It Would Be Something Fine If We Could Learn How to Bless the Lives of Children
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
“It would be something fine if we could learn how to bless the lives of children. They are the people of new life. Children are the only people nobody can blame. They are the only ones always willing to make a start; they have no choice. Children are the ways the world begin again and again.” -- June Jordan As scholars of education, history, psychology, sociology, and various other academic fields and disciplines, we unequivocally denounce the policies and practices that separate immigrant families, particularly children from primary care givers. We are also educators and (many of us) state employees who carry the charge to serve and advocate for children and families in the states where we work as faculty and to support the development of a healthy generation of young people, more broadly. Our peers, and indeed several of us in this letter, have written to you, offering you evidence of why the unconscionable practice of separating children from their parents and caregivers, accompanying adults, and guardians at the border is not only unsound practice but also untenable.1 The separation of minors from primary care givers as part of U.S. enforcement of immigration laws is unethical, immoral, and goes against all human rights conventions and laws. There is no legal doctrine that requires this, despite the falsehoods being circulated by the Trump administration. Moreover, such a practice constitutes an extreme human rights breach, as outlined by the Geneva Convention on the Rights of the Child (GCRC), placing all those who abide by it squarely on the wrong side of history.2 Even though the US is the only country that has not signed onto the GCRC, this does not mean that we are exempt from international human rights law and the moral imperative it carries. Grounded in this legal, moral, and ethical imperative, we the undersigned, urge Congress and individual states to act to immediately stop such practices. To remain silent and continue with this egregious practice is to be complicit with nothing less than child abuse and torture. We must raise our voices and call for the immediate reunification of minors and their primary caregivers. We patently reject the ideological justifications that this administration is offering as rationale for these cruel practices. The Department of Homeland Security insists that deterrence is not the goal of such practice and that it is only done to “protect the best interests of minor children crossing our borders, and occasionally this results in separating children from an adult they are traveling with”.3 However, others in the Trump administration have made it clear that the separation of children from their families is meant to punish and deter those who seek asylum in the US. Framing such separation as an immigration deterrent, as John F. Kelly put it in March of 2017, reveals the true motivation of this policy. This much was admitted when Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen stated openly that “We're looking at a variety of ways to enforce our laws to discourage parents from bringing their children here.”4 Additionally, the latest indication that this administration is using the separation of children from caregivers as a political tactic adds to the insurmountable evidence of the unethical and nefarious nature of this policy.5 Furthermore, the federal government is acting in a way that signals its intent to make this process as cumbersome as possible for advocates. The separation of caregivers from children across state lines is one 1 See letter by MaryLee Allen Director of Policy Children's Defense Fund 2 Taking Migrant Children From Parents Is Illegal, U.N. Tells U.S, June 5, 2018 3 (NY TImes , April 20, 2018 4Separating Families is Inhumane, ACLU 5 Trump suggests separation of families at border is a negotiating tool, CNN, June 16, 2018. such strategy that points to the intent of the federal government. The story of an immigrant from the Congo known as Ms. L is testament to this. Her daughter was sent to Chicago while she has been locked away in Otay Mesa Detention Center near San Diego. We know that over 120 undocumented women have been sent to a detention facility in SeaTac, separated from their children at the Texas border. Another example of the federal government acting in a way that frames this law as a deterrent is the private corporate contracting to house minors. According to the New York Times,”[t]he federal Office of Refugee Resettlement is now overseeing an estimated 100 shelters in 17 states, serving a population that has grown to more than 11,000 youths.”6 What we are seeing, in short, is nothing less than a violation of due process and a violation of meaningful representation for the accused.7 With this fundamental right to representation and due process denied, minors are being placed in subpar and prison-like living conditions, such as tents in Tornillo, Texas, where temperatures are currently in the triple digits.8 With little or no oversight in such places, one can only imagine that these infants and children have been subject to abuses, particularly given the documented US state practice of physically and sexually abusing and threatening children and minors that the ACLU recently exposed in the treatment of detained migrant children from 2009-2014.9 Moreover, even in the absence of subpar dwellings and the practice of such overt sexual and physical abuses and threats of injury and harm, the separation of migrant infants and children from their caretakers will have profound psychological effects upon children, as the American Pediatric Association,10 the American College of Physicians11 and the American Psychiatric Association12 have recently concluded. Indeed, the evidence based scholarship in the field amply demonstrates that the traumas of such practices that will continue to surface over the lifespan for children being separated from their caregivers. As experts in the field, we know well that the consistent and predictable attachment and attention from primary caregivers fosters children’s growth and development and overall well-being through adulthood. The interruption of such relationships results in adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) that pose a negative input to children’s development and long-term success. Children with ACEs, such as separation from parents, have 1) a higher potential for social, emotional, and cognitive impairment, 2) adoption of high risk behaviors, 3) disease, disability, and social problems, and 4) early death. Current research around childhood trauma indicates that separation from their families leaves children more vulnerable to exploitation and abuse, no matter what the care setting. Traumatic separation creates toxic stress in children and adolescents that can profoundly impact their development and increase the risk of 6 Inside the Former Walmart That Is Now a Shelter for Almost 1,500 Migrant Children, NY Times June 14, 2018 7Voices of San Diego, Letter to the Court, , June 4, 2018 8 Inside the Former Walmart That Is Now a Shelter for Almost 1,500 Migrant Children, NY Times June 14, 2018 9 Border Patrol Kicked, Punched Migrant Children, Threatened Some with Sexual Abuse, ACLU Alleges, Newsweek, May 23, 2018 10 AAP Statement Opposing Separation of Children and Parents at the Border, 11 ACP Objects to Separation of Children from their Parents at Border 12 APA Statement Opposing Separation of Children from Parents at the Border, stress-related disease well into adulthood.13 Such trauma is found to be held within the children’s DNA and then passed onto future generations. This evidence is clear for descendants of US Native American Boarding School survivors as well as survivors of the Holocaust. Given our wealth of information around the importance of consistent child-caregiver relationships, it is irresponsible and harmful for these policies to continue.14 For the government to put children at risk in such ways replicates acts of history that we know to have caused trauma across generations. Our collective expertise leads us to conclude that this policy is nothing less than an outright attack upon youth within Trump’s war upon immigrants and people of color, and one that will continue to haunt communities for generations to come. Waged through children, as the most vulnerable segment of any population, this practice has eerie echoes in shameful histories of state dictatorship, ethnocide, and genocide that have since been proven morally reprehensible and illegal under international and national human rights law and norms. It places US state policy and practice among the most unethical and unjust of actions couched in the rhetoric of “child welfare.” It also includes the most blighted periods of US history, such as the separation of African American children from their parents under slavery and the removal of tens of thousands of Native American children who were placed within Native American Boarding Schools.15 In short, we demand that children stop being used as political pawns. The damage of these practices will last a lifetime, and across future generations. To punish these parents reflects both cruelty and an overzealous prosecution of the law in order to garner political points. To punish these children is tantamount to government-sanctioned child abuse. Grounded in our firm understandings of such histories and their unbearable consequences, we cannot stand by and watch the administration’s shameful practices. We therefore unequivocally demand that these practices be immediately halted and children be reunited with their parents and caregivers. We urge you to act now. Sincerely, Dolores Calderon, Associate Professor, Western Washington University Anna Lees, Assistant Professor, Early Childhood Education, Western Washington University Tracy Lachica Buenavista, Professor, Asian American Studies, California State University, Northridge Maria C. Ledesma, Associate Professor, University of Utah Lourdes Alberto, Associate Professor, University of Utah 13 Ginding & Poggio (2009).