There is an humanitarian crisis at our nation’s border. With over 69,550 children separated from their parents and detained last year, we see an urgent need to act—and act now—to stem the brutal offenses being committed in our name by the United States federal government.
Those of us studying at the Georgetown University School of Medicine have learned to evaluate physical and mental health through a psychosocial framework: trauma can be nonphysical and still chronic, impacting us many years into the future. One way of diagnosing trauma is to evaluate Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), such as prolonged separation from caregivers. ACEs reshape the affected individual’s neurobiology and physical health profile, elevating that person’s risk of health complications in the future.
The trauma of family separation, consequently, can have devastating impacts. For children fleeing violence with their parents, separation can amplify the effects of previous ACEs. Regardless of the family’s reason for migrating to the United States, children separated from their parents are more likely to face anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), cancer, and other chronic illnesses as they grow up.
During the 154-day median time of separation, though, innocent kids are also more likely to catch—and die from—the flu.
It’s true that humanitarian interventions are expensive. But it is also expensive to separate children from their parents—more expensive than keeping families together, according to the current administration. The cost of a single detention bed was $208 every night in 2018, and over eight million of our tax dollars go each day to maintaining the current policies on family separation.
If our government can spend so much to separate and detain, why couldn’t it instead distribute those funds to aid and support?
We should all care about this issue, not only as future medical practitioners, but as residents of the United States. Splitting up enslaved families, depriving Native American children of their heritage through boarding schools, as well as forcing migration through the Trail of Tears, Chinese exclusion laws, Japanese internment, and Operation Wetback . . . no politician, no citizen, no human would praise those disgraceful policies.
Yet, our country continues to engage in a calculus of cruelty, balancing a young generation’s health against unrestrained nationalism and blind isolationism.
While border officials are required by law to prevent child trafficking, there is no evidence that their efforts are anything but cruel. Various departments have failed to monitor other agencies’ actions, there is rampant disorganization and miscommunication, and no one in the federal government has been held liable.
Our government does not have to separate families or detain children. In fact, both Congress and the Supreme Court have protected unaccompanied minors’ rights. We need to act now to halt the humanitarian crisis on the border that our government is actively perpetrating.
S.1733 was proposed in the Senate by Senator Dianne Feinstein and is currently stuck in the Senate Committee on the Judiciary. While it is not the only solution, it is one way to start addressing this crisis. The bill, entitled the “Protecting Families and Improving Immigration Procedures Act,” would establish a rebuttable presumption against family separation in federal law, requiring any agency to justify its actions before dragging a child away from their parents. It would also require the government to address its lagging queue of immigration trials and, if the government can justify family separation, it would require that updates be given to the child’s parents.
In short, it stands contrary to the current administration’s hellish policy.
We can address this humanitarian crisis but only if we act now. The consequences of our chronic inaction are and will continue to be deadly.
Melissa Baker, Mariama Jallow, and Cynthia Peng are M.D. candidates at the Georgetown University School of Medicine expecting to graduate in 2022. Jacob Demree is a J.D. candidate at the Georgetown University Law Center also expecting to graduate in 2022. The authors are working together through Georgetown's Health Justice Alliance to advocate for immigrant health policy reform.
The Trump Administration’s policy of family separation has created an humanitarian crisis. We can, and must, act.
