Mental health professionals working at shelters said they feel “unprepared” to address the level of trauma experienced by many unaccompanied children, according to an inspector general report released this week.
“Facilities must promptly address children’s mental health needs – not only to stabilize each child in crisis, but also to reduce the risk that the child will negatively influence or harm others,” the report reads. Inspectors spoke to mental health clinicians, program directors and medical coordinators at 45 facilities about the mental health services provided to the children.
They spoke of seeing children who arrive at their shelters after experiencing trauma at home and during their journeys to the border. “Staff in multiple facilities reported cases of children who had been kidnapped or raped, some by members of gangs or drug cartels.” That trauma is exacerbated by family separations and prolonged stays in shelters, inspectors were told.
“According to facility staff, longer stays resulted in higher levels of defiance, hopelessness, and frustration among children, along with more instances of self-harm and suicidal ideation,” the report states.
Some clinicians also spoke of how their work affected them personally. “Mental health clinicians discussed how challenging it was to hear about children’s traumatic experiences, which sometimes caused the clinicians to become overwhelmed or suffer their own mental distress.”
Inspectors proposed six solutions, ranging from setting caseload limits for clinicians to reducing the time children spend in shelters. The government agreed with the recommendations.
The report echoes what medical experts have warned the government about for years: Children’s mental health deteriorates when they are held in a detention-like setting.
Read the report here.
RECORDS OFFER GLIMPSE INTO NEW SHELTER FOR MIGRANT CHILDREN
In July, we partnered with WRAL News on an investigation into the government’s plan to send children to shelters with troubling track records or little experience.
Among those shelters is the Sunny Glen Children’s Home in San Benito, Texas. According to federal records, the government awarded the home a $31 million grant despite its lengthy history of state violations, including reports of staff using a chokehold on a child and pushing another into a wall.
I recently obtained the compliance history for Sunny Glen, which offers more details into inspectors’ findings. Among some of the violations:
- Sunny Glenn staff did not report injuries, runaway attempts or suicidal behavior to the state, as required by Texas law. In July 2018, police responded to Sunny Glen after receiving a report about a child trying to harm themselves with a butter knife, but the incident was not reported to the state.
- Some staff members also placed children in improper restraints. Video surveillance from May 2017 showed two employees placing a child in a restraint on the ground. “One staff (was) on top of child and the other staff was holding down youth's legs. The video indicated there was no caregiver monitoring child's breathing while the youth's face was pushed down to the ground by a caregiver's hand,” records state.
- Several rooms were not clean and had a “strong urine smell,” inspectors reported, as well as moldy shower curtains. Records show Sunny Glen entered into a “plan of action” to address the violations.
Chase Palmer, the home’s director, did not respond to our questions. But after our story published, he sent us a statement, which partially reads:
“From decades of experience, we discovered that our operations had to be built on integrity and transparency to mitigate suspicion. Therefore; we see regulatory inspections and outcomes as opportunities for learning and improvement. Our entire team from the board of directors to our house parents view deficiencies as lessons-learned and process improvement opportunities.”
Read the compliance history here.
WHAT WE’RE LISTENING TO
Earlier this year, I told you the story of a Salvadoran father who was separated from his two children in November. Border officials accused him of being a gang member, an allegation his lawyers disputed in court. His son and daughter were among roughly 900 children that were separated from parents at the border after the Trump administration ended its “zero tolerance” policy last summer.
The families are often split up when the government accuses parents of things like gang affiliations or traffic offenses. They’re also separated on the basis of “communicable disease.”
That’s what happened to three sisters, ages 11, 13 and 14, that were separated from their father near El Paso in November.
The girls told Beth Fertig from WNYC Studios that officers never explained why they were split up from their father. The family’s lawyers later learned the government justified the separation based on the father’s HIV diagnosis.
“We immediately said we don’t believe that that is a communicable disease that would warrant separation,” said Lee Gelernt, the lead ACLU attorney in the family reunification case known as Ms. L. “We still never got a clear answer from the government.”
