping contact with children difficult.Agents told Melchor Santacruz, who arrived at the South Texas border from El Salvador around May 22, that asylum wasn’t available and that he couldn’t be with his son, according to the news release from advocates and attorneys.In addition to being partially deaf, his teenage son suffers frequent nosebleeds, the news release said.Border Patrol agents put de la Cruz’s three children -- ages 11, 8 and 7 -- in a cell that migrants call an “hielera,” which means ice chest because it is very cold. She was not asked why she had left her home country of Guatemala, which attorneys said was because of threats and violence. The agents told her she’d see her children again after her court hearing, but she hasn’t seen them yet, the news release said.Bol Paau and his son, from Guatemala, arrived May 22. Bol Paau was put in a detention cell and his son was made to wait outside it. When Bol Paau left the cell his son was gone, the release states.Also filing the petition were the University School of Law Immigration Clinic, the Women's Refugee Commission and García & García law firm in Texas.The Inter-American Human Rights Commission can adopt measures requiring its member states to take action in cases of human rights abuses. The United States is an OAS member state.Some of the protests on Friday were being held in front of Immigration and Customs Enforcement offices as well as the Department of Justice in Washington.Texas Congressman Joaquín Castro, a Democrat, spearheaded organization of a protest in San Antonio that was held Thursday night.“My grandmother came here as an orphan when she was brought here by relatives and she lost her parents before that," Castro told NBC News in a telephone interview before the rally. "I believe we can enforce immigration policies and still treat people as human beings and with respect."*****************************************************Taking Migrant Children From Parents Is Illegal, U.N. Tells U.S.By Nick Cumming-BruceThe New York TimesJune 5, 2018 -- The Trump administration’s practice of separating children from migrant families entering the United States violates their rights and international law, the United Nations human rights office said on Tuesday, urging an immediate halt to the practice.The administration angrily rejected what it called an ignorant attack by the United Nations human rights office and accused the global organization of hypocrisy.The human rights office said it appeared that, as The New York Times revealed in April, United States authorities had separated several hundred children, including toddlers, from their parents or others claiming to be their family members, under a policy of criminally prosecuting undocumented people crossing the border.That practice “amounts to arbitrary and unlawful interference in family life, and is a serious violation of the rights of the child,” Ravina Shamdasani, a spokeswoman for the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, based in Geneva, told reporters.Last month, the Trump administration announced a “zero tolerance” policy for illegal border crossings, saying that it would significantly increase criminal prosecutions of migrants. Officials acknowledged that putting more adults in jail would mean separating more children from their families.“The U.S. should immediately halt this practice of separating families and stop criminalizing what should at most be an administrative offense -- that of irregular entry or stay in the U.S.,” Ms. Shamdasani said.The United States ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki R. Haley, clearly showed American irritation with the accusation in a statement released a few hours later.“Once again, the United Nations shows its hypocrisy by calling out the United States while it ignores the reprehensible human rights records of several members of its own Human Rights Council,” Ms. Haley said. “While the High Commissioner’s office ignorantly attacks the United States with words, the United States leads the world with its actions, like providing more humanitarian assistance to global conflicts than any other nation.”Without addressing the specifics of the accusation, Ms. Haley said: “Neither the United Nations nor anyone else will dictate how the United States upholds its borders.”The administration has characterized its policy as being about illegal immigration, though many of the detained migrants -- including those in families that are split apart -- enter at official border crossings and request asylum, which is not an illegal entry. It has also said that some adults falsely claim to be the parents of accompanying children, a genuine problem, and that it has to sort out their claims.On Twitter, President Trump has appeared to agree that breaking up families was wrong, but blamed Democrats for the approach, saying that their “bad legislation” had caused it. In fact, no law requires separating children from families, and the practice was put in place by his administration just months ago.The Times found in April that over six months, about 700 children had been taken from people claiming to be their parents.The American Civil Liberties Union says that since then, the pace of separations has accelerated sharply. Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the group’s immigrant rights project, said that in the past five weeks, close to 1,000 children may have been taken from their families.Last year, as Homeland Security secretary, John F. Kelly raised the idea of separating children from their families when they entered the country as a way to deter movement across the Mexican border.Homeland Security officials have since denied that they separate families, but have also faced sharp criticism from Mr. Trump for failing to do more to curb the numbers of migrants crossing the border.For the United Nations, it was a matter of great concern that in the United States “migration control appears to have been prioritized over the effective care and protection of migrant children,” Ms. Shamdasani said.The United States is the only country in the world that has not ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child, she noted, but the practice of separating and detaining children breached its obligations under other international human rights conventions it has joined.“Children should never be detained for reasons related to their own or their parents’ migration status. Detention is never in the best interests of the child and always constitutes a child rights violation,” she said, calling on the authorities to adopt noncustodial alternatives.The A.C.L.U. has filed a class-action lawsuit in federal court in San Diego, calling for a halt to the practice and for reunification of families.*****************************************************U.N. Condemns U.S. Practice of Separating Migrant Children From ParentsBy Gabriella PaiellaThe CUTJune 5, 2018 month, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced an extreme new Trump administration policy to deter illegal immigration: separating migrant children from their parents at the U.S.–Mexico border. Now, the United Nations has come forward to call on the U.S. to “immediately halt this practice.”The Guardian reports that Ravina Shamdasani, spokesperson for the U.N. human rights office, told reporters that “the practice of separating families amounts to arbitrary and unlawful interference in family life, and is a serious violation of the rights of the child.” She added that it generally “runs counter to human rights standards and principles.”“It is therefore of great concern that in the U.S., migration control appears to have been prioritized over the effective care and protection of migrant children.” Shamdasani continued. “Detention is never in the best interests of the child and always constitutes a child-rights violation.”White House Chief of Staff John Kelly has infamously defended the policy in the past, saying “the children will be taken care of -- put into foster care or whatever.”*****************************************************U.N. human rights chief: U.S. policy on migrant children ‘unconscionable’Associated PressJune 18, 2018 – The U.N. human rights chief is urging the Trump administration to end new policies separating migrant children from their parents after entering the United States from Mexico, saying they’ve affected nearly 2,000 kids in the last six weeks.Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein says it’s “unconscionable” that any country would seek to deter parents from migrating “by inflicting such abuse on children.”He spoke at Monday’s opening of a regular Human Rights Council session, his last before his term ends in August.Zeid, a Jordanian prince, also decried concerns about countries including Syria, Myanmar, Hungary, Nicaragua, Israel, North Korea, and India- and Pakistan-controlled parts of Kashmir.He denounced the lack of access provided by U.N. member states to rights investigators, noting China has accumulated 15 pending requests in the last five years.*****************************************************U.N. human rights chief calls Trump administration’s policy on migrant children ‘unconscionable’By Carol MorelloThe Washington PostJune 18, 2018 possible U.S. withdrawal from the U.N. Human Rights Council is overshadowing discussions at the organization’s meeting in Geneva, as the Trump administration’s policies come under fire.The 47-nation body, which meets three times a year, began Monday’s session with the U.N. human rights chief slamming the Trump administration’s policy of separating migrant parents from their children after they enter the United States at the Mexican border, comparing it to child abuse.“The thought that any state would seek to deter parents by inflicting such abuse on children is unconscionable,” said Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, a Jordanian prince.The Human Rights Council, which has existed in its current form since 2006, is shaping up to be the next flash point in the administration’s efforts to either overhaul or leave agreements and institutions it says fall short of upholding American values.Two weeks ago, President Trump’s U.N. ambassador, Nikki Haley, threatened to pull out of the council unless it stops what she called unfair criticisms of Israel and prevents authoritarian governments from having a seat on the council. U.S. officials say no decision has been made on whether to relinquish membership.The United States could completely withdraw, either now or when its current term ends next year, or it could retain observer status.A withdrawal would further separate the United States from its long-standing allies, who disagree with the idea of leaving the council.British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, in a speech to the council Monday, sided with the United States in urging the council to stop reflexively criticizing Israel by keeping an agenda item devoted to human rights abuses in the West Bank and Gaza Strip as a permanent item on the schedule. Calling it “disproportionate and damaging to the cause of peace,” he said Britain will vote against it every time it comes up.But in an apparent allusion to the U.S. threat of withdrawal, Johnson also defended the council’s work.“I stress that that does not mean that we in the U.K. are blind to the value of this council,” he said.Since 2006, the Human Rights Council has passed more than 70 resolutions critical of Israel, 10 times as often as it has criticized Iran.Its membership includes 14 countries that are ranked as “not free” by Freedom House: Afghanistan, Angola, Burundi, China, Cuba, Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iraq, Qatar, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Venezuela.*****************************************************Separating children from parents at US border 'unconscionable': UN rights chiefAgencie France PresseJune 18, 2018 STATES OF AMERICA- The UN human rights chief on Monday urged Washington to stop separating migrant children from their parents at the U.S. border, describing the policy as "unconscionable"."The thought that any state would seek to deter parents by inflicting such abuse on children is unconscionable," Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein said as he opened a session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.The "zero-tolerance" border security policy implemented by President Donald Trump's administration has sparked global outrage.The government has said that during one recent six-week period nearly 2,000 minors were separated from their parents or adult guardians.The number of separations has jumped since early May, when Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that all migrants illegally crossing the U.S. border with Mexico would be arrested, regardless of whether the adults were seeking asylum.Since children cannot be sent to the facilities where their parents are held, they are separated.Zeid quoted the American Association of Paediatrics as describing the practice as "government-sanctioned child abuse" which may cause "irreparable harm," with "lifelong consequences"."I call on the United States to immediately end the practice of forcible separation of these children," he said, urging Washington to ratify the Convention of the Rights of the Child.The U.S. is the only country that has not ratified the convention.Ratification, Zeid said, would "ensure that the fundamental rights of all children, whatever their administrative status, will be at the centre of all domestic laws and policies."Zeid's address at the start of the 38th session of the UN Human Rights Council marks his last address to the body before he is due to step down at the end of August.The session kicked off under a cloud of growing U.S. criticism of the council. Diplomatic sources said there was a risk that Washington may withdraw from the council altogether.*****************************************************U.N. Rights Chief Tells U.S. to Stop Taking Migrant Children From ParentsBy Nick Cumming-BruceNew York TimesJune 18, 2018 -- The United Nations’ top human rights official on Monday entered the mounting furor over the Trump administration’s policy of separating undocumented immigrant children from their parents, calling for an immediate halt to a practice he condemned as abuse.United States immigration authorities have detained almost 2,000 children in the past six weeks, which may cause them irreparable harm with lifelong consequences, said Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights.He cited an observation by the president of the American Association of Pediatrics that locking the children up separately from their parents constituted “government-sanctioned child abuse.”