A new report from the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights calls the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy “a gross human and civil rights violation,” saying that the forcible separation of thousands of families at the southern border and other anti-immigrant policies resulted in “widespread, longterm, and perhaps irreversible physical, mental and emotional childhood trauma,” and the violation of constitutional due process rights.
“Immigrant children, as well as adults, experienced trauma as a result of the administration’s policies,” the report states. “At the Commission’s Public Comment Session on April 12, 2019, Commissioners heard from a number of trauma experts and interested organizations on the effects of trauma. The Commission also heard directly from immigrant detainees who confirmed traumatic experiences as a result of not only being separated from their families, and also the trauma they suffered as a result of enduring inhumane conditions at detention facilities and sometimes on account of the cruel treatment by Department of Homeland Security personnel.”
Trump administration officials, the report continues, carried out this inhumane policy knowing full well of the damage it would inflict on children in particular. Officials “chose to ignore the advice and warnings from trauma experts, stakeholder organizations, and even experts within the administration. Nearly a year before the policy was implemented, in a letter to the administration, the Young Center, along with 500 other child health and welfare organizations, laid out the specific harms that family separations would inflict on children and families.”
Former Office of Refugee Resettlement director Scott Lloyd has already admitted to Congress that he was warned about this damage, but did nothing about it. "Did you ever say to the administration, this is a bad idea, this is what my child welfare experts have told us, we need to stop this policy?” Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington asked him in February. “Did you once say that to anybody above you?" Lloyd replied, "To answer your last question, I did not say those words.”
The report follows a September Health and Human Services inspector general report that said children stolen from families “exhibited more fear, feelings of abandonment, and post-traumatic stress than did children who were not separated. Separated children experienced heightened feelings of anxiety and loss as a result of their unexpected separation from their parents after their arrival in the United States.” These separations, as advocates like Texas Civil Rights Project have said, continue.
“Despite the administration’s issuance of an Executive Order halting family separations, there still remain credible allegations that children continue to be separated from their families and held in substandard facilities and conditions. The Young Center testified that the policy continues to be used as a tool to deter migrants from crossing the border and seeking asylum.” The American Civil Liberties Union said that over 1,000 families have been separated at the border since June 2018, and officials have admitted to also stealing as many as 1,250 kids before the official policy was even implemented. This has been a crime against humanity.
Other findings from the in-depth report continue to confirm horrific detention conditions for children and their families while in custody, including a “lack of basic hygiene and sleeping arrangements,” lack of “soap, blankets, dental hygiene, potable water, sufficient showering days, clean clothing, and nutritious food” for kids. “These conditions violate not only Department of Homeland Security detention standards,” the report continued, “but challenge and degrade legal norms regarding the respect for human life and humane treatment of immigration detainees.”
The commission based its more than 200-page findings—which is available to read in full here—on “media reports, government investigations, eyewitness accounts, and public testimony,” like that from the public comment session, because Trump administration agencies “did not respond to our discovery requests,” the commission said.