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<div class="header reader-header reader-show-element"> <font
size="-2"><a class="domain reader-domain"
href="https://theintercept.com/2020/02/25/family-separations-border-torture-report/">https://theintercept.com/2020/02/25/family-separations-border-torture-report/</a></font>
<h1 class="reader-title">Family Separations at Border Constitute
Torture, New Report Claims</h1>
<div class="credits reader-credits">John Washington - February
25, 2020</div>
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<p><u>The separation of</u> families by U.S. immigration
officials at the U.S.-Mexico border amounts to torture,
according to a group of medical and human rights experts
that performed psychological evaluations of
asylum-seekers. Their report for Physicians for Human
Rights, a U.S.-based nonprofit that investigates human
rights violations around the world, found that the
policy of family separation — which officially ended in
the summer of 2018 but <a
href="https://theintercept.com/2019/12/09/family-separation-policy-lawsuit/">continues
today</a> — “constitutes cruel, inhuman, and degrading
treatment.” In other words: torture.</p>
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<p>As far as we know, as of last December, over 5,500
children had been forcibly separated from their
parents under a policy first implemented in 2017 and <a
href="https://theintercept.com/2018/06/19/children-separated-from-parents-family-separation-immigration/">drastically
expanded in 2018</a> as part of the Trump
administration’s so-called zero tolerance crackdown on
the border. In their investigation, “<a
href="https://phr.org/our-work/resources/you-will-never-see-your-child-again-the-persistent-psychological-effects-of-family-separation/">You
Will Never See Your Child Again: The Persistent
Psychological Effects of Family Separation</a>,” PHR
evaluated 17 adults and nine children from Central
America who had been separated between 60 and 69 days.
All of the parents reported already having suffered
trauma in their home countries, and feared that their
children would be harmed or killed if they remained or
returned. And so, in search of protection, they fled.</p>
<p>Instead of finding safety or refuge in the United
States, however, they were met with new abuses, and
further trauma. Children were “forcibly removed from
[parents’] arms” or simply “disappeared” while their
parents were taken to court. Some of the parents were
then taunted and mocked by U.S. immigration officials
when they asked after their children. The subsequent
shock, terror, and grief was not only expected, but
intentional — <a
href="https://theintercept.com/2018/09/25/family-separation-border-crossings-zero-tolerance">designed
to push parents into giving up their asylum cases</a>.</p>
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<p>“U.S. officials intentionally carried out actions
causing severe pain and suffering, in order to punish,
coerce, and intimidate Central American asylum seekers
to give up their asylum claims.”</p>
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<p>“U.S. officials intentionally carried out actions,”
the report explains, “causing severe pain and
suffering, in order to punish, coerce, and intimidate
Central American asylum seekers to give up their
asylum claims.” That intentionality is a key factor
that the report leans on to make the argument that the
abuse meets the legal standard for torture.</p>
<p>A mother from El Salvador recalled the “nightmare”
when officers woke her at 2 a.m. and interrogated her
in front of her daughter. “They told her she had
broken the law and hence she would be arrested. They
handcuffed her in front of her daughter and then
proceeded to take her daughter to another room.”</p>
<p>Another mother from El Salvador recounted asking a
U.S. official why her daughter was being taken away
from her. The official reportedly responded that her
daughter “was going to be adopted by an American
family and that [she] would be deported and that she
would never see her daughter again,” according to the
report. Another mother whose daughter was taken from
her was told she should “learn to deal with it.”</p>
<p>PHR clinicians chronicled that all those they
interviewed exhibited symptoms and behaviors
consistent with trauma: confusion, constant worry,
crying a lot, having difficulty sleeping and eating,
nightmares, depression, overwhelming anxiety, panic,
and despair. Parents described feeling “pure agony”
and being “incredibly despondent.” One mother reported
that she felt she was in a “black hole.”</p>
<p>Children, too, exhibited regression in
age-appropriate behaviors, including excessive crying,
refusing to eat, nightmares and other sleeping
difficulties, loss of developmental milestones, as
well as clinging to parents and feeling scared
following reunification. All but two of the children
