Joshua Barajas reports for PBS:
A top health official told lawmakers Tuesday that the Trump administration was warned about instituting “any policy” resulting in family separations because of the effects such separations could have on the wellbeing of immigrant children.
The official’s response came after Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) asked every federal immigration official at Tuesday’s hearing over family separations to answer a particular question: “Did anyone on this panel say, maybe [separating families] wasn’t such a good idea?”
After a pause, Blumenthal directed his question first to Commander Jonathan White of the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, who said he and the Office of Refugee Resettlement raised a number of concerns in the previous year about “any policy which would result in family separation due to concerns we had about the best interest of the child as well about whether that would be operationally supportable with the bed capacity we had.”
The Democratic senator asked the commander to further explain his response in layman’s terms, asking if he told the administration that children would “suffer” as a result of its “zero tolerance” policy.
“Separation of children from their parents entails significant harm to children,” White said in response. “There’s no question that separation of children from parents entails significant potential for traumatic psychological injury to the child,” he added, shortly after.
READ MORE: How the toxic stress of family separation can harm a child
White also said that the administration’s response was that family separation was not a policy. As stated before, there is no current law that mandates the separation of migrant children from their parents at the U.S. border.
The Trump administration implemented its “zero-tolerance” policy this spring. President Donald Trump signed an executive order in June to halt the separations.
In recent weeks, lawsuits filed against the separation policy have produced testimonies from lawyers and the separated families they represent, alleging that the government’s actions resulted in trauma to their children.
In one personal declaration presented earlier this month in court, one mother said her son “is not the same since we were reunited.”
“I thought that, because he is so young he would not be traumatized by this experience, but he does not separate from me. He cries when he does not see me,” Olivia Caceres said of her 1-year-old son. “That behavior is not normal. In El Salvador he would stay with his dad or my sister and not cry. Now he cries for fear of being alone,” she wrote.
Here are several other key moments from Tuesday’s hearing in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
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Read the entire article at the link.
The lack of accountability and acceptance of responsibility by the Administration is astounding, as was Sen. Cornyn’s tone deaf comment. The reason why other laws aren’t being enforced is because of the cruel, wasteful, unconstitutional “zero tolerance” policy instituted by Sessions. Stop blaming the victims, Senator!
And why isn’t Sessions being held accountable for the mess he “masterminded?”
PWS
08-01-18