Investigate abusive immigration moves
“We need to take away children.” Chilling words from then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions. This cartoonishly evil statement from the draft report of the Justice Department’s inspector general’s inquiry into the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy on family separation would be hard to believe if taken alone. Unfortunately, these words stand like terrifying dominoes, perfectly in line with the systematically abusive approach this administration has taken to asylum seekers.
Combined, we have more than 40 years of experience examining worldwide survivors of torture from Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria, to survivors of the CIA black sites, to those in the forced labor camps of the Congo. We know torture, and the cruelty to migrant children perpetrated by the United States meets that bar
We call for an immediate congressional investigation into abusive and illegal migrant policies and practices. We are in the midst of an election that will determine the course of our democracy. Should the opportunity present itself, we call on a Joe Biden and Kamala Harris administration to enforce the values they espouse — and it’s up to us to hold them to it. Torture of children should not be a partisan or political issue; it is lawless and it defines our character and integrity as a nation.
We saw the haunting images over the summer: migrant children, wide-eyed, frightened, betrayed, watching helplessly from shadowy hotel room windows — held captive by our government. The Trump administration, which touts law and order, has been expelling thousands of children as young as 8 months old from the United States under the guise of COVID-19, sometimes without their parents’ knowledge.
According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, there have been almost 200,000 people expelled by Border Patrol without due process from the United States from March to September 2020 under Title 42, a rule which has been punitively invoked, citing COVID-19 to keep people crossing between the ports of entry out of the country. These were all without the customary asylum screenings that ensure the United States isn’t violating domestic and international law.
Philadelphia immigration attorney Bridget Cambria describes a 1-year-old baby and her parents — clients of hers — who were detained for five weeks at the McAllen Hampton Inn. She notes that they were kept in one room with no external stimulation and with 24-hour surveillance. Cambria said that the tactic employed by the government is extreme intimidation. “They are essentially disappearing people within our country,” Cambria said.
The cruelty perpetrated on children seeking asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border, including the practice of separating migrant children from their parents, in fact meets the definition of torture under the U.N. Convention Against Torture: infliction of severe pain and suffering for a specific purpose, at the behest of or with the consent of a government.
This systematic pattern of abuse of migrant children has subtly progressed over the last two years: from holding pens akin to cages, teargassing of toddlers, family separation, the Migrant Protection Protocol forcing vulnerable migrants into squalid and dangerous encampments, forced deportations and then expulsions. There are now recent allegations of forced surgeries on migrant women in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facilities and sexual abuse claims involving more than 4,000 children. Furthermore, a staff report by the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Reform at the end of last month reported deaths of migrant detainees in ICE facilities citing inadequate medical care and poor hygienic conditions. The separation, detention, mistreatment, and expulsion of children to the dangerous situations from which they fled is not only illegal; it is cruel and inhumane, and it is torture.
We know that family separation of parents and children at the Mexican border results in severe psychological trauma, according to a recent Physicians for Human Rights investigation, which documented post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and anxiety in children and parents. Every case evaluated by these experts was found to rise to the level of torture.
Susan Reed, managing attorney with the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center, explains that this administration has slowly moved from forms of federal custody that at least had restrictions and supervision into another that is completely in the dark. She notes that unaccompanied children who cross the border into the United States for protection are entitled to specific rights and protections through the Office of Refugee Resettlement system — an imperfect, but regulated entity. Now we don’t even have that. While the notion of kids in cages immediately evokes our horror, the idea of expulsions is far more sinister. “It’s indefinite, unaccountable, and unpredictable … It’s torture,” she says.
Kumar Ramanathan, M.D., MPH is a pediatrician in Ann Arbor, Mich., the medical director of the University of Michigan Asylum Collaborative, and a medical expert for Physicians for Human Rights. Crosby, M.D. is an associate professor of medicine and public health at Boston University and a medical consultant for Physicians for Human Rights. She is a drafter on the Istanbul Protocol Supplement Project, used as a global gold standard for torture documentation.