Doctors Group Calls On Biden to Redress Victims of Trump-Era Family Separation

Parents forcibly separated from their children during then-President Donald Trump’s “zero tolerance” immigration crackdown continue to suffer enduring trauma and should be justly compensated by a Biden administration that’s instead defending its predecessor in court, according to a report published Tuesday by a prominent human rights group.

The Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) study examines the enduring psychological damage of Trump’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy on a group of 13 parents who were deported from the United States, most of whom were separated from their children for three to four years.

“The psychological evaluations conducted by PHR clinicians show that separated families continue to endure significant distress, functional impairment, and mental health disorders,” PHR medical director Dr. Michele Heisler, who conducted an evaluation for the report, remarked in a statement.

“This ongoing trauma is a consequence of being forcibly separated from their children by the U.S. government and later deported to face persecution in their countries of origin,” she noted. “These new findings make it clear that reparations and redress are not an optional policy choice. It is the bare minimum fulfillment of the U.S. government’s obligation owed to victims as a result of its violations of international and domestic law.”

Between 2017 and at least late 2018, more than 5,000 children—most of them fleeing violence and impoverishment in Central America—were seized from their parents by a xenophobic administration seeking to stem undocumented immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border. Separated parents and children were often detained in facilities that numerous critics called “concentration camps.”

According to the report:

Although in most cases the separation had taken place several years before, the parents’ despair was evident in the reporting of current symptoms at the time of the PHR evaluation. Almost universally, parents noted continued disturbances in sleep, nightmares, loss of appetite, loss of interest, fear for the future, constant worry, hopelessness, and loss of the ability to concentrate.

One mother said, “I don’t know if I will ever be able to ever recover from what I have experienced.”

The parents in the study described being forcibly separated from their children by unsympathetic officials who offered little or no information about the reason for the action, where their children were being taken, and for how long.

As a result of the separation policy, both parents and children—who were often told by U.S. officials that they would never see each other again—have suffered tremendous emotional and psychological trauma that PHR has called “torture” and “state-sanctioned child abuse.” Eleven of the 13 parents documented post-traumatic stress disorder diagnoses, while the other two suffered from symptoms of PTSD just below the clinical level.

While President Joe Biden—who in February 2021 signed an executive order establishing a family reunification task force—has said that separated families “deserve some compensation,” their advocates were deeply disappointed when his administration withdrew from settlement negotiations with the migrants’ lawyers last December.

In June 2021, Biden’s reunification task force said it had identified at least 3,913 children who were separated under Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy. According to PHR, at least 324 children were in the process of being reunified as of February 2022, while 1,228 children had not yet been returned to their parents.

Continuing a pattern repeated by past presidents, the Biden administration is seeking to protect, rather than hold accountable, its predecessor. As the president’s former boss—then-President Barack Obama—shielded George W. Bush administration and Central Intelligence Agency officials accused of torture in the “War on Terror”, Biden is defending Trump’s family separation policy in court. This forces families who often lack the means to pay for legal representation to either give up the trauma of separation in “protracted, adversarial court proceedings.”

“The Biden administration should immediately return to the global settlement negotiations it shamefully walked away from in December,” asserted PHR Asylum Program deputy director Kathryn Hampton. “Rather than defending Trump’s family separation practices in court, the Justice Department should instead provide redress and rehabilitation.”

Originally published at Commondreams.org, written by Brett Wilkins.