“The thought that any state would seek to deter parents by inflicting such abuse on children is unconscionable,” Mr. al-Hussein said.His intervention added to an escalating chorus of condemnation from people across the political spectrum in the United States, including the former first lady Laura Bush, who called the separations “cruel” and “immoral.” But Mr. al-Hussein risked retaliation by the Trump administration, widely believed to be pondering pulling out from the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva.President Trump turned to Twitter early Monday to blame Democrats for the current situation: “Why don’t the Democrats give us the votes to fix the world’s worst immigration laws?” he wrote.“We don’t want what is happening with immigration in Europe to happen with us!” he said in a separate tweet.The high commissioner’s office had already condemned the practice of separating children from their parents this month, calling it a serious violation of children’s rights and international law. That drew an angry rebuke from Nikki R. Haley, the United States ambassador to the United Nations, who accused the agency of ignorance and hypocrisy.Her response illustrated the administration’s deepening impatience with United Nations human rights mechanisms that Ms. Haley has accused of “chronic bias” against Israel and of overlooking the abuses major human rights violators -- even allowing them to become Human Rights Council members.Diplomats from the United States mission in Geneva attended the start of a new council session on Monday, but rights advocates and envoys of other countries continued to ask how long the Americans would remain there.Mr. Trump has shown his disdain for the multilateral organizations and agreements that have long been central to world affairs, withdrawing the United States from the Paris climate accord, trade pacts and the Iran nuclear deal, imposing tariffs on trade, and undermining other international agreements.Those tensions did not deter Mr. al-Hussein, an outspoken advocate for human rights, from raising the issue of families being pulled apart as they enter the United States, many of them illegally and others requesting asylum.Opening the last session of the Human Rights Council before he steps down in August, he voiced deepening concern about a threat to global stability posed by the nationalist agendas of “self-serving, callous leaders.” Mr. al-Hussein warned that “the more pronounced their sense of self-importance, the more they glory in nationalism, the more unvarnished is the assault on the overall common good -- on universal rights, on universal law and universal institutions, such as this one.”The escalating attack on the multilateral system and its rules, he said, would only increase the risk “of further mischief on a grander scale.”The high commissioner’s final overview of human rights around the world after four years in office earned a standing ovation from a packed council chamber.*****************************************************“Zero Tolerance” and the Detention of Children: Torture under International Lawby Meg Satterthwaite and Rebecca RiddellJust SecurityJune 21, 2018 has been widespread shock and dismay at the Trump administration’s policy of “zero tolerance” enforcement of criminal penalties for irregular border crossing--even against asylum-seekers--and its most extreme element, the separation of families and the incarceration of children. The criminalization of seeking asylum is unethical; the forced separation of families is abhorrent; and the intentional deployment of the suffering of children is especially vile. But it is also illegal under refugee and human rights law binding on the United States. And President Donald Trump’s new Executive Order does not fix the problem. Here’s why.First, the administration’s efforts to criminally charge asylum-seekers for crossing the U.S. border irregularly is wrong under international law. The Refugee Convention and its Optional Protocol, which binds the United States, makes clear that treating those seeking asylum as criminals is unlawful--even if they enter irregularly. Such treatment flies in the face of the protective purpose of refugee law, which sought to prohibit expulsions like those that European Jews and other persecuted minorities experienced as they fled the Nazis--often without visas or holding forged passports--during World War II.The UN High Commissioner for Refugees has urged states to recognize that “asylum-seekers are often forced to arrive at, or enter, a territory without prior authorization,” an act for which they should not be penalized. Under refugee law, the United States should provide everyone fleeing persecution or torture with a fair opportunity to make their claim for asylum or protection against deportation. Instead, Trump’s policy of “zero tolerance” has wreaked havoc on the right to seek asylum. As Human Rights First has reported, the Trump administration’s criminal enforcement processes were violating refugee rights even before “zero tolerance” was announced. This is because these prosecutions:* Entail group processes in which individuals often have only a moment or two to make their case;* Involve pressure to renounce the right to seek asylum altogether in exchange for avoiding jail time; and* Deprive asylum-seekers who serve time the opportunity to seek asylum, since officials often fail to refer those convicted of unlawful entry or unlawful presence to asylum proceedings once their sentences are completed.These conditions have only grown worse in recent weeks, apparently in an effort to deter asylum-seekers from pursuing refuge and migrants from seeking opportunity in the United States. According to media reports, in some cases, asylum-seekers have been turned away by border patrol agents who have physically barred their entry or told them there is “no room” for them. Criminal prosecutions of asylum-seekers for border crossing are on the rise as a result of the “zero tolerance” policy. Defense attorneys report that they have less than 5 minutes to prepare their clients facing criminal penalties for border crossing and the Department of Defense has agreed to detail JAG lawyers to act as prosecutors along the border. And in an exceptionally cruel move, the Trump administration has been separating children from parents seeking asylum and placing the children--rendered unaccompanied through the criminalization of parents--in detention. This incarceration of children is a violation of refugee and human rights law.Indeed, the disturbing separation of children from their families in this context may amount to torture. Under the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, which also legally binds the United States, torture includes any act by which severe mental pain or suffering is intentionally inflicted on a person for the purpose of intimidating or coercing him or a third person. Numerous administration officials have indicated that the forced separation of families was instituted, at least in part, to deter people from crossing the border. The forced separation of families undoubtedly causes immense anguish, both for parents and for children. Given officials’ comments, it is plain that the Trump administration is intentionally inflicting suffering to send a message to others who wish to seek safety or opportunity in the United States. Family separation also creates a de facto group of unaccompanied children, who are afforded robust protections under international human rights law precisely because of their extreme vulnerability. Indeed, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has recognized that such children “face greater risks of inter alia sexual exploitation and abuse, military recruitment, child labour.” The Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment has recently observed that ill-treatment can amount to torture if it is intentionally imposed “for the purpose of deterring, intimidating, or punishing migrants or their families, [or] coercing them into withdrawing their requests for asylum.” The traumatic separation of children from parents, and the subsequent and unnecessary creation of a group of highly vulnerable children, carried out for the purpose of deterrence contravenes the prohibition on torture.Under international and domestic pressure, Trump issued an Executive Order (EO) yesterday, cynically titled “Affording Congress an Opportunity to Address Family Separation.” After blaming Congress for the administration’s immigration policies, the EO announces a two-part policy to “rigorously enforce our immigration laws” and to “maintain family unity.” The former policy appears to be just a doubling down on the “zero tolerance” policy of prosecuting those who do not enter at a “designated port of entry at a designated time.” The latter policy, however, instead of restoring some semblance of morality by at least releasing incarcerated children, will be achieved by “detaining alien families together where appropriate and consistent with law and available resources.”Detention, even with parents or guardians, can have profoundly damaging effects on a child’s psychological and physical well-being and development. Under the Convention on the Rights of the Child, in all actions concerning children, children have a right to have their best interests taken into account as a primary consideration, and they can only ever be detained as a measure of last resort and for the shortest possible period of time. Further, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has concluded that “[d]etention cannot be justified solely on the basis of the child[‘s] migratory or residence status, or lack thereof.” Indeed, the Special Rapporteur has observed that while detaining children as a measure of last resort may make sense in other contexts, such as juvenile criminal justice, this justification is not applicable in immigration proceedings, where it conflicts with the best interests of the child and the right to development. While the United States has not ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child (the only member of the United Nations not to do so), it has signed the treaty, and thus must refrain from acts that defeat its object and purpose. Further, the UN Human Rights Committee has interpreted the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which the United States has ratified, to require states to “take into account the principle of the best interests of the child” when implementing immigration law. Despite this broad consensus and the harmful impact of detention on children, it appears that the administration is already seeking a court’s permission to keep children detained with their families for longer than the 20 days currently permitted by the controlling caselaw--the Flores settlement.While Trump believes that his new EO will “solve” the “problem”--a problem that he introduced through recent policies--his administration will continue to run afoul of refugee and human rights law unless and until it stops criminalizing refugees and ends the unjustified detention of children. Even then, President Trump must face the consequences of having inflicted the torture of separation and incarceration on thousands of children and their parents.*****************************************************The Torture of Forcibly Separating Children from their Parentsby Beth Van SchaackJust SecurityOctober 18, 2018 discussed in my prior post, President Donald Trump’s family separation policy has come under legal assault from a number of civil society organizations, 17 U.S. states, and the District of Columbia. Some of these lawsuits challenging family separations date back to earlier administrations, (e.g., Flores, see our backgrounder), but new lawsuits have proliferated since Trump’s promulgation of the “zero tolerance” policy, which intends to ramp up criminal prosecution of those crossing the border without prior authorization. At the same time, the Trump administration is considering a return to the practice of separating children from their parents, but this time under the guise of giving parents an excruciating Sophie’s choice: Keep your children in detention with you for months, or even years, or hand them over to U.S. authorities.Although many of the cases in U.S. courts have focused on constitutional and other domestic legal protections, international human rights law also speaks to the family separation policy. In terms of international fora for pressing these claims, the Texas Civil Rights Project and others have activated the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights, which monitors states’ compliance with the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man and other relevant treaties. The Commission has jurisdiction over the United States by virtue of our membership in the Organization of American States. Over the years, the Commission has scrutinized the United States’ use of the death penalty, immigration and racial justice policies, protections against gender-based violence, and Guantánamo Bay detention practices. Our readers may recall that in March 2017, the Commission was scheduled to consider the Trump administration’s travel ban, but--in an unprecedented move--no U.S. government official attended the session. The hearing went forward nonetheless. In the new petition involving family separations, lawyers for the victims have argued that the family separation policy runs afoul of the United States’ human rights obligations (including the right to a family, to seek asylum and protection, to due process, etc.). In August, the Commission adopted so-called “precautionary measures” on behalf of children who had been separated from their parents at the border.As is beginning to be argued by human rights organizations, journalists, the United Nations, academic psychologists, and doctors, the family separation policy as implemented implicates the international prohibitions against torture; cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment; and even forced disappearances. In the following analysis, I compare the impact of the family separation policy against the international and domestic definitions of torture and other forms of mistreatment prohibited by international law. I rely upon the medical literature on Adverse Childhood Experiences compiled by the Stanford Human Rights in Trauma Mental Health Program (with which I am affiliated) to demonstrate that the neurological, physiological, and psychological impact of acute childhood traumas like forcible family separation and indefinite detention rises to the level of severe pain or suffering--and thus torture--under international law. Most importantly, this policy has the potential to cause long-lasting psychological harm to all the parties involved. This is especially true for children, who can experience enduring damage if subjected to toxic stress at crucial developmental stages. The threshold at which treatment or punishment may constitute torture is thus lower when it comes to children, especially when they are deprived of their liberty, because children are still developing physically and emotionally. All