I work with children separated from caregivers at the border. What happens is unforgivable.

[babylonsister]

I work with children separated from caregivers at the border. What happens is unforgivable.
The policy has a devastating emotional impact on kids.
By Katie Annand Jun 6, 2018, 8:40am EDT


Helplessness. It’s what I feel when children are faced with forced separation from their parent or caregiver at the US border. Anger, sadness, uncertainty, and dismay all follow closely behind.

I work as an attorney with an organization called Kids in Need of Defense, or KIND, devoted to working with unaccompanied children. I hear firsthand stories that illustrate the severe impact of family separation on children; to say they are terrorized and completely devastated is an understatement. This new terror is compounded by the trauma already experienced by these children — the violence, persecution, and other harm they faced in their home country that caused them to seek protection in the US in the first place.

Among our cases of family separation are two siblings, a 7-year-old girl and 12-year-old boy, who traveled with their mother to the United States from Central America and were apprehended in September 2017 in El Paso, Texas. On the cold January day when they came into our office, the 12-year-old was wearing a green raincoat while his sister wore only a rainbow-adorned blouse because, as she told us, she was “too young to get cold.” We learned from the children that Customs and Border Protection, or CBP, had taken them from their mother at the border. The 7-year-old told us how she cried and begged to be with her mother — she was clearly still in shock.

We later learned that their mother had been detained, transferred between various detention facilities over the course of about two weeks, and then deported. The children were told their mother had committed a crime by bringing them to the United States, and were promptly transferred to a shelter.

A few months later, as these two children sat in KIND’s office telling their story, their emotions were still raw. They are currently living with a member of their family whom they are not close with; it hardly feels like home to them. They remembered every detail of the horrifying moment when immigration officials took their mother away. The 7-year-old kept saying over and over how she was having trouble going to school because she missed her so much. Only her mom knew how to do her hair just right each morning, she said. Her brother, a few years older, told us he had to take care of his little sister after their mom was taken away. They were terrified of never seeing her again.

What could we tell them? We didn’t know if or how they would see their mother again, either.
Separating children from their parents has a devastating emotional impact on the child

more...

https://www.vox.com/first-person/2018/6/6/17431298/immigration-kids-ice-border

[dlk]

1. This Policy is Nothing Short of Sadism by Design

[olegramps]

21. This is just the first phase of the program. The next is the final solution.

[exboyfil]

2. Does anyone remember the crap

Clinton took for returning Elián González to his father!!! We should resurrect those GOP quotes.

Gonzalez recently graduated as an Industrial Engineer.

[LisaM]

13. Oh my god, that was so ridiculous.

I remember it was the story that wouldn't die.

[malaise]

3. K & R

It is evil

[iluvtennis]

16. +++ agree. My heart breaks for these parents and kids. I know I'd be out of my mind if my kids

were separated from me like that. Just heartbreaking. This needs to stop and now. Hope ACLU can help do something about it. Join the organization to help fund this.

[meadowlander]

4. Maybe I'm obtuse,

but I just can't imagine any circumstances under which separating parents and kids would be necessary. Why, if you are deporting the mother, would you not deport the kids as well? Or, if the kids are citizens and the mom is not, give her the option to take them with her when she goes?

What strikes me is not just the cruelty but how completely unnecessary and without purpose it is.

[RandomAccess]

28. The intention is to deter them from coming here in the first place

And of course to satisfy their barbaric, fascistic, and most of all sadistic urges.

[duforsure]

5. These people who are doing this

Are cruel, and this is extremely cruel punishment to these children, who they are damaging for life intentionally. Who would vote into office anyone treating their children like this? Before long this dictator will be threatening us, to save himself. He's beyond anything this country has ever seen. At their trials people need to remember this before they're sentenced.

[Wellstone ruled]

6. You are now seeing the real Republican Party.

[dchill]

7. Conservatism Unchained.

This is what they are. Too many people do not know or care about history. Money and power ARE their morals and ethics. THIS is religion as we know it.

[mopinko]

8. we know who the animals really are.

[meow2u3]

25. Calling Trumpists animals degrade the animals themselves

Those sadistic monsters are not even animals; they're savages who themselves belong in cages.

[byronius]

9. Deport the people responsible for this. Not the kind of citizens we want.

ICE staff need to be put on a raft and pushed gently out to sea. Good luck!

[defacto7]

10. The RW are using these children to stop immigration.

No parent knowing what atrocities await in the US would come here. The GOP are using these children as pawns in a war against humanity. They think they can justify their international crimes in the name of security.

