WASHINGTON, D.C. [06/21/2018]—Today, U.S. Senator Tina Smith (D-Minn.) called on leaders of the Senate Health Committee—on which she serves—to hold a hearing in order to better understand the negative health effects of the Trump Administration’s disgraceful zero tolerance immigration policy on separated children and their families.
“Although the administration has said that they will stop separating families, we must hold them to this promise and ensure that the more than 2,300 children who have already been separated are safely reunited with their families and receive the care they need as soon as possible,” wrote Sen. Smith in her letter to Chairman Lamar Alexander and Ranking Member Patty Murray. “Given the immediate need to reunite these families, the potentially long-term negative health effects of this traumatic policy, and the Committee’s longstanding commitment to protecting children and supporting families, I ask that you immediately call a full committee hearing to hold the Trump administration accountable for the negative impacts of this policy on children. Specifically, this hearing is needed to better understand how the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) plans to mitigate the health effects on separated children and their families and to conduct oversight over the HHS facilities where separated children are being housed. This is especially urgent given allegations that at least one of these facilities has forcibly injected already-traumatized children with powerful sedatives.”
You can read a full copy of the letter here or by reading below:
June 21, 2018
The Honorable Lamar Alexander
Chairman, Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions
U.S. Senate
Washington, DC 20510
The Honorable Patty Murray
Ranking Member, Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions
U.S. Senate
Washington, DC 20510
Dear Chairman Alexander and Ranking Member Murray:
I write with grave concern for the well-being of children and families who have been unnecessarily separated from their families along the United States’ southern border as a result of President Trump’s disgraceful zero tolerance immigration policy. I believe this policy reflects a blatant disregard for the health, well-being, and basic human rights of children and families. Although the administration has said that they will stop separating families, we must hold them to this promise and ensure that the more than 2,300 children who have already been separated are safely reunited with their families and receive the care they need as soon as possible.
Given the immediate need to reunite these families, the potentially long-term negative health effects of this traumatic policy, and the Committee’s longstanding commitment to protecting children and supporting families, I ask that you immediately call a full committee hearing to hold the Trump administration accountable for the negative impacts of this policy on children. Specifically, this hearing is needed to better understand how the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) plans to mitigate the health effects on separated children and their families and to conduct oversight over the HHS facilities where separated children are being housed. This is especially urgent given allegations that at least one of these facilities has forcibly injected already-traumatized children with powerful sedatives.
The implementation of the Trump Administration’s zero tolerance policy that led to families being ripped apart has been chaotic and cruel. Once detained, children—including babies just months old—were transferred from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to the care of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), over which this Committee has jurisdiction. Reports about the care of these children have been disturbing to say the least. Children are being held in makeshift tents or barracks-like facilities, separated from their families under false pretenses, and housed in facilities that have been cited for dozens of violations. Even more alarming are federal court filings alleging that employees at one of these facilities, the Shiloh Treatment Center outside of Houston, have forcibly injected children with powerful antipsychotic medications, leaving them listless and even incapacitated. Despite concerns for the welfare of detained children, the Trump administration has no clear plan to reunite detained children with their families, and child advocates worry that reunification could take months or longer.
Beyond the urgent need to protect and quickly reunite these children with their families, there are very real concerns about the trauma this policy has inflicted on these children and its implications for their long-term health and well-being. Decades of research show that separating families can be catastrophic for kids, so much so that the head of the American Academy of Pediatrics said that the government’s policy of ripping children away from parents “amounts to government-sanctioned child abuse.” In the short-term, the stress resulting from this trauma can interfere with critical brain development—damage that, if sustained, can be permanent. The initial reports about the trauma children are experiencing are unnerving. An immigrants-rights advocate stated, “some of the kids I spoke to were so traumatized, some could barely speak.”
Over the course of their lives, children who experience this kind of trauma are more likely to experience physical and mental health problems, including behavioral problems, alcoholism and other substance use disorders, depression, or chronic disease, like diabetes or heart disease. As stated by a University of Texas psychiatry professor, “from a strictly medical and scientific point of view, what we as a country are doing to these children at the border is unconscionable…The harm our government is now causing will take a lifetime to undo.”
The United States has systematically separated families before. Government officials forcibly removed Native American children from their tribes and sent them to government boarding schools, and the military separated children from their parents in Japanese internment camps. Families and communities across the country are still grappling with the pain and the long-term mental and physical health implications caused by this traumatic history. This committee has worked on a bipartisan basis to address the legacy of these traumatic events in prior hearings, and I cannot stand by as the Trump Administration subjects another generation to these horrors.
The administration’s zero tolerance policy at the border subjected children to the terror and confusion of being separated from their parents. This reflects a blatant disregard for not only the health and well-being of children, families, and entire communities, but the mission of the Department of Health and Human Services. I respect that the HELP Committee has a strong history of working in a productive, bipartisan manner on urgent health matters, especially those that disproportionately affect children and youth. It’s imperative that the committee take similar action to address what Chair Alexander described as a “humanitarian crisis” at our border. I strongly urge you to hold this hearing and take an important first step toward ensuring that HHS and other agencies within the administration quickly and safely reunite detained children with their families. Furthermore, this hearing will help hold the administration accountable for supporting the health and well-being of affected children, affirming the importance of families, and respecting basic human rights.
Thank you for your consideration of this important request.
Sincerely,
###
English