Doctor: ICE detention is unsafe for kids
Eerie quiet, lasting trauma at this ‘summer camp’
Two 10-year-old girls ran across the room toward one another and hugged. The fifth-graders had not seen each other since they were classmates in Honduras and their excitement was palpable. I handed them a pad and a pencil, and they began to draw the words “I love you” and stick figures of each other and their names. This would have been a sweet interaction if not for its location: the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas.
I visited Dilley last month with Human Rights First, an international human rights nonprofit organization. The girls’ unexpected reunion reflects what I saw while there: attempted normalcy in far-from-normal conditions.
Dilley currently holds more than 1,500 mothers and children, including babies and toddlers, with the capacity to hold up to 2,400. Families who arrive get food, clothing and beds. The facility has a library, a school and playgrounds. But there are also clues to the toll detention takes on families staying there. The playground was mostly empty. Children clung to their mothers, afraid to venture outside. The mothers were afraid to let them, telling us that staff warned them to watch their children carefully because they’d be responsible if the child got hurt on the playground.
While there is a school at Dilley, it’s not big enough for children to spend the full day there. For the four hours they are not in class, I would expect to hear laughter and games. I did not hear these noises at Dilley. It was eerily quiet. Detention replaces the joys of childhood activities with fear and anxiety, keeping the children’s “fight or flight” stress hormones elevated.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement guards told us there were doctors and nurses on site and parents were free to bring their children to the clinic at any time. But the parents we spoke to painted a different picture. I identified at least 10 children who needed to be seen urgently. One boy about 8 years old had been at Dilley for a little over 24 hours. His face was covered with a painful rash called impetigo, and he had several boils on his arms and legs. A toddler had been ill for days, was lethargic and showed signs of dehydration. Her mother had gone to the clinic the day before and was told to come back later. Dehydration can be extremely dangerous in a child and delaying care for even a day can have serious, even deadly, consequences.
Children can appear quite healthy, running around and playing, while their little systems are shutting down. They need practitioners who can recognize the differences between mild and serious illness. The lack of access to specialized care I observed, particularly for the babies and breastfeeding mothers, was alarming.
The knowledge that at least they would not remain here long was the only thing that kept these mothers from falling into deep despair. Most of the families I spoke to had been at Dilley between three and seven days. Federal courts have required ICE to release children from detention quickly, but the Trump administration is trying to change the rules so that families could be held in detention for years, putting their health at great risk.
No child should ever be detained in the first place. The American Academy of Pediatrics has said that no amount of time in detention is “safe for children.” I have seen its impact on these children first hand, and their parents describe the changes that include regressive behavior, decreased eating, sleep problems, clinginess, withdrawal, self-injurious behavior and aggression.
Detention itself undermines parents’ ability to meet their children’s needs. And detaining families together is not a solution. Safer options, like community-based alternatives, are much more effective. We need the government to implement and fund them.
Federal officials have likened conditions at facilities like Dilley to “summer camp.” What I saw was like no summer camp I’ve ever been to. These women and children are experiencing trauma that will stay with them for a long time, and from which they may never fully recover. The question is: What will we do about it?