told, the family separation policy amounts to government-sanctioned torture.The Prohibition Against Torture and CIDTThe Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment defines torture at Article 1 as:any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.The Torture Convention in Article 16 also prohibits cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment (CIDT) in equal measure. CIDT encompasses abusive acts that do not constitute torture, for example because the gravity threshold of “severe” pain or suffering is not met (due to the conduct’s duration or the characteristics of the victim), because the specific intent elements of torture are not satisfied (e.g., the harm was not committed for one of the listed purposes), or because the victim is not within the perpetrator’s custody or control (e.g., situations of police brutality). The ill treatment of individuals who are powerless, for example in situations of detention, is more likely to amount to torture. Human rights law also considers the personal characteristics of the victim, such as age, health status, and other vulnerabilities.Article 3 of the Convention prohibits any state party from expelling, returning, or extraditing anyone to another country where “there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.” The International Covenant on Civil & Political Rights, which the United States ratified in 1992, prohibits these two categories of abuse in the same breath:No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.The United States ratified the Convention Against Torture in 1994 subject to certain declarations, reservations, and understandings. Of relevance to the family separation policy, the Senate issued an understanding that “mental torture” refers to “prolonged mental harm caused or resulting from”: (1) the intentional infliction or threatened infliction of severe physical pain and suffering; (2) the administration of mind-altering substances or procedures to disrupt the victim’s senses; (3) the threat of imminent death; or (4) threats to others of the foregoing. In addition, the prohibition applies only to persons in the offender’s custody or physical control.Within U.S. law, these alterations to the terms of the Torture Convention are included in 28 U.S.C. §1350 (the Torture Victim Protection Act, which supports civil suits for torture in U.S. courts), and 18 U.S.C. §2340, the provision of the federal penal code criminalizing torture. The former statute applies only to individuals acting under actual or apparent authority, or color of law, of any foreign nation. The latter statute applies only to torture committed outside the United States and may be invoked against U.S. nationals or other nationals who are “present in” the United States, regardless of the nationality of the victim or perpetrator. The Committee Against Torture, which monitors compliance with the Torture Convention, routinely takes issue with the United States’ incomplete incorporation of the Convention’s prohibition in U.S. law.As defined by international law, torture thus comprises the following essential elements:1. The intentional commission of severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental;2.3. That is inflicted for a particular purpose (to obtain information, to punish the victim or another, to intimidate the victim or another, or for any reason based upon discrimination); and4.5. That is inflicted with the consent or acquiescence of a state actor.6.The family separation policy as implemented satisfies each of these elements, even when the idiosyncrasies of U.S. law are taken into account. In addition, to the extent that instances of detention do not rise to the level of torture, they constitute CIDT, which is also prohibited by U.S. treaty obligations and constitutional principles.The remainder of this post focuses on the harm to children by forcible separation, but the medical literature also indicates that parents and other caregivers experiencing forced separation suffer intensely since they are faced with a significant threat to their child’s well-being. From the parents’ perspective, their child is at risk of experiencing a whole range of potential harms, including neglect, disappearance, physical violence and injury, sexual violation, or even death. As the next section recounts, these fears are valid in light of the demonstrated harm suffered by children in U.S. immigration detention.Element #1: Severe Pain or SufferingThe immediate and long-term impacts of the family separation policy easily surpass the gravity threshold of severe physical or mental pain and suffering, particularly when it comes to children.a. Physical Torture/CIDTStarting with physical harm, lawsuits challenging the policy, as well as media reporting, have revealed that children are being subjected to physical abuse and horrific conditions while in Customs & Border Protection (CBP) detention facilities.First, allegations have emerged of children being abused in these detention facilities. This abuse is consistent with earlier accounts of unaccompanied minors being subject to physical and verbal mistreatment in detention by federal agents or contractors charged with their care. (The ACLU’s report from 2009-2014 is here). These include allegations that children were sexually abused by facility employees. There are also allegations that one toddler died after receiving inadequate medical care in an immigration detention facility run by a private contractor.Second, children are being held in inhumane, unsafe, and unsanitary conditions. Lawyers representing children held in some CBP centers have compiled copious evidence revealing that their clients have been subjected to cruel and inhumane conditions, including inadequate food, enforced dehydration, lack of privacy, sleep deprivation, cold temperatures, and unsanitary conditions. Media have reported that children were kept in cages (which Fox & Friends insisted are not cages but rather holding pens with walls built “out of chain-link fences”). (Harrowing photos are here). In addition, there appear to be little to no educational services to speak of.Following an evidentiary hearing, Judge Dolly Gee of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California (which monitors the Flores settlement) ruled that one set of plaintiffs in a suit predating the current crisis had established that their conditions of detention were in violation of the Flores settlement. Proven facts include:* The government has provided inadequate, frozen, or inedible food. Children reported getting nothing but a cookie for a meal or being fed at 2 a.m., hours after arriving at a facility.** The government has provided insufficient fresh water or dirty and contaminated water.** Toilets are placed in open areas and children have no access to a shower for days.** Children have no access to clean bedding. Instead, they are being forced to sleep on a concrete floor with only aluminum “sheets” (photos here) or in wet clothes.** Holding centers were described as “ice boxes.” Human Rights Watch has reported that officers actually turned up an air conditioner in response to complaints by children or their parents.** Over-crowded cells with constant lighting have prevented families and children from lying down or sleeping.** Individuals are being held in unlicensed facilities, including facilities that had earlier had their licenses revoked.*In response to these allegations, the government tried to argue--ludicrously--that words such as “sleep,” “showers,” “bedding,” “toothbrushes,” or “soap” were not contained in the Flores settlement. Judge Gee ruled, however, that each of these basic supplies would be required, at a minimum, to satisfy the “safe and sanitary” conditions standard set forth in the Flores settlement. (Even more Orwellian, Trump administration officials later testified before Congress that these centers are “more like a summer camp”).Given frequent violations of the Flores standards, Judge Gee ordered the parties to choose an expert to monitor conditions in CBP detention facilities along the Texas border or she would appoint one herself. At the end of July, she ultimately decided to appoint someone to give her an independent assessment of these conditions. Former U.S. Attorney Andrea Sheridan Ordin has been recently appointed to take on this task.Incidentally, under Flores, children are entitled to the least restrictive detention conditions, but, in reality, are routinely being housed in more restrictive conditions. A lawsuit has challenged the practice of Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) in stepping up children from shelters to medium-secure, secure, or even psychiatric facilities without procedural fairness or transparency. In addition, the statements children are making to social workers or doctors are being used against them. Lawsuits have revealed that such statements at ORR facilities are being used to keep them in detention longer, ramp up the security conditions of their detention, or even subject them to psychiatric treatment. Such statements are not, apparently, subject to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), which contains privacy protections for health information. Children cannot fully exercise their HIPAA rights without the consent of their parent or guardian.b. Mental Torture/CIDTArguably, as any parent would attest, the mere fact of being forcibly separated from your child, potentially indefinitely and under such coercive circumstances and without knowledge of their wellbeing, constitutes a form of mental torture. This common sense wisdom is supported by the medical literature on forcible family separations and indefinite detention, which confirms the long-term harm to parents and especially children. The medical literature also reveals that forms of psychological torture often cause more long-term harm than torture techniques that involve the imposition of physical pain, as I have written about more extensively here.1. Psychological Harm Associated with Early Childhood TraumaAs a general matter, experiencing any form of traumatic event during childhood can have lasting effects on a child’s psychological health and neurological functioning. Children who have experienced trauma are at a significantly elevated risk of developing enduring mental health problems, including emotional and behavioral problems as well as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), mood disorders, anxiety disorders, learning disorders, and personality disorders. Emotional and behavioral problems seen in survivors of early childhood trauma include fearfulness, nervousness, restlessness, impulsivity and disobedience. Children also manifest other symptoms of trauma-related disorders including depressed mood, anhedonia or an inability to feel happiness or pleasure, changes in appetite/weight, panic symptoms, excessive worry, difficulty concentrating, insomnia, fatigue, emotional numbing, negative changes in cognitions, intrusive thoughts, nightmares, muscle tension, feelings of guilt or worthlessness, psychomotor agitation or retardation, experiential avoidance, and suicidal thoughts.Exposure to childhood trauma may also contribute to the development of personality disorders that disrupt the child’s development of his or her sense of self, as well as their ability to regulate emotions and form positive interpersonal relationships. In addition to these psychological harms, trauma experienced during childhood can generate deleterious psychosocial outcomes, such as increased risk of self-harm, substance use, domestic violence, and suicide. Childhood exposure to abuse has been linked to disrupted attachments, poor social skills, difficulties with trust and security in relationships, and poor interpersonal effectiveness. As a result, trauma exposure in childhood is commonly associated with functional impairment including social isolation, impaired security and stability in relationships, and risk for further trauma or victimization.Experiencing trauma alters the child’s development by prioritizing tasks of survival. This, in turn, interferes with other developmental tasks by diverting cognitive and other resources away from learning and growth. A child exposed to abuse, violence, and threats will utilize his or her survival skills (i.e., fight/flight) more than his or her executive control, emotional regulation, and other functional skills. This reaction is adaptive in an immediate emergency; if left on, however, this fight/flight response becomes maladaptive. A child living in chronic fight/flight mode will continue to allocate their resources to survival, rather than to developing other cognitive skills. In prolonged threat situations, the child may receive input that his or her efforts to make the world a safer place have failed. As a result, the child can develop dissociative responses as the best means of self-preservation. In addition, children often assume that they are responsible for the traumas they experience and for being forsaken by their parents, leading to lasting feelings of guilt, self-blame, shame, and worthlessness.2. The Special Trauma of Childhood Separation from ParentsEarly separation from parents is particularly associated with a range of psychiatric symptoms that can persist even into adulthood. This is confirmed by a longitudinal study of Finnish children separated from their parents during World War II. This research shows that the loss of a parent, and especially a same-sex parent, during early childhood can affect the severity and course of depressive symptoms and personality disorders throughout the child’s lifespan. This holds true even for temporary separations from parents in childhood. Forcible separations are also associated with increased rates of substance abuse.In addition to these psychological harms, the long-term impact of early childhood separation is attributable to physiological changes in children. Such separations often lead to a significant impairment in the ability of the child’s central nervous system to respond to and recover from stress. The psychiatric and neurological effects of being detached from their parents appear to be the most pronounced in children who are separated after infancy and before the age of 5. In other words, children’s brains are physically changed in connection with these sorts of traumas.And, this harm is not easily remedied. Indeed, increases in depressive symptoms related to childhood parental separation have been demonstrated nearly 60 years post-separation. Further, the biological effect of traumatic stress exposure is passed down across generations through alterations in gene expression. This harm thus becomes intergenerational.In essence, parents serve as a buffer for children from the adverse effects of a toxic stressor--a traumatic experience that engages the prolonged activation of the body’s stress management system. Remove that buffer and children are incapable of managing