The psychological impact of child separation at the US-Mexico border

For over 40 years, I've been
a clinical social worker

and a developmental psychologist.

And it seemed almost natural
for me to go into the helping professions.

My parents had taught me
to do good for others.

And so I devoted my career

to working with families
in some of the toughest circumstances:

poverty, mental illness,

immigration, refugees.

And for all those years,
I've worked with hope and with optimism.

In the past five years, though,

my hope and my optimism
have been put to the test.

I've been so deeply disappointed
in the way the United States government

is treating families who are coming
to our southern border,

asking for asylum --

desperate parents with children,
from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras,

who only want to bring their kids
to safety and security.

They are fleeing some of
the worst violence in the world.

They've been attacked by gangs,

assaulted, raped, extorted, threatened.

They have faced death.

And they can't turn to their police
because the police are complicit,

corrupt, ineffective.

Then they get to our border,

and we put them in detention centers,

prisons, as if they were common criminals.

Back in 2014, I met some of
the first children in detention centers.

And I wept.

I sat in my car afterwards and I cried.

I was seeing some of the worst
suffering I'd ever known,

and it went against everything
I believed in my country,

the rule of law

and everything my parents taught me.

The way the United States
has handled the immigrants

seeking asylum in our country

over the past five years --

it's wrong, just simply wrong.

Tonight, I want to tell you
that children in immigration detention

are being traumatized.

And we are causing the trauma.

We in America --

actually, those of us here tonight --

will not necessarily be on the same page
with respect to immigration.

We'll disagree on how we're going
to handle all those people

who want to come to our country.

Frankly, it doesn't matter to me
whether you're a Republican or a Democrat,

liberal or conservative.

I want secure borders.

I also want to keep the bad actors out.

I want national security.

And of course, you'll have your ideas
about those topics, too.

But I think we can agree

that America should not be doing harm.

The government, the state, should not
be in the business of hurting children.

It should be protecting them,

no matter whose children they are:

your children, my grandchildren

and the children of families
just looking for asylum.

Now, I could tell you story after story

of children who have witnessed
some of the worst violence in the world

and are now sitting in detention.

But two little boys have stayed with me
over these past five years.

One of them was Danny.

Danny was seven and a half years old
when I met him in a detention center

in Karnes City, Texas, back in 2014.

He was there with his mother
and his brother,

and they had fled Honduras.

You know, Danny is one of these kids
that you get to love instantly.

He's funny, he's innocent,

he's charming and very expressive.

And he's drawing pictures for me,

and one of the pictures he drew for me
was of the Revos Locos.

The Revos Locos: this is the name

that they gave to gangs
in the town that he was in.

I said to Danny,

"Danny, what makes them bad guys?"

Danny looked at me with puzzlement.

I mean, the look was more like,

"Are you clueless or just stupid?"

(Laughter)

He leaned in and he whispered,

"Don't you see?

They smoke cigarettes."

(Laughter)

"And they drink beer."

Danny had learned, of course,
about the evils of drinking and smoking.

Then he said, "And they carry guns."

In one of the pictures,

the stick figures of the Revos Locos
are shooting at birds and at people.

Danny told me about the day his uncle
was killed by those Revos Locos

and how he ran from his house
to his uncle's farmhouse,

only to see his uncle's dead body,

his face disfigured by bullets.

And Danny told me he saw his uncle's teeth
coming out the back of his head.

He was only six at the time.

Sometime after that,

one of those Revos Locos
beat little Danny badly, severely,

and that's when his parents said,

"We have got to leave
or they will kill us."

So they set out.

But Danny's father was
a single-leg amputee with a crutch,

and he couldn't manage the rugged terrain.

So he said to his wife,

"Go without me. Take our boys.

Save our boys."

So Mom and the boys set off.

Danny told me he looked back,
said goodbye to his father,

looked back a couple of times
until he lost sight of his father.

In detention, he had not
heard from his father.

And it's very likely that his father
was killed by the Revos Locos,

because he had tried to flee.

I can't forget Danny.

The other boy was Fernando.

Now, Fernando was
in the same detention center,

roughly the same age as Danny.

Fernando was telling me about the 24 hours
he spent in isolation with his mother

in the detention center,

placed there because his mother
had led a hunger strike

among the mothers in the detention center,

and now she was cracking
under the pressure of the guards,

who were threatening and being
very abusive towards her and Fernando.

As Fernando and I are talking
in the small office,

his mother burst in,

and she says, "They hear you!
They're listening to you."

And she dropped to her hands and knees,

and she began to look under the table,
groping under all the chairs.

