Kristjen Nielsen has just hours left in her job, but the damage she inflicted as Homeland Security secretary will reverberate for a lifetime for others. Matías was just 6 years old when he was separated from his mom Victoria at the southern border. “Up until recently,” Huffington Post reports, “the child slept with a cellphone flashlight on due to nightmares about men watching him in the dark.”
Child experts repeatedly warned the Trump administration of the devastating emotional and physical effects of tearing a child from their parent. But the calls also came from inside the house, because a career official testified before a House committee that he warned his superiors about these dangers, but had his concerns dismissed. The policy was about cruelty, and it was about pain.
“Teresa Silvestre’s 13-year-old nephew also won’t talk to her about what happened when he was taken from his father after crossing the border last May,” Huffington Post reports. “The teenager has been permanently separated from his dad, who was deported back to Guatemala and decided his son should stay in the U.S. because of violent gang threats.” Silvestre said that the boy recently woke up from a nightmare in which his dad had been murdered.
Vincente says his 9-year-old daughter was once “friendly and polite,” until they were separated for four months. “Although she used to be friendly and polite, he says, she now constantly lashes out at him and recently hit her 4-year-old sister.” He says his daughter will not tell him what happened when they were separated, only telling him, “What do you care? Why is it important to you?”
More than a year after former Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III distributed the official “zero tolerance” policy, nearly 60 children remain separated from their families. This does not include the unknown number of others who were torn apart before the policy’s official implementation. A judge is currently deciding whether he’ll order officials to also reunite those families.
But parents and child welfare experts fear the damage that has already been done. Victoria is among a group of parents who have sued the administration for millions of dollars in damages. She says her now 7-year-old is “traumatized,” and “we don’t talk.” The boy is struggling in school, and she said he isn’t moving on to the second grade next year. “There are going to be lasting effects on a generation of kids and young people,” said Elaine Weisman of International Social Service, USA. Family separation remains a crisis.