trauma without long-term damage.3. Deleterious Effects of Detention on ChildrenEven separate and apart from childhood separation, immigration detention in and of itself has a substantially detrimental effect on the psychological wellbeing of children. The detention of children prevents their basic needs from being adequately met and bars them from enjoying a sense of stability, an appropriate education, and recreation during a period of their development when these experiences are critical to healthy physical and psychological development. Unsurprisingly, research has consistently found that children in immigration detention experience negative mental health outcomes similar to those occasioned by other forms of severe trauma (including significantly elevated rates of emotional and behavioral problems, anxiety, depression, and PTSD). Additionally, suicidal ideation (recurring thoughts of suicide) is not uncommon among detained children.4. Compounded Traumas at Times Amounting to Enforced DisappearancesThese negative outcomes are compounded in situations in which children experience repeated, or prolonged, traumas such as that occasioned by indefinite immigration detention coupled with forcible family separation. Research has found that the duration of detention (and the possibility of indefinite detention) is positively correlated with deterioration of mental health and overall functioning. Further, not knowing where one’s loved ones are, or if they are ok, compounds uncertainty and distress of being incarcerated, leading to further psychological harm. The fact that the government was unable to locate family members, or ensure that they remained in touch with each other, approaches practices of enforced or involuntary disappearances. The International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance defines this international crime as:the arrest, detention, abduction or any other form of deprivation of liberty by agents of the State or by persons or groups of persons acting with the authorization, support or acquiescence of the State, followed by a refusal to acknowledge the deprivation of liberty or by concealment of the fate or whereabouts of the disappeared person, which place such a person outside the protection of the law.All told, the medical research is unequivocal that immigration detention puts children--even when they are accompanied by their parents--at significant risk for negative mental health outcomes and overall poorer socioemotional functioning. These impacts become more acute when accompanied by indefinite family separation.5. The Administration of Psychotropic Drugs to Detained ChildrenAs mentioned, U.S. law significantly minimizes the types of mental torture that are actionable domestically (for example, because mental harm must be incidental to actual or threatened physical harm). As a result, not all of these circumstances of mental pain or suffering would necessarily satisfy the idiosyncratic definition of “mental torture” under U.S. law (although the international prohibition still applies).However, it is worth pausing on one particularly troublesome facet of the policy--revealed through litigation--that is acutely relevant to the U.S. definition of mental torture: “the administration of mind-altering substances or procedures to disrupt the victim’s senses.”Judge Gee has found that children in detention are being over-medicated and administered psychotropic drugs without parental consent or judicial authorization through a court order. Separated children in detention have alleged that they had been forced to take multiple psychotropic medications simultaneously. These medications, which react with the central nervous system, can have long-term side effects (hallucinations, self-harm, suicidal ideation, etc.) when administered to adolescents or children. For this reason and others, many of these drugs are not approved for use on children by the Food & Drug Administration. Lawyers have alleged that detention facility personnel are administering these medications solely to control the behavior and “pacify” the children and not because the children have a psychiatric disorder in need of treatment. (Redacted versions of documents filed under seal are available here). Court records reveal that children were in some cases given bogus “psychiatric diagnoses” that were inconsistent with their actual behavior in order to justify the provision of such pacifying medications.This practice of forced psychiatric medicating, particularly as applied to children, satisfies even the heightened standards for proving mental torture under U.S. law.Element #2: Prohibited PurposesThe Torture Convention contains a non-exhaustive list of purposes that must be shown to have animated the commission of torture. This is the “specific intent” element of the crime. These are:* obtaining from the victim or a third person information or a confession,** punishing the victim for an act the victim or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed,** intimidating or coercing the victim or a third person, or** for any reason based on discrimination of any kind.*As addressed in my prior post, there are multiple statements in the public record indicating that the family separation policy was implemented in order to punish families for crossing the U.S. border without authorization and also to deter other families (third parties) from following suit.The separated and detained children are thus suffering for the immigration transgressions of their parents or to deter future potential border-crossers.The policy is also disproportionately applied to families coming across our Southern border as compared to people arriving at other ports of entry, implicating the discrimination prong above.Trump administration statements explaining the purpose and motivation behind the policy reveal that the harm to children and their parents was a specifically intended consequence of the policy.Element #3: State ActionThis element is easily satisfied since this was an express federal policy implemented in governmental facilities. This is the case even when private contractors are involved, because they are working at the direction and instigation of federal authorities. Indeed, several private contractors stand to profit mightily in light of new proposals to detain families, most notably GeoGroup and CoreCivic, who run massive facilities near the border. In addition, any custodial requirement is easily satisfied.Family Separations Constitute Torture for Both Parents and ChildrenThis conclusion that the family separation policy constitutes torture is consistent with the jurisprudence from human rights courts charged with interpreting the key human rights treaties. For example, the European Court of Human Rights has recognized that the mental pain and suffering that comes from knowing that a child has been detained but not knowing the child’s fate can constitute torture and/or ill-treatment of the parents. Similarly, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights has recognized that separations occasioned by forced disappearance can constitute torture and ill-treatment of the disappeared persons and family members.Family reunions will not necessarily mark the end of these children’s struggles. As a result, child survivors of the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy are likely to have lasting psychological effects. These harms are further compounded by the fact that many of these children have faced horrific trauma in their home countries, which caused their families to flee in the first place. Accordingly, the ACLU is seeking psychosocial rehabilitation for their clients as a form of reparation. Prompt access to appropriate physical and psychological health services is critical to mitigating the harmful effects of immigration detention, especially in children.*****************************************************Children separated at border, suffering alarming and prolonged effects: UN rights expertsUN NewsOctober 19, 2018 children from their undocumented parents is a traumatic violation of their rights, UN independent experts said on Friday.The group of experts said in a statement that the treatment of migrants as criminals, provokes intolerance and xenophobia, in addition to posing a danger to their well-being.Criminalizing irregular migrants and addressing irregular migration through harsh border control measures “is disproportionate to migration governance, contributes to rising intolerance and xenophobia, and the social exclusion of migrants,” said Chair of the Committee on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers (CMW), Ahmadou Tall.Ms. Renate Winter, who chairs the Committee of the Rights of the Child (CRC), elaborated on the repercussions for children who are separated from their parents, explaining there are “long-lasting effects” on their health.She emphasized that for migrants, trauma and stress often begin in their countries of origin, and this is further exacerbated when governments inhumanely separate families.Children are left vulnerable without their parents, risking exposure to gender-based violence and leaving young girls to fall prey to serious human rights violations, said Ms. Dalia Leinarte, Chair of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW).The experts called on UN Member States to fulfill the human rights of all persons, regardless of immigration status, expressing concern for those in detention who sometimes face violence, overcrowding, poor sanitary facilities and inadequate mental and physical care.Ms. Winters added that the treatment of children should be based first and foremost on their identity, regardless of migration status or nationality.States should fully cooperate to address the root causes of irregular migration, and work to make accessible, safe migration paths more available, the experts said.They concluded that with the coming into force of the Global Compact on Migration, which seeks to investigate and address migration concerns, States will benefit from hearing the voices of migrants themselves to ensure their full respect and protection.*****************************************************UNICEF statement on situation of migrant children at Mexico-U.S. borderNovember 28, 2018 YORK, 28 November 2018 – “UNICEF is deeply concerned for the safety and wellbeing of the more than 1,000 migrant children moving through Mexico or waiting at the border in Tijuana for their asylum claims to be heard by immigration authorities in the United States.“These children have limited access to many of the essential services they need for their wellbeing, including nutrition, education, psychosocial support and healthcare. They are also at risk of exploitation, abuse and trafficking while on the road or amidst the crowded camps and respite centres at the border.“Such difficult conditions come after they have already fled violence, extortion, devastating poverty and a lack of opportunity in their home countries of northern Central America.“A child is a child first and foremost, regardless of their migration status. In accordance with international law, UNICEF urges all governments to guarantee that uprooted children have access to asylum procedures in a timely manner, no matter how they enter the country.“UNICEF also urges governments in the region to keep families together and to use proven alternatives to immigration detention, such as community-based case management for families. Detention and family separation are deeply traumatic experiences that can leave children more vulnerable to exploitation and abuse and can create toxic stress with devastating long-term consequences.“Finally, we urge governments to renew efforts to tackle the root causes of irregular migration – poverty, violence and a lack of educational and economic opportunities. Until these root causes are addressed in a meaningful way over the long term, families and children will be pushed to leave their homes in search of safety or a more hopeful future via irregular migration routes.“UNICEF stands ready to work with all governments in the region to ensure that uprooted children are provided with the support and services they need and that their rights are upheld.”*****************************************************UN special rapporteur demands inquiry into death of Guatemalan girl held in USby Ed PilkingtonThe GuardianDecember 24, 2018 United Nations monitor who acts as global watchdog on the treatment of migrants is calling for an in-depth independent investigation into what happened to Jakelin Caal Maquin, a seven-year-old Guatemalan girl who died in the custody of the U.S. government.Felipe González Morales, the UN’s special rapporteur on the human rights of migrants, has sent a formal complaint to U.S. secretary of state Mike Pompeo, via officials in Geneva, in which he sounds the international alarm about the death. Jakelin died on 8 December, less than 48 hours after she was detained by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) at a remote border crossing in New Mexico.González is demanding a full independent inquiry into the tragedy, to be led by judges and lawyers and in which the girl’s family is legally represented and given access to language translation. As a measure to prevent more deaths, he also calls for an immediate end to detention of migrant children in the U.S. and urges the Trump administration to address “failings within the immigration system to prevent similar situations”.In an interview with the Guardian, González said numerous international human rights bodies had repeatedly warned that children should not be kept in detention based on their migrant status.“Detention of children has such a severe impact on them that we have repeatedly warned of the risks,” he said.The UN monitor stressed that the Trump administration was bound by international laws it could not shirk.“When a person, especially a child, is in the custody of a state, that state has to ensure their rights. States have an obligation to care for migrants who arrive at the border, they cannot treat them as animals in inhuman conditions. I’m not saying this happened in this case, but the U.S. has a duty in this regard.”The intervention of the main international watchdog on the human rights of migrants adds to pressure for the Trump administration to go beyond the routine inquiry that is being carried out by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of the Inspector General. Lawyers for the girl’s family as well as several members of Congress have decried such an internal investigation as a grossly inadequate form of self-policing.