The girls, who now live with relatives in New York, told Fertig their father was doing well on medications. He was eventually deported and now speaks to his daughters on the phone once a week.
“I want to be with them, I’d really like to be with them to watch them grow, to talk to them and to kiss them,” the father said.
Listen to the WNYC Studios story here.
WHAT WE’RE READING
Immigrants working at laundry sites often face low wages, 72-hour work weeks and poor working conditions. (The New York Times)
One afternoon last February, in front of dozens of riled-up protesters and two police officers, a small, visibly distraught woman confronted her employer at Sunshine Shirt Laundry Center, a family-owned cleaner in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.
In the back of the store, stacks of dirty shirts spilled from a few laundry carts alongside an ironing board, as clients entering the place were fighting their way through the crowd of protesters to drop off their laundry at the counter.
“I’ve been working here for 15 years in the same misery,” said Ricarda, 44, who insisted she be identified only by her first name because of her immigration status. A single mother of two from Mexico, Ricarda was being paid around $7 an hour — about half the city’s minimum wage for small businesses — while working up to 72 hours a week without overtime benefits.
Ricarda then aimed her complaints directly at her boss: “When I went to the hospital, I still had to come to work”; “I asked you to install ventilation, and it made you laugh”; “Your brother shoves me and looks at me sideways.”
Since the Trump administration’s decision to send asylum-seekers to Mexico to wait for their court dates, 255 migrants have died along the border. (Dallas Morning News)
Under Remain in Mexico, asylum seekers are returned to Mexico to await their court dates in the U.S. The policy “is sending shock waves among migrants, provoking frustration, desperation and bad decisions because there’s such a lack of information and they feel they’ve run out of options,” said Tekandi Paniagua, Guatemala’s Consul General in Del Rio.
Between January and August of this year, 255 migrants died along the U.S.-Mexico border, according to the Missing Migrants Project, which monitors migration tragedies as part of the U.N.-affiliated intergovernmental International Organization for Migration. In all of last year, 308 died, according to the report.
Migrant rights advocates, U.S. congressional critics and top authorities from countries such as Guatemala say farming out the U.S. asylum system to Mexico is a flawed policy that means the U.S. is contributing to a rising number of tragedies. In addition to sending asylum seekers back to Mexico -- a nation wracked by drug violence with an astronomical murder rate -- at the behest of the U.S. governments, 21,000 Mexican national guardsmen have formed a human wall along the southern and northern border to halt the flow of migrants seeking to make claims for asylum.
A letter signed by 23 Democratic U.S. senators was sent this week to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Kevin McAleenan urged an end to the Migrant protection Protocols, stating that, "Under the Remain in Mexico policy, the United States has turned its back on its domestic and international legal obligations by forcing men, women, and children to await resolution of their U.S. asylum cases in parts of Mexico plagued by violence."
Advocates in California are seeing fewer immigrants enrolling for public benefits after the Trump administration announced its “public charge” rule. (Los Angeles Times)
Experts say that people are likely to fall back on what feels like the safest option without fully being able to understand how the rule applies to them.
“We’re already seeing chilling effects,” said Sara McTarnaghan, a research associate at the Urban Institute. “There are families that are stopping benefits for their U.S. citizen children. There are green card holders and naturalized citizens that stopped benefits even though they won’t be affected.”
Kelly Whitener, an associate research professor at the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families, said families are exposed to greater financial instability when a member is uninsured, and that children, in particular, could suffer serious consequences if they lose their benefits.
“When children have health coverage, they are more likely to get the preventative care that they need, they are more likely to have better attendance at school, graduate from high school, go on to college, get higher-paying jobs,” she said.
Immigrants without legal status who spoke with the Times, requesting that only their first names be used out of fear of being deported, said they worried that they will be seen as a “public charge” because of the benefits their children receive.
Your tips have been vital to our immigration coverage. Keep them coming: [email protected].
– Laura C. Morel
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