She looked at the electric sockets,

at the corner of the room,

the floor, the corner of the ceiling,

at the lamp, at the air vent, looking
for hidden microphones and cameras.

I watched Fernando
as he watched his mother spiral

into this paranoid state.

I looked in his eyes
and I saw utter terror.

After all, who would take care
of him if she couldn't?

It was just the two of them.
They only had each other.

I could tell you story after story,

but I haven't forgotten Fernando.

And I know something about
what that kind of trauma,

stress and adversity does to children.

So I'm going to get clinical
with you for a moment,

and I'm going to be
the professor that I am.

Under prolonged and intense stress,

trauma, hardship, adversity,
harsh conditions,

the developing brain is harmed,

plain and simple.

Its wiring and its architecture

are damaged.

The child's natural stress
response system is affected.

It's weakened of its protective factors.

Regions of the brain
that are associated with cognition,

intellectual abilities,

judgment, trust, self-regulation,
social interaction,

are weakened, sometimes permanently.

That impairs children's future.

We also know that under stress,
the child's immune system is suppressed,

making them susceptible to infections.

Chronic illnesses, like diabetes,
asthma, cardiovascular disease,

will follow those children into adulthood
and likely shorten their lives.

Mental health problems are linked
to the breakdown of the body.

I have seen children in detention

who have recurrent
and disturbing nightmares,

night terrors,

depression and anxiety,

dissociative reactions,

hopelessness, suicidal thinking

and post-traumatic stress disorders.

And they regress in their behavior,

like the 11-year-old boy

who began to wet his bed again
after years of continence.

And the eight-year-old girl
who was buckling under the pressure

and was insisting
that her mother breastfeed her.

That is what detention does to children.

Now, you may ask:

What do we do?

What should our government do?

Well, I'm just a mental
health professional,

so all I really know is about
children's health and development.

But I have some ideas.

First, we need to reframe our practices.

We need to replace fear and hostility

with safety and compassion.

We need to tear down the prison walls,

the barbed wire, take away the cages.

Instead of prison, or prisons,

we should create orderly
asylum processing centers,

campus-like communities

where children and families
can live together.

We could take old motels,
old army barracks,

refit them so that children and parents
can live as family units

in some safety and normality,

where kids can run around.

In these processing centers,

pediatricians, family doctors,

dentists and nurses,

would be screening, examining,

treating and immunizing children,

creating records that will follow them
to their next medical provider.

Social workers would be conducting
mental health evaluations

and providing treatment
for those who need it.

Those social workers
would be connecting families

to services that they're going
to need, wherever they're headed.

And teachers would be teaching
and testing children

and documenting their learning

so that the teachers at the next school

can continue those children's education.

There's a lot more that we could do
in these processing centers.

A lot more.

And you probably are thinking,

this is pie-in-the-sky stuff.

Can't blame you.

Well, let me tell you that refugee camps
all over the world are holding families

like those in our detention centers,

and some of those refugee camps
are getting it right

far better than we are.

The United Nations has issued reports
describing refugee camps

that protect children's
health and development.

Children and parents live in family units

and clusters of families
are housed together.

Parents are given work permits
so they can earn some money,

they're given food vouchers so they can
go to the local stores and shop.

Mothers are brought together
to cook healthy meals for the children,

and children go to school
every day and are taught.

Afterwards, after school,
they go home and they ride bikes,

hang out with friends, do homework
and explore the world --

all the essentials for child development.

We can get it right.
We have the resources to get it right.

What we need is the will
and the insistence of Americans

that we treat children humanely.

You know, I can't forget
Danny or Fernando.

I wonder where they are today,

and I pray that they
are healthy and happy.

They are only two
of the many children I met

and of the thousands we know about
who have been in detention.

I may be saddened

by what's happened to the children,

but I'm inspired by them.

I may cry, as I did,

but I admire those children's strength.

They keep alive my hope
and my optimism in the work I do.

So while we may differ
on our approach to immigration,

we should be treating children
with dignity and respect.

We should do right by them.

If we do,

we can prepare those children
who remain in the United States,

prepare them to become productive,
engaged members of our society.

And those who will return to their
countries whether voluntarily or not

will be prepared to become the teachers,
the merchants, the leaders

in their country.

And I hope together
all of those children and parents

could give testimony to the world
about the goodness of our country

and our values.

But we have to get it right.

So we can agree
to disagree on immigration,

but I hope we can agree on one thing:

that none of us wants to look back
at this moment in our history,

when we knew we were inflicting
lifelong trauma on children,

and that we sat back and did nothing.

That would be the greatest tragedy of all.

Thank you.

(Applause)