“Something as serious as the death of this girl should not be left to administrative authorities,” González told the Guardian. “I want to make sure that judges and public attorneys carry out the investigation fully in an independent manner without any pressure from the immigration authorities. An internal CBP inquiry would not be satisfactory.”The tragic last hours of Jakelin have become a lightning rod for unease about increasingly hardline policies being pursued by Trump at the southern border. After a perilous journey of more than 2,000 miles from her indigenous community in Guatemala, she and her father, Nery Gilberto Caal, arrived at the U.S. border on 6 December.They were among 163 migrants detained by CBP agents at Antelope Wells in New Mexico, including 50 unaccompanied children. Jakelin was reported sick as she and her father were being transported in a bus to the Lordsburg border patrol station, from where she was helicoptered to a hospital in El Paso, Texas. She died in the early hours of 8 December.Many key facts have been disputed. CBP claims it properly cared for the girl, providing her and her father with water and food and doing everything they could to save Jakelin’s life when her sickness became known.Her father has insisted no water was offered to them. He has said his daughter was in good health when they entered U.S. detention.On Monday, a white coffin carrying Jakelin’s ended its somber journey home to San Antonio Secortez, a dusty hamlet 220 miles north of the capital. Relatives had set up a small wooden altar overflowing with flowers, photographs of the child and a sign that read “We miss you.”When a person, especially a child, is in the custody of a state, that state has to ensure their rightsFelipe González MoralesGonzález told the Guardian he wanted the investigation to determine whether the Guatemalan family had been placed in “hieleras” – holding cells at the border patrol stations where for years migrants have complained they are kept in freezing temperatures with only aluminum blankets for heat.“There have been many complaints about the conditions of migrants in hieleras – they are places that pose a risk to the health of the persons detained,” González said.Earlier this week it was revealed that a five-month-old infant had been hospitalized in North Carolina with pneumonia. Her migrant mother blamed the freezing conditions in CBP ing as it does on Christmas Eve, the intervention of the UN monitor falls at an awkward time for an administration that has proved sensitive to accusations it shows heartlessness towards migrant children. Trump backed down in June from his controversial policy of separating families, after massive criticism at home and around the world.González said using the detention of very young children as a form of deterrence against migration was not only “very problematic” it was also a violation of international law.“You are invading a person’s rights as a way of securing public policy, and that is not reasonable,” he said.He added that he would be keeping a close eye on new tactics being pursued by federal authorities, ostensibly to deter migrants attempting to cross into the U.S.. CBP appears to be pursuing a deliberate policy of dragging its feet over the processing of asylum applications.This week it was also announced that in future asylum seekers will be returned to Mexico as they await decisions about their claims.González lamented the fact that so far his requests for access to the U.S. border with Mexico had not received the blessing of the Trump administration. The UN monitor has made two formal requests to be allowed to make an official fact-finding visit to detention centers and border patrol stations. There has been no reply from the state department.*****************************************************UN official calls for an independent investigation into deaths of migrant children in US custodyThe UN monitor argues that he has a right to investigate the death of two migrant childrenby Matthew RozsaSalonDecember 28, 2018 mysterious death of Jakelin Caal Maquin, a 7-year-old Guatemalan migrant girl who had been in U.S. government custody for less than 48 hours when she died on Dec. 8, is now the potential target of a United Nations investigation."When a person, especially a child, is in the custody of a state, that state has to ensure their rights," Felipe González Morales, the UN’s special rapporteur on the human rights of migrants, told The Guardian. "States have an obligation to care for migrants who arrive at the border, they cannot treat them as animals in inhuman conditions. I’m not saying this happened in this case, but the U.S. has a duty in this regard."González wants a full independent inquiry into the young girl's death as well as an immediate cessation of all migrant child detention, which he claims will prevent more deaths."Detention of children has such a severe impact on them that we have repeatedly warned of the risks," González told The Guardian. He also emphasized to the publication that the Trump administration could not be entrusted to look into the matter on its own."Something as serious as the death of this girl should not be left to administrative authorities," González explained to the Guardian. "I want to make sure that judges and public attorneys carry out the investigation fully in an independent manner without any pressure from the immigration authorities. An internal CBP inquiry would not be satisfactory."There is good reason to believe that the Trump administration would not be amenable to United Nations intervention in this case. In addition to his firmly nationalistic ideology, Trump has also worked to thwart congressional oversight into his migrant detention policies. Last week Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., discussed his own unsuccessful efforts over the summer to visit a detention center so he could learn more about the child separation policy.We were not allowed to speak to children," Merkley told Salon. "So you had these rules that had been in the facility -- it's either Department of Homeland Security or Health and Human Services -- they are imposing two-week requirements, you have to seek a waiver, they don't want to do it except when they can fly in special minders to control everything you do while you're there. We are not able to exercise oversight if we can not get into a facility on brief notice and actually talk to the relevant people, be they staff or be they actual for example the children or adult prisoners."Sen. Merkley added, "They don't want people to know that they have this system of child prisons, that they're locking up children for far more than 20 days, that they're slow-walking their release even when they have sponsors who have gone through the full background check system because they want to keep them in prison rather than releasing them to homes and schools and parks, where they should be. This is all part of an effort by the administration on their policy from May to say to the world, 'Do not come to our borders if you're fleeing oppression because we will inflict trauma on you and your children.'"*****************************************************Does Taking Migrant Children from Parents Constitute a Crime Against Humanity?by Roger E. OlsonFebruary 2, 2019 reading this, I suggest you read the following New York Times article from June 5, 2018: “Taking Migrant Children From Parents Is Illegal, U.N. Tells U.S.”Many people both within the U.S. and outside it condemned the U.S. practice of separating children from parents at southern border crossings. Over the months of this operation as many as two thousand (probably more) children (many of them little more than infants and toddlers) were forcibly taken from their parents and placed in detention centers without adequate humane supervision and psychological and physical support. The practice called “zero tolerance” was suspended after a hue and cry from even many supporters of President Trump’s policies regarding illegal immigration. However, during the enforcement of the policy some government officials defended the practice--as necessary to inhibit parents from bringing their children to the U.S. without authorization.Today, still, many immigrant children are being held in detention camps in the U.S. and some have died while in detention or shortly after being taken to a hospital for diagnosis and treatment. In most cases, so the U.S. government claims, the children now being held apart from their parents do not have parents anywhere in the U.S. They were brought to the U.S. by others, not their parents. In most cases it is believed their parents sent them to the U.S. to escape civil unrest in especially Central American countries.Some observer-critics of the zero-tolerance policy and practice of separating children from immigrant parents at the border constitutes a crime against humanity. Of course, “crime against humanity” is so far not well defined. There is, as always, predictably, debate about what constitutes a crime against humanity because no country in the world ever thinks its own actions constitute such.Now, as a side bar comment to head off one critical response: Many of the immigrant families separated at the border did not consider themselves “illegal” because they were seeking asylum. That is why I have not labeled all of them “illegal immigrants.” It is not strictly illegal to come to the U.S. to seek asylum from persecution in a home country.It is my opinion, as an ethicist, that forcibly separating families unnecessarily (not for the good of the children and especially as a deterrent to cause fear among would-be immigrant families) is cruel. I do not know of anyone who has claimed the policy and practice was necessary. It was clearly acknowledged to be part of a strategy to warn parents away from illegally immigrating to the U.S. or even to seek asylum here.Does cruelty to children necessarily constitute a crime against humanity when it is a policy and practice of a government aimed at a particular group of people? Some are saying so.As an ethicist I believe systematic cruelty to children always and by definition constitutes a crime against humanity--even if it is legal in the place where it happens. We, the U.S., would condemn it as such in any other country. We have condemned it as such when practiced by governments or para-military groups operating in other countries.What does this claim mean to me? Only this: I would urge Christian churches especially to tell government agents involved in this practice that they need to repent and promise never to participate in cruelty to children even if that results in their being fired. Since at least Nuremberg, “I was just obeying orders” does not stand as a defense for committing crimes against humanity.I am not speaking here to any government or international agencies; I am speaking as a Christian theologian to churches. They all need to speak out forcefully against such practices--including the current situation in which many migrant children are being held in detention centers apparently without adequate supervision and sometimes being subjected to neglect and abuse. (There have been videos shown on national news networks of “caretakers” in some child detention centers abusing children. And then there are the deaths. At least in some cases the children’s lives could have been saved had they been treated medically properly earlier.)Christian churches need to explain to their people that Romans 13, for example, does not require Christians to obey government orders that are cruel and inhumane. And that, in fact, Christians ought always to disobey government orders that are cruel and inhumane.*****************************************************Arbitrary Detention of Asylum Seekers Perpetuates the Torture of Family Separationby Anjali Mehta, Ashley Miller and Nikki ReischJust SecurityMarch 15, 2019 the Trump administration’s official policy of family separation may have formally ended in June 2018, the practice itself did not, nor did the harm it has caused to thousands of families. As congressional hearings last week made clear, many questions remain about how many children have been separated from their parents, where they are today, and what the government knew about the severe, long-term psychological damage inflicted by the forcible separation of parents and children at the border--a practice that, when undertaken deliberately for the purpose of deterring migration, constitutes torture under international law. Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen continues to deny the existence of a family separation policy, but a recent report by the Texas Civil Rights Project and news articles citing the Department of Justice’s own records indicate that families crossing the country’s southern border are still being torn apart, without any process or recourse for parents.This ongoing humanitarian crisis, of the administration’s own making, has rightfully preoccupied the new U.S. Congress. What has received less attention, however, is the role that the routine, arbitrary detention of asylum seekers--itself a violation of human rights law--plays in the ongoing torture of family separation. We cannot truly repair the impact of family separation, unless we reckon with the practice of arbitrarily keeping asylum seekers behind bars.Arbitrary Detention of Asylum Seekers in International LawArbitrary detention is prohibited under international law, including in treaties binding on the United States. Article 9 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), for example, guarantees that no one shall be subject to arbitrary detention and applies with equal force in the immigration context. Article 31 of the Refugee Convention, which binds the United States through its Optional Protocol, has been interpreted to protect refugees from arbitrary detention. According to Detention Guidelines issued by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, confining an asylum seeker in civil immigration detention is permissible only when based on an individualized determination that confinement is necessary for a legitimate purpose, such as preventing flight or protecting public safety or national security, and when subject to prompt, independent judicial review.Crucially, international bodies have made clear that detention of asylum seekers must be a measure of last resort, not a default practice imposed automatically or as a broad rule for a large category of people.Deterring asylum applicants or discouraging future migration is not a lawful basis for depriving an individual migrant of liberty, either under international law (see Detention Guidelines at para. 32) or under U.S. law (see the preliminary injunction issued in RILR v. Johnson).U.S. Practice of Detaining Asylum SeekersThat is where U.S. practice parts ways with U.S. legal obligations. As reported by Amnesty International and the ACLU, the United States routinely detains asylum seekers without individualized findings that they pose a flight risk or a danger to the community, and without affording them an opportunity for independent judicial review of their custody.Instead, evidence suggests that deterrence of immigration to the United States is a principal motivation