Zero Tolerance for the Trump Administration’s Detention Policies
The Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund (DREDF) unambiguously opposes Trump administration policies that forcibly remove children from immigrant parents and places them in detention camps at the United States-Mexico border.
The Trump administration policy—which does not have a clear procedure for reuniting families—has separated nearly 2,000 children from their parents and guardians between April 19 and May 31, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
“Immigrant children seeking safe haven in the United States should never be placed in detention facilities,” the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) said in a statement opposing the practice of forcibly separating children from their parents at the border. “Studies of detained immigrants have shown that children and parents may suffer negative physical and emotional symptoms from detention, including anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder. Conditions in U.S. detention facilities, which include forcing children to sleep on cement floors, open toilets, constant light exposure, insufficient food and water, no bathing facilities, and extremely cold temperatures, are traumatizing for children. These are not appropriate places for children.”
This policy is wrong. Period.
Furthermore, as the AAP statement illustrates the intersections between immigration and disability, under Trump, are increasingly stark. The Trump administration’s animosity toward the disability community, including disabled children, apparently knows no bounds. And, for once, no borders.
The Administration issued a proposal earlier this year to make it more difficult for immigrants with disabilities and their families to get a visa or attain permanent residency in the United States. The administration stopped a 10-year-old with cerebral palsy en route to the hospital to have emergency gall bladder surgery last fall and deported the sole caregiver of a paraplegic 6-year-old earlier this year.
President Trump can end these cruel and inhumane policies with a single phone call. Mr. President, it is in your power to stop this abuse. Make that call. Now.
DREDF also demands that Congress stop the family separation policies and practices, such as those enacted by the Trump administration, permanently. As such, the United States House of Representatives should uniformly reject the Border Security and Immigration Reform Act.
Whatever one’s political persuasion, the forced separation of children from their parents at the U.S. border is no solution to immigration concerns. Neither is detaining children. Both science and morality are clear about this. The time for U.S. public policy on family separation, detention, and immigration to catch up is increasingly, urgently overdue.