The world should rise up against these criminals.

[Initech]

11. This is an act of war and should be treated as such.

Fuck this fucking party.

[NCjack]

12. I suspect that we will soon begin to about these children being sexually

abused by their Republican kidnappers. I hope that Trump and all of his managers of these atrocities are declared by the UN to be human-rights violators.

[MineralMan]

14. We should not be punishing children. Period.

They did not choose to come to the United States. They are not criminals. Where is our humanity?

This is just disgusting.

[Lifelong Protester]

31. I agree with your post.

It is Cruel and Unusual Punishment.

[volstork]

15. These barbaric policies

Will do nothing but devastate loves and build terrorists who will be bent on revenge.

[nolabear]

17. Those gangs 45 loathes so much...he's creating them.

Children (of all ages, not just little ones) need a family to belong to, to help them feel secure and to give them purpose. Take away their mothers and fathers or those they come to know as a secure base they can grow up within and they are the perfect victims for exploitation. A gang is a family to most members and those who can make use of them are just waiting.

Btw those people are the “super predators” Hillary spoke about, those who prey on innocent need for home, food, structure and love in order to get them to commit crimes for them. That got badly twisted.

God, I almost can’t breathe even thinking about this kind of warping, horrifying trauma. What has become of us? We had been getting better...or had we? I just don’t know any more.

[lostnfound]

29. I'm a little worried that this is the beginning of a program to do exactly that.

Our government has dark episodes in its past that include
-experimentation on black men at Tuskegee
-shock treatment experiments that wiped memories from college students at McGill
-training future death squads in terror / pacification techniques at School of the Americas
-“enhanced interrogation” programs at numerous facilities (hmm, Gina Haskell)
-complicated schemes galore in support of right wing ideologies (Iran contra)

Do they have ways to warp and weaponize fifteen year old boys going through their detention camps? Especially the ones with younger siblings?

It’s not like such a program is inconceivable to the current crowd in the White House.

I fear that we do not know how deep the bottom is of this hideous thing they are doing.

[bornfree17]

18. Why

Was their mother sent to detention facilities? I'm confused. When they deported their mother why didn't they let the children go? Who found the family member? How did they even know these children had a family member in the states?

[MontanaMama]

19. We are damaging people.

Damaged people can grow up to be broken to the point where they damage others. Jeff Sessions, I wish you an eternity in your personal hell.

[Silver Gaia]

20. This is pure evil.

Barbaric. Demonic.

[Sophia4]

22. This reminds me very much of the many children separated from their parents by the

NAZIs in and prior to WWII. Many of them were given refuge in England. They survived, and that is something to be grateful for. But the trauma.

This makes me think of three words "human rights violation."

Horrors!

[OhNo-Really]

23. Some kids are held in cages within an empty Walmart. Destroying dignity.

sleeping on the floor with a silber plastic blanket......IN A CAGE

WTH ...... how can this be stopped?

who are these shit people working this inhumane system?

[lostnfound]

30. Actually, held in cages BEFORE being sent to an empty Walmart.

The cages are at the border. Before that, they are left on a hot bridge for up to ten days, blocked from entering. Then the cages at the border. Then the Walmart. Next stop might be military base in Texas.

[GentryDixon]

24. I heard it first hand today.

I tried to get an appointment last week, but was told my hairdresser (Angie) was off for a time. She was back today, so I went to get a haircut.

She explained she was off was because she is fostering 2 young girls, aged 8 & 9 years old, and had a hard time finding daycare since school is out. She is not even related to these young girls, but her daughter once dated their father, who happens to be from Brazil, and was in the country illegally. He voluntarily deported himself, so he would be able to come back with the 10 year date for persons whom have been deported.

The mother of the girls has had the girls taken out of her home because she does not feed them, nor does she provide basic care (drugs/alcohol involved). They asked Angie if they could take food home because their mother did not feed them anything but TV dinners. Her daughter is no longer with the father of the girls, but they have been part of Angie's for 3 years, so she now has the girls. She has no idea what will happen with these girls. They are at the mercy of the court system. Since the father is out of country, she is not sure if they will even let her keep them if they terminate the mother's rights. It is a real mess. Daycare is costing her $1K a month until school starts back, and her savings are quickly being depleted.

[Sienna86]

26. What can we do to help?

This whole situation breaks my heart.

[GentryDixon]

27. I asked her about a go fund me account.

She did not feel good about it. Doesn't feel good about asking for help.