behind the routine jailing of asylum seekers. A memorandum penned by then-Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly in January 2017 asserted that the detention of arriving asylum seekers and other migrants while they await the results of their eligibility hearings “has a significant deterrent effect on illegal immigration.” And a White House press statement issued in April 2018 asserted that “[c]atch and release loopholes encourage more and more illegal immigration into the U.S.,” implying that detaining migrants would have the opposite effect. The U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has expressed concern about the widespread use of detention in the United States, noting that deterrence appeared to be the aim.Trends in various Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) field offices reflect the overuse of immigration detention, as evident in crowded detention facilities in California, in violation of migrants’ fundamental right to liberty and the prohibition of arbitrary detention. An ongoing federal lawsuit argues that ICE’s widespread practice of routinely locking up asylum seekers is unlawful. In March 2018, a class action complaint (Damus v. Nielsen) was filed on behalf of detained asylum seekers who were denied release on “parole” at five of ICE’s busiest field offices. The case cited evidence that nearly 100 percent of such parole requests were denied, whereas in the past more than 90 percent were granted. This sharp reversal in the number of requests granted and the use of checkboxes to communicate denials strongly suggest that ICE is not determining the necessity of detention in each individual case.In July 2018, a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction in Damus, prohibiting those ICE field offices--in Detroit, El Paso, Los Angeles, Newark and Philadelphia--from denying parole to any detained, arriving asylum seeker who has shown a credible fear of returning to their country of origin, “absent an individualized determination, through the parole process, that [the person] presents a flight risk or a danger to the community.”It is unclear, however, if the government is complying with this order. Filings in the case late last year indicate that the parole grant rate, which reportedly had dropped to less than 4 percent between February and September 2017, has remained far below rates in prior years even after the injunction. According to a case status report submitted by the plaintiffs in December 2018, there is evidence that ICE continues to apply categorical criteria to deny parole, and still uses boilerplate language to refuse release rather than provide an explanation of specific factual findings that justify continued detention for each individual.How Arbitrary Detention Compounds TortureSuch arbitrary detention is not only illegal on its own; when it is imposed on an asylum seeker who was forcibly separated from her child, it also amounts to torture. The Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT) defines torture as an act or omission intentionally conducted by government officials that results in severe suffering and is carried out for an impermissible purpose, such as coercion or intimidation.As Beth Van Schaack explained in an earlier post, the forcible separation of parents and children at the border not only fits this international law definition, but also satisfies the narrower definition codified in U.S. law: it is a deliberate practice that causes severe pain and suffering, carried out by government agents, not based on any finding that the parent poses a danger to the child or is unfit to care for them, but for the purpose of deterring migration and coercing asylum seekers to give up their claims. (Last year, the Washington Post compiled statements from administration officials who admitted that family separation was meant as a deterrent.)When an individual forcibly separated from her child is deprived of her liberty for no legitimate purpose and without independent judicial review, that arbitrary detention prolongs the separation and exacerbates the severe suffering experienced by both parent and child. At a hearing before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce in February 2019, Dr. Jack Shonkoff, director of the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University, testified that prolonged separation “inflicts increasingly greater harm as each week goes by.” He added, “forcibly separating children from their parents is like setting a house on fire. Prolonging that separation is like preventing the first responders from doing their job.”Both in creating an enabling environment for such abuses and in prolonging the harm, the administration is violating international law. As the CAT Committee has clarified in a General Comment on the right to redress and in its jurisprudence on individual complaints, a state’s failure to immediately cease acts of torture or to investigate and remedy them constitutes a continuing violation.Moreover, what appear as mere administrative oversights or omissions may amount to breaches of the state’s legal obligation to prevent torture through reporting mechanisms, as detailed in the Istanbul Protocol on the effective investigation and documentation of torture. A torture prevention handbook published by the U.N., Preventing Torture: An Operational Guide for National Human Rights Institutions, stresses that the lack of documentation, particularly in detention settings, heightens the risk of torture. Both the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture and the U.N. Human Rights Committee, commenting on Article 7 of the ICCPR, likewise have emphasized that transparency is essential to preventing torture.The Trump administration’s conduct is patently at odds with these standards. Officials have failed to keep track of the extent or nature of the harm done by family separation and the ongoing arbitrary detention of asylum seekers separated from their children, let alone take steps to remedy it. Recent testimony in a series of congressional hearings by Nielsen, Director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement Scott Lloyd, Chief of the U.S. Border Patrol Carla Provost, and Director of the Executive Office for Immigration Review James McHenry has brought to light egregious omissions on the part of officials. These include the failure to maintain basic records of the number of children actually separated or to voice known concerns about the cruel consequences of family separation.The colossal gaps in record-keeping and stunning silence on the part of the administration regarding the foreseeable trauma inflicted by forcing families apart has exacerbated the suffering of thousands of individuals. The lack of documentation further heightens the uncertainty detained asylum seekers face about their children’s whereabouts and wellbeing, and when or if they will be reunited with them. When so many “bureaucratic failures” pile up--and especially when they represent such egregious departures from standard procedures--they suggest not simply negligence but a deliberate effort to do harm.The Global Justice Clinic at New York University School of Law recently made these international law arguments in an amicus brief filed in the Western District of Texas. The brief supports a habeas petition by an asylum seeker who has been detained in El Paso for almost a year without any judicial review of her confinement. Her detention has prolonged her separation from her young child, who was with her when she arrived at the border in March 2018 and was taken from her the next day. (The amicus brief was signed by other legal clinics and law professors with expertise in human rights and immigration law, including former U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture Juan E. Mendez, as well as Justice in Motion, an organization working at the intersection of refugee, human rights, and immigration law.)Ending Arbitrary Detention, Reuniting Families and Remedying TortureTruly ending the horror of family separation--which has been roundly condemned by top U.N. officials and human rights experts, regional human rights bodies, and world leaders--requires ending the practice of arbitrarily detaining asylum seekers. So long as migrants are kept behind bars without any individualized justification, for the illegitimate purpose of deterring migration, reunification will be impossible. And the suffering inflicted by the forcible separation of parents and children will only continue.By not ordering an end to arbitrary detention of asylum seekers in cases where children have been forcibly separated from their parents, the United States is deliberately causing severe pain and suffering for the impermissible purpose of deterring migration, and that constitutes torture under international law. Moreover, the administration is enabling that torture to continue and impeding justice for the thousands affected by failing to keep records and depriving the public of information about the practices of family separation and arbitrary detention.Ceasing the ongoing violations is the most urgent priority and the primary, unequivocal obligation of the United States. But it is only the first step. An equally pressing, and perhaps even more daunting, task is to remedy the damage done to thousands of children and parents. The United States has a poor track record in this regard, having historically shirked its obligation to provide effective remedy for torture, at least in the context of the CIA’s secret detention and torture program after 9/11, as the Global Justice Clinic has addressed. (Fionnuala Ni Aolain elaborated on what amount to a “litany of effectively unavailable rights” in her piece for Just Security, “What is the Remedy for American Torture?”)Some recent lawsuits are beginning to tackle this challenge. Six complaints filed in February by mothers forcibly separated from their children seek monetary compensation from the government for the resulting harm, under the Federal Tort Claims Act. In September, a class action suit was filed seeking compensation and the creation of a mental-health treatment fund for children traumatized by family separation.It remains to be seen whether the U.S. government will assert immunity or other exceptions in these cases in an effort to maintain impunity for torture. What is certain is that many more such suits and other legal advocacy strategies will be needed to begin to right these atrocious wrongs and, crucially, to prevent them from happening again.*****************************************************U.N. human rights chief ‘deeply shocked’ by migrant detention center conditions in TexasBy Deanna Paul and Nick MiroffThe Washington PostJuly 8, 2019 Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said Monday that she is “appalled by the conditions” being forced upon migrants after they cross the southern U.S. border and admonished the federal government for failing to find noncustodial alternatives.“Any deprivation of liberty of adult migrants and refugees should be a measure of last resort,” she said, adding that where detention is necessary, it should be for the shortest period and under conditions that satisfy international human rights standards.“Clearly, border management measures must comply with the State’s human rights obligations and should not be based on narrow policies aimed only at detecting, detaining and expeditiously deporting irregular migrants,” Bachelet said.The high commissioner singled out the treatment of migrant children, saying she was “deeply shocked that children are forced to sleep on the floor in overcrowded facilities, without access to adequate healthcare or food, and with poor sanitation conditions.”In 2018, Bachelet’s predecessor as high commissioner criticized the Trump administration’s child-separation policy. “The thought that any state would seek to deter parents by inflicting such abuse on children is unconscionable,” Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein said at the time.On Monday, Bachelet said immigration detention -- which she noted is never in the best interests of a child -- can have a significant effect on a child’s health and development. “[C]onsider the damage being done every day by allowing this alarming situation to continue,” she said.Several human rights bodies have determined that detention of migrant children under current conditions at the U.S. border violates international law as “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.”Bachelet’s statement comes days after the Department of Homeland Security’s internal watchdog issued a report about detention center conditions.The Office of Inspector General concluded that the “urgent” situation required “immediate attention and action” and advised the government to “take immediate steps to alleviate dangerous overcrowding and prolonged detention of children and adults.”According to the Associated Press, Tuesday’s report included new details about the centers in the Rio Grande Valley. It also stated that at least three facilities denied children access to showers and that “some children under age 7 had been held in jammed centers for more than two weeks. Some cells were so cramped that adults were forced to stand for days on end.”Notwithstanding the report, Trump accused the mainstream media on Sunday of “writing phony and exaggerated accounts of the Border Detention Centers.”Like the president, DHS officials have remained steadfast in their defense of Border Patrol station conditions. On Sunday, acting homeland security secretary Kevin McAleenan called the situation “extraordinarily challenging” during an interview on ABC News’s “This Week.”According to a DHS management memo dated July 1, the daily average of people who crossed the southern border either “illegally or arrived at ports of entry without proper documents” in May was more than 4,600. During the same month two years ago, the number was below 700 a day.The number of people in U.S. Customs and Border Protection custody has dropped nearly 40 percent in recent weeks, from more than 19,000 a month ago to about 11,000 in recent days, according to a DHS official familiar with the latest statistics who spoke on the condition of anonymity to disclose unpublished data.The DHS official told The Washington Post that the agency and conditions at its detention centers “remain at crisis levels” because CBP detention capacity border-wide is only about 4,500.The agency has added three “soft-sided” tent facilities to ease the overcrowding, with additional capacity for about 2,000 detainees, the official said. The air-conditioned tents have shower facilities, mattress and recreational activities.DHS officials say the number of unaccompanied minors in CBP custody has dropped from more than 2,500 in early June to fewer than 350 in recent days.Homeland Security officials attribute the falling numbers to a reduction in border crossings as a result of an enforcement crackdown by the Mexican government.