Horrifying Conditions At Child Detention Centers & Continuing Family Separations Must End NOW

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**Despite public outcry and court orders, children are still being separated from their families at the U.S. border. After being forcibly removed from their families, they face horrifying conditions in overcrowded internment camps and lasting psychological trauma. This unconscionable child abuse must end.**

In June of 2019, lawyers visited facilities for children and teenage migrants as recommended by the Flores settlement1. These lawyers were so horrified by the conditions they found that they took the unusual step of sharing their findings with the media. What they described was the stuff of nightmares.

Mismanaged facilities forced children to sleep on concrete floors, some with a single blanket or no blanket at all. Bathrooms were replete with refuse and mold. Unsanitary food storage and preparation areas were photographed; in one, a raw chicken was leaking blood openly in a refrigeration unit. Soap and toothbrushes were not available, and children wore unwashed clothes rife with filth. Older children were tasked with caring for young children without adult support.2,3 The children "are locked in their cells and cages nearly all day long," according to one of the lawyers present.4

In June of 2018, a ruling in a lawsuit the ACLU filed ordered an end to routine family separations5. **The recent report by these lawyers indicates that separations are continuing unabated.** Even as the lawyers reached out to the media, a representative of the Trump Administration appealed vital elements of the Flores agreement, stating that it wasn't their responsibility to provide toothbrushes, soap, or adequate bedding.6

The President and CEO of the American Psychological Association, J.Daniel, PhD., and A. Evans, Ph. D., stated in a letter7 to President Trump dated June 14, 2018: "For children, traumatic events can lead to the development of post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental health disorders that can cause long lasting effects." More recently, U.S. Representative Ocasio-Cortez made a controversial statement comparing the detention centers to concentration camps.8 Actor George Takei, who was placed in two internment camps for Japanese-Americans in the U.S. as a child, supported her description, saying, "I know what concentration camps are. I was inside two of them, in America. And yes, we are operating such camps again."9

The overtly cruel and abusive treatment of children at our border must stop. The trauma these children and their families experience cannot fail to touch the hearts of patriotic Americans. It is against everything this great nation stands for. **Tell President Trump that unnecessary child separation and internment must end now.**