and two of the adults who were evaluated showed signs
of suffering post-traumatic stress disorder.</p>
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<p>The consequences of torture, especially the torture
of children, are severe and long-lasting. Children who
have undergone torture “have higher rates of chronic
medical conditions such as cardiovascular disease,
cancer, and premature death,” the report notes. “In
addition, there is an increased risk of psychiatric
disorders such as anxiety, depression, and psychosis,
and of detrimental coping behaviors such as smoking
and the use of alcohol or drugs.”</p>
<p>The consequences have “a domino effect,” especially
in children, said Dr. Ranit Mishori, a senior medical
adviser for PHR, influencing overall “health, mental
health, cognition, behavior.” Such trauma in children
can actually physically alter the structure of the
brain, as well as DNA, Mishori explained. She cited
evidence of children who had been separated suffering
severe regression even more than a year after they had
been reunited with their family.</p>
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<blockquote data-reactid="237"><span data-reactid="238"></span>
<p>The doctor cited evidence of children who had been
separated suffering severe regression even more than a
year after they had been reunited with their family.</p>
</blockquote>
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<p>Hundreds of the children who were separated were
preverbal, and the report concluded that the U.S.
government taking them from their parents amounted to
“endangering children’s very right to their names and
identities, a serious violation of children’s rights.”
The United States is the only member of the United
Nations that is not party to the Convention on the
Rights of the Child, signed in New York in 1989.</p>
<p>For the purposes of the report, PHR followed the
Istanbul Protocol: the United Nations guidelines for
assessing and documenting torture. The official U.N.
definition of torture is an act that causes severe
physical or mental suffering, done intentionally, for
the purpose of coercion, punishment, intimidation, or
for a discriminatory reason, by a state official or
with state consent or acquiescence. The decision to
label this particular set of cruelties as torture was
“not something we took lightly,” Mishori told The
Intercept. The organization consulted with United
Nations experts on torture and carefully considered
the legal definition.</p>
<p>“Part of calling this torture,” Mishori said, “is
about accountability.” PHR is calling for reparations
for the people who were harmed, specifically in the
form of mental health treatment. People who were
deported likely received no specialized attention at
all. Those who remain in the U.S. may have gotten help
from nonprofits or government-sponsored programs, but
<a
href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/national/immigration-therapy-reports-ice/">a
recent Washington Post investigation</a> revealed
that some therapists working in immigrant detention
centers share information about their clients with
Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, which
can then use details against them in their cases. PHR
isn’t calling for an international court to take up
the case, at least not yet, but they do want an
“internal reckoning,” Mishori said, especially for
those who designed and implemented the policy.</p>
<p>PHR also concluded that the policy of family
separation constitutes enforced disappearance, “which
occurs when state agents conceal the fate or
whereabouts of a person who is deprived of liberty.” A
recent <a
href="https://www.revealnews.org/article/the-disappeared/">article
from Reveal</a>, giving disturbing substance to
PHR’s claim, detailed the story of a 10-year-old girl
who was separated from her family and then disappeared
into the shelter system for six years, during which
her family had no idea where she was.</p>
<p>In all of the cases examined in the PHR report, there
was at least one period where parents had no idea
where their children were, were unable to contact
them, and “had no assurance of, or timeline for,
eventual contact or reunification.”</p>
<p>One of the recommendations in the report is simply to
stop family separations. The government has been
ordered to do just that: Trump signed an executive
order on June 20, 2018, and a federal judge issued a
nationwide injunction on the policy six days later.
Yet loopholes were left in place to <a
href="https://theintercept.com/2019/12/09/family-separation-policy-lawsuit/">allow
the practice to continue</a> in certain situations,
and at least 1,142 children have been separated since
the official end to the policy. That is, according to
PHR, another 1,142 children tortured by the U.S.
government.</p>
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