*****************************************************U.N. Rights Head ‘Shocked’ by Treatment of Migrant Children at U.S. BorderBy Nick Cumming-BruceThe New York TimesJuly 8, 2019 -- The United Nations human rights chief, Michelle Bachelet, condemned on Monday how the United States is treating migrant children arriving from Mexico, saying she was “shocked” at the conditions they faced in detention centers when they crossed the border.“As a pediatrician, but also as a mother and a former head of state, I am deeply shocked that children are forced to sleep on the floor in overcrowded facilities, without access to adequate health care or food, and with poor sanitation conditions,” Ms. Bachelet, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, said in a statement.Ms. Bachelet, a former president of Chile, has generally taken a more mollifying approach to dealing with governments than the outspoken Jordanian diplomat, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, whom she replaced 10 months ago.But she pulled few punches on the issue of migrant children at the southern border.Children should never be held in immigration detention and should never be separated from their families, Ms. Bachelet said in the statement.“Detaining a child even for short periods under good conditions can have a serious impact on their health and development -- consider the damage being done every day by allowing this alarming situation to continue,” Ms. Bachelet said.Ms. Bachelet said that countries had a sovereign right to decide how to manage their borders, but that they still had to comply with their human rights obligations, and that the approach “should not be based on narrow policies aimed only at detecting, detaining and expeditiously deporting irregular migrants,” she said.Several United Nations human rights bodies had determined that the Trump administration’s separation of children from their families likely constituted the sort of cruel and inhumane treatment prohibited in international law, she noted.United Nations human rights officials have spoken out against the policy for more than a year since the administration started its zero tolerance policy of separating children from their parents. But officials in Ms. Bachelet’s office said she was prompted to add her voice by the dire conditions exposed in a report by the Department of Homeland Security’s independent watchdog.In five facilities visited by inspectors in June, they found children had few clothes, were given few means to clean themselves, were provided with inadequate and unhealthy food, and were held in severely overcrowded facilities. Adult migrants in one center had been held in standing room only conditions for a week.“Any deprivation of liberty of adult migrants and refugees should be a measure of last resort” and applied for the shortest possible time, Ms. Bachelet said, urging American immigration officials to find noncustodial alternatives for migrants and refugees.*****************************************************US: Family Separation Harming Children, FamiliesHuman Rights WatchJuly 11, 2019, DC – United States officials are separating migrant children from their families at the border, causing severe and lasting harm, Human Rights Watch said today. The U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Reform will hold hearings on the government’s family separation policy on July 12, 2019.Human Rights Watch interviews and analysis of court filings found that children are regularly separated from adult relatives other than parents. This means that children are often removed from the care of grandparents, aunts and uncles, and adult siblings even when they show guardianship documents or written authorization from parents. Parents have also been forcibly separated from their children in some cases, such as when a parent has a criminal record, even for a minor offense that has no bearing on their ability as caregivers. As a result, in cases reviewed by Human Rights Watch, children as young as 5 have been held in Border Patrol holding facilities without their adult caregivers.“Congressional hearings are the first step in accounting for and addressing the enormous harms inflicted on children and their families in holding cells at the border,” said Michael Garcia Bochenek, senior children’s rights counsel at Human Rights Watch. “Senior immigration officials should take this opportunity to acknowledge these serious concerns and announce an immediate end to family separation.”A 5-year-old Honduran boy held in the Clint Border Patrol Station in Texas told lawyers that when he and his father were apprehended at the border, “the immigration agents separated me from my father right away. I was very frightened and scared. I cried. I have not seen my father again.” He did not know how long he had been separated from his father: “I am frightened, scared, and sad.” In another case, an 8-year-old Honduran boy detained in Clint with his 6-year-old sister said, “They took us from our grandmother and now we are all alone.” He did not know how long they had been apart from their grandmother: “We have been here a long time.”Human Rights Watch interviewed 28 children and adults, and reviewed an additional 55 sworn declarations filed in court and taken from children and adults placed in holding cells at the Texas border between June 10 and 20, 2019. Human Rights Watch identified 22 cases in which one or more children described forced separation from a family member, usually within the first few hours after apprehension. Three Human Rights Watch lawyers took part in the teams that collected these declarations to make sure conditions were in compliance with a settlement agreement. The agreement sets the standards for conditions in which migrant children are held.No federal law or regulation requires children to be systematically separated from extended family members upon apprehension at the border, and there is no requirement to separate a child from a parent unless the parent poses a threat to the child.U.S. border officials are required to identify children who are victims of trafficking – such as children who are transported for the purpose of exploitation – and to take steps to protect them, but all of the cases of family separation reviewed by Human Rights Watch involved children travelling with relatives to seek asylum, join other family members, or both, with no indication that they were trafficked.In June 2018, the Trump administration announced an end to the government’s forcible family separation policy after images of children in cages, leaked recordings of border agents mocking crying children, and other news of the extent and impact of the administration’s policy prompted a public outcry.The cases that Human Rights Watch reviewed demonstrate that forcible family separation is continuing. For relatives other than parents, forcible separation appears to be a routine practice, and for many children, separation from relatives who have served as primary caregivers can be as traumatic as separation from a parent.Between July 2018 and February 2019, U.S. border officials separated at least 200 children from parents. They often failed to give a clear reason for the separation, a New York Times review found; in some cases, agents separated families because of minor or very old criminal convictions.Immigration authorities have never disclosed the number of relatives other than parents forcibly separated from children at the border.Forcible separation is traumatic for children and adults alike. Separated children interviewed by Human Rights Watch described sleepless nights, difficulties in concentrating, sudden mood shifts, and constant anxiety, conditions they said began after immigration agents forcibly separated them from their family members.Most separated children we interviewed reported having parents or other relatives in the U.S., but family members with whom Human Rights Watch spoke said border agents made no attempt to contact them.To prevent harm to children and uphold the principle of family unity, Human Rights Watch urges that:* The acting commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection should direct immigration agents to keep families together unless an adult presents a clear threat to a child or separation is otherwise in a child’s best interests. That determination should be made by a licensed child welfare professional, such as a social worker, psychologist, or psychiatrist with training and competence to work with children.** The inspector general’s office of the Department of Homeland Security should systematically review all instances of family separation, including of family members other than parents, to determine whether separation was in the child’s best interests.** Congress should prohibit the separation of families, including of children and their siblings, grandparents, aunts and uncles, or cousins, except when separation is in an individual child’s best interests.*“The border agency needs clear direction from the administration to end forcible family separation and other abusive practices,” Bochenek said. “And it’s up to Congress to provide the oversight to make sure the border agency complies.”“Zero Tolerance” and Systematic Family SeparationIn May 2018, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced a “zero tolerance” policy under which parents – including those seeking asylum – would be prosecuted for illegal entry, and their children forcibly removed from their parents’ custody and reclassified as “unaccompanied.” White House chief of staff John Kelly told National Public Radio that month: “The children will be taken care of – put into foster care or whatever.”The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) brought a court case to compel the U.S. government to disclose how many children were separated from their parents under the policy. Authorities struggled to provide this information, eventually telling the court that more than 2,700 children had been forcibly separated from their parents in May and June 2018. On June 20, 2018, President Donald Trump issued an executive order that he said ended his administration’s forcible family separation policy.A government report published in January 2019 found that “thousands” more children had been forcibly separated from their parents, and beginning much earlier, than the administration had previously acknowledged. A leaked draft policy document confirmed administration officials were discussing a family separation policy as of late 2017.The government has acknowledged that forcible family separations continued after the executive order. In a court filing this February, it reported at least 245 separations between June 26, 2018, and February 5, 2019. By late May, the number had risen to 700, the ACLU reported. In some cases these were triggered by minor, nonviolent offenses – a 20-year-old nonviolent robbery conviction in one case and possession of a small amount of marijuana in another, in cases reviewed by the New York Times. Most of these cases did not list detailed reasons for the separation.These figures do not include the number of children who were forcibly separated from relatives other than parents.Children Distraught Without Their ParentsChildren described days of not knowing where their parents had been taken and when, if ever, they would be reunited. For example, a 17-year-old boy from El Salvador, interviewed in Clint, said that he and his mother had crossed an international bridge 16 days before. He said:We presented ourselves to border patrol agents, who then separated us. They refused to explain why they were doing so. Since that moment, I have not known where my mother is. I have not known if my mother was in the United States or elsewhere, or even if she was alive. I have been extremely worried about her.Children Taken from Grandmothers, Aunts, and UnclesA 12-year-old girl who travelled to the U.S. with her grandmother and 8 and 4-year-old sisters said that border agents woke them up at 3 a.m. two days before she spoke with lawyers:[T]he officers told us that our grandmother would be taken away. My grandmother tried to show the officers a paper signed by my parents saying that my grandmother had been entrusted to take care of us. The officers rejected the paperwork, saying that it had to be signed by a judge. Then the officers took my dear grandmother away. We have not seen her since that moment. . . . Thinking about this makes me cry at times. . . . My sisters are still upset because they love her so much and want to be with her.In another case, a woman who had raised her niece said border agents told her the notarized guardianship papers she showed them were “no good in the United States.” Agents told her she should expect to be separated from her niece once they were transferred from the Ursula Processing Center in McAllen, Texas, the facility frequently called the perrera, meaning “dog kennel,” because of its chain-link-fence holding pens.An 11-year-old boy who travelled to the U.S. with his 3-year-old brother and their 18-year-old uncle to escape gang violence in Honduras said that border agents separated him and his brother from their uncle when they were apprehended, about three weeks before Human Rights Watch spoke to him in Clint:The border agents made us sit in a circle, then we were placed on trucks and transported. I don’t know to where. My uncle identified himself as our uncle. The agents told us we would be separated. This was so sad for me. I don’t know where they sent my uncle. We were not allowed to say goodbye to each other.Human Rights Watch identified many other such cases in our own interviews and the declarations we reviewed. For instance:* A 12-year-old girl from Guatemala said that border agents separated her from her aunt and cousin when the three entered the United States at the beginning of June, 15 days before she spoke with lawyers while in the Clint border station.** An 8-year-old boy told lawyers he came to the United States with his aunt, who had been taking care of him back home in Guatemala. He said that after border agents separated him from his aunt three days earlier, “I cried and they did not tell me where I was going.”** A 12-year-old girl from El Salvador said she and her 7-year-old sister were separated from their grandmother the previous day, after they crossed into the United States and reported to Border Patrol officers.Siblings Forced ApartA 17-year-old girl from El Salvador told lawyers she entered the United States with her 8-month-old son and her older sister. Border agents “separated [my sister and me] shortly after we arrived in the U.S. about three weeks ago and I have not been allowed to speak with her ever since.”A 16-year-old girl from El Salvador, interviewed in Clint, said that she and her 5-month-old daughter were separated from her 20-year-old sister and her sister’s 3-year-old son when they were apprehended three days before she spoke to lawyers in Clint. Border agents later told her that her sister and nephew had been released and sent to live with family members.A 14-year-old Guatemalan girl said that immediately after she and her 18-year-old sister crossed the river to enter the United States – she was not sure how long ago – border agents “lined us up and checked our skin and our hair. That is when they took my sister away from me and now I’m very worried about her. I don’t know where she is or if she is ok.”Adult Caregivers Returned to Mexico Without ChildrenHuman Rights Watch has previously identified family separations occurring in the context of the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) or “Remain in Mexico” policy, under which tens of thousands of primarily Latin American asylum seekers have been returned to Mexico to wait while their claims are pending in the United States. In the context of the MPP, agents separate families who had been traveling together at the border. Children, including some with mental health concerns, were separated from non-parental guardians by Border Patrol, classified as “unaccompanied alien children,” and detained alone. Meanwhile, their adult family members were sent to Mexico for the duration of their asylum cases, which can take months or years. Staying in contact is especially difficult for families separated under the MPP, since those forced to wait in Mexico may not have access to a cell phone or landline.Families Split Up During Their Time in Border Holding CellsIf both parents are travelling together, fathers are frequently split from the rest of the family. For example, a 23-year-old Honduran man said he, his wife, and their two children were all in the same border station: “I was separated from my family almost immediately. I have only seen my wife and children one time in the three days that I have been here.” A 5-year-old girl told lawyers her father was separated from her and her mother when they were held in McAllen.Teenagers who are held in the same border station as their parents often stated that they were separated if they and their parents are different genders. In such cases, even though they and their parents are in the same facility, they recounted having little or no contact with their parents. For example:* A 15-year-old girl from Honduras said that she was separated from her father in the two holding cells where they were detained. “I’m in a mixed unit with fathers and their children, so I’m not sure why I can’t be with my dad,” she told lawyers.** “I was separated from my mother for five days and I was very frightened because I didn’t know what was happening to me or my mother,” a 16-year-old Guatemalan boy said.** A 16-year-old Honduran girl said that she and her father were held in separate cells without any contact for two days. “I did not see my father again until . . . they called us out to be fingerprinted and photographed. We were not allowed to see each other before then even though my father repeatedly requested to see me,” the girl said.*Border agents sometimes split children between parents, assigning one or more to each parent during their time in a holding cell. “Our family is kept in separate cells, one son with me and one son with my wife,” a 29-year-old Guatemalan man said. A Honduran woman, also 29, said that when she, her husband, and their two children were apprehended, “[m]y daughter and I were separated from my husband and son almost immediately. I’ve only seen my husband and son one time since we arrived three days ago.”Some of the children held in border stations have children themselves, and some have travelled to the United States with spouses or long-term partners.In one such case, a 16-year-old girl said that after she and her fiancé, along with their one-year-old daughter, fled gang violence in El Salvador, border agents separated her fiancé from her and her daughter. She told lawyers:We were all very upset. Our baby was crying. I was crying. My fiancé was crying. We asked the guards why they were taking our family apart, and they yelled at us. They were very ugly and mean to us. They yelled at him in front of everyone to sit down and stop asking questions. We have not seen him since.In another case, a 15-year-old girl who fled Guatemala with her husband and their 8-month-old son said that they requested asylum at the border crossing: “We told them we were travelling as a family and wanted to [remain] together. However, [my husband] was separated from us, and I do not know where he is now. I have not heard from him and I am worried about him.”Trauma of Forcible SeparationA 15-year-old Guatemalan boy told Human Rights Watch he felt “really desperate and heartbroken and worried” after he was forcibly separated from his father after border agents apprehended them. He described the two months he had been apart from his father:It is really difficult to be apart from my dad. I don’t know when I will be able to see him, and it makes me really sad. Because I am thinking about my dad and being apart from him, I have difficulty concentrating in class. It’s hard for me to pay attention to what I should be doing. I feel anxious and worried a lot. There are days I don’t have any appetite. I never had a problem eating before, and I think if I weren’t so sad about being apart from my dad I wouldn’t have a problem with eating now. . . . When I start thinking about what happened, I feel sad and I start to cry. This never happened before. . . . This is new. It’s caused by the stress I’m under now.Family separation causes severe and long-lasting harm. As the American Academy of Pediatrics has noted: “highly stressful experiences, like family separation, can cause irreparable harm, disrupting a child’s brain architecture and affecting his or her short- and long-term health. This type of prolonged exposure to serious stress – known as toxic stress – can carry lifelong consequences for children.”“This kind of stress makes children susceptible to acute and chronic conditions such as extreme anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, hypertension and heart disease,” two pediatricians wrote in the Houston Chronicle last year.*****************************************************Asylum-Seeking Families Separated by U.S. Government Experienced Torture, PHR Concludes in New InvestigationForcibly separated children and parents suffer PTSD, depression, anxietypress releasePhysicians for Human RightsFebruary 25, 2020 new investigation by Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) documents evidence of severe psychological trauma among children and parents who were separated at the U.S. southern border by the U.S. government.According to PHR’s report, based on in-depth psychological evaluations of 26 asylum seekers (nine children and 17 parents), the U.S. government’s forcible separation of asylum-seeking families constitutes cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment and, in all cases PHR evaluated, meets criteria for torture.The practice of forced family separation specifically as a means of deterring migrants from coming to the United States was secretly piloted by the Trump administration in 2017 and ramped up along the southern border from April to June 2018, before it was halted by a court injunction. However, family separation has continued, and many families are yet to be reunited, according to government statistics.The new PHR report, ‘You Will Never See Your Child Again’: The Persistent Psychological Effects of Family Separation, provides the first medical and psychological evidence of the long-lasting harm associated with family separation. It is the first analysis to date that relies on medical-legal affidavits written by medical experts based on in-depth psychological evaluations of asylum-seeking children and parents. These asylum seekers fled their countries of origin (El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras) in search of refuge in the United States, only to be forcibly separated at the border before June 26, 2018 and sent to detention facilities hundreds or thousands of miles away from family members.PHR’s unique cohort revealed that all separated children (9) and all but two of the adults (15 of 17) who were evaluated met diagnostic criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), major depressive disorder (MDD), or generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) – diagnoses which independent clinicians assessed as being highly consistent with and linked to the experience of family separation. While this study focuses on the experience of a limited group of people, the narratives of the 26 individuals evaluated help illustrate the experiences of other families who endured separation under Trump administration policy.In line with the definition contained in the United Nations Convention Against Torture, PHR experts concluded that U.S. officials intentionally carried out discriminatory actions that caused severe pain and suffering, in order to punish, coerce, and intimidate Central American asylum seekers to give up their asylum claims. PHR also finds that family separation as implemented was a form of temporary enforced disappearance, which occurs when the state conceals the fate or whereabouts of a person who is deprived of liberty.“The cases of family separation PHR documented represent a form of torture by the U.S. government,” said Ranit Mishori, MD, report co-author and PHR senior medical advisor. “Even when evaluated by medical professionals a year after being reunited with their families, these kids and parents still exhibit signs of compound trauma, including PTSD, depression, and anxiety.”Despite broad public outcry in recent years, separation of asylum-seeking families in the United States continues to date. More than 1,110 families have been separated since the nationwide injunction on June 26, 2018 which halted separations, according to government numbers provided to the American Civil Liberties Union. A total of 5,512 children have been separated from their families since July 2017.“Our findings provide compelling evidence of the adverse and long-lasting mental health effects associated with family separation forced by the Trump administration,” said Dr. Mishori.Due to targeted acts of violence in their home countries, the families PHR evaluated arrived at the border with trauma exposure from death threats, physical and sexual assault, relatives having been killed, and extortion, mostly due to gang activity. PHR’s report – through the narratives of these individuals – describes how, shortly after migrants’ arrival in the United States, immigration authorities forcibly removed children from their parents’ arms, removed parents while their children slept, or simply “disappeared” the children while their parents were in courtrooms or receiving medical care.According to the medical-legal affidavits analyzed by PHR, most families did not receive any information as to why they were being separated, where their family members were being sent, and if or how they would be reunited. Children were often sent to detention facilities in different states than their parents.The report documents instances of cruelty toward these families, such as officials telling parents that “you will never see your child again” or telling a young girl that if she did not “behave” she would never see her mother again. Families also reported terrible conditions in detention, including overcrowding and mistreatment. One child reported being hit with shoes by staff in a detention facility.The PHR report also outlines how the Department of Homeland Security had no plan in place to reunite families, and the eventual reunions that did take place were haphazard and chaotic.“U.S. officials operated under the guise of legality while depriving parents and children of their right to family integrity. They intentionally caused severe harm, in order to punish asylum seekers and coerce them into dropping their asylum claims,” said Kathryn Hampton, report co-author and PHR senior asylum officer. “The U.S. government must uphold domestic and international law by fulfilling its obligations to provide reparations to victims of torture, including mental health treatment, to those affected by this repugnant policy.“Family separation has not ended, nor have all separated families been reunited,” said Donna McKay, PHR executive director. “We call on the Trump administration to immediately reunite families, including deported parents, and end this deplorable family separation practice for good.”The 20 PHR clinicians who interviewed the asylum seekers – including psychiatrists, psychologists, pediatricians, and other mental health professionals – documented nearly every parent as exhibiting symptoms and behaviors consistent with trauma and its long-lasting effects: being confused, upset, and worried, frequent crying, sleeping difficulties and nightmares, severely depressed and anxious moods, and physiological manifestations of panic and despair. The evaluating clinicians noted that the children exhibited reactions that included regression in their age-appropriate behaviors, inability to hold urine, crying, not eating, and nightmares and other sleeping difficulties, as well as clinging to parents and feeling scared even following reunification with parents.The vast majority of mental health diagnoses (PTSD, MDD, and GAD) given by the evaluating clinicians are highly consistent with the effects of the trauma recounted by the parents and children during detention and family separation. The clinicians recommend that nearly all parents and children evaluated receive therapeutic support, including psychotherapy, removal from detention, and/or psychiatric medications.“The seven-year-old girl I interviewed displayed some of the most inhibited behavior on a drawing task that I’ve ever encountered in my 20 years of child psychiatry,” said Stuart Lustig, MD, a child psychiatrist who conducted one of the evaluations that informed the report. Dr. Lustig has conducted numerous forensic evaluations for asylum seekers and is a PHR expert trainer in this subject. “She displayed hallmark features of Separation Anxiety Disorder, including a level of inhibition that is very consistent with high levels of deep-seated anxiety, likely associated with the trauma of family separation.”See also: “Trump Admin Owes Migrant Families Separated at Border Reparations for 'Torture' and 'Forced Disappearance,' Doctors Say,” by Chantal Da Silva, Newsweek February 25, 2020 ; “Trump's separation of families constitutes torture, doctors find,” by Amanda Holpuch, The Guardian, February 25, 2020 ; “Doctors Have a Name for Separating Kids from Their Parents at the Border: It's Torture.,” by Emma Ockerman, Vice News, February 25 2020 ***************************************************** ................
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