Psychological Damage From Separation Has Already Been Done To Kids, Experts Say As Trump Caves On Immigration Policy

The New York Times: Trump’s Executive Order On Family Separation, Explained
President Trump on Wednesday sought to quell the uproar over his administration’s systematic separation of immigrant children from their families at the border, signing an executive order he portrayed as ending the problem. (Savage, 6/20)

The New York Times: Trump Retreats On Separating Families, But Thousands May Remain Apart
“We’re going to have strong — very strong — borders, but we are going to keep the families together,” Mr. Trump said as he signed the order in the Oval Office. “I didn’t like the sight or the feeling of families being separated.” But ending the practice of separating families still faces legal and practical obstacles. A federal judge could refuse to give the Trump administration the authority it wants to hold families in custody for more than 20 days, which is the current limit because of a 1997 court order. (Shear, Goodnough, and Haberman, 6/20)

The Washington Post: Fact-Checking Claims About Trump’s Plan To Stop Family Separations
A new executive order signed by President Trump lays out steps to end the separation of immigrant families at the U.S.-Mexico border. We see this as a tacit admission by the Trump administration that many of its previous claims about family separations were bunk. Until Trump signed the order June 20, the administration was insisting that it didn’t have a policy of separating families (false), that several laws and court rulings were forcing these separations (false), that Democrats were to blame (false), that only Congress could stop family separations (false) and that an executive order wouldn’t get the job done. (Rizzo and Kelly, 6/21)

The Washington Post: The Trauma Of Separation Lingers Long After Children Are Reunited With Parents
Long after the wailing and tears, the trauma of separation can linger in children’s minds, even after they are reunited with their parents, experts say. On Wednesday, under pressure from around the globe and his own party, President Trump signed an executive order to keep migrant families together. For some, the crisis may now seem resolved. But experts warn that for many of those children, the psychological damage of their separation will require treatment by mental health professionals — services they are extremely unlikely to receive because of U.S. government policies for undocumented migrants. (Wan, 6/20)

Los Angeles Times: 'Children Must Not Be Abused For Political Purposes': What Health Groups Say About Family Separation
America’s medical and public health organizations have been unanimous in their criticism of the Trump administration’s practice of separating migrant children from their parents at the southern border. President Trump signed an executive order ending the policy on Wednesday, after U.S. border officials placed more than 2,300 children in facilities away from their parents, who were detained for criminal prosecution. Here’s a roundup of why these groups opposed the family separation policy, and what they’ve said about it. (Healy, 6/20)

Los Angeles Times: The Long-Lasting Health Effects Of Separating Children From Their Parents At The U.S. Border
Researchers have long looked upon wars, famines and mass migrations as grim but important opportunities to understand how adversity affects children’s health. They’ve culled the experiences of orphans warehoused in government facilities, Jewish children dispatched to foreign families ahead of a Nazi invasion, and young refugees fleeing guerrilla warfare in Central America. They’ve conducted experiments in child development labs, taken brain scans, used epidemiological methods, examined the narratives of children torn from their parents — all in an effort to find meaning in tragedy. (Healy, 6/20)

NPR: A Pediatrician Reports Back From A Visit To A Children's Shelter Near The Border
Dr. Colleen Kraft, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, visited a shelter in Texas' Rio Grande Valley where some of these children are held. She spoke with All Things Considered's Audie Cornish about that visit on Monday. She said she's concerned that the stress the children are going through will have long-term health effects. Stress triggers the release of fight-or-flight hormones, including epinephrine, cortisol and norepinephrine. When children are separated from their parents those hormones are increased and remain in the system, putting the child on high alert, Kraft said. (Davis, 6/20)

NPR: Kids' Health Suffers When They Are Torn From Their Parents, Researchers Say
Rachel Osborn knows kids who slept in the immigrant detention centers in Texas that have dominated recent headlines. "We have kids who will say that was the worst part of their journey," Osborn says. "They were traveling for weeks and the hardest part was being in this freezing cold room where, you know, they were fed a cold sandwich and had a thin blanket to shiver under." And they had no parent or caregiver to comfort them and make them feel safe. (Kodjak, 6/20)

PBS NewsHour: Toddlers Separated From Parents ‘Eerily Quiet’ Or Inconsolable At One Migrant Shelter
For days, the public has seen images of shelters for the more than 2,300 migrant children who have been separated from their parents by the Trump administration. What do we know about the facilities and the conditions where toddlers and infants are being held? (Yang, 6/20)

Politico: ‘Some Of The Kids I Spoke To Were Traumatized. Some Could Barely Speak.’
Advocates slam the conditions as inappropriate for children and say the Trump administration’s policy to criminally prosecute all migrants crossing into the United States illegally and its attendant family separations are overwhelming holding and processing centers, forcing migrants – including young children -- to stay in them for far longer than the permitted 72 hours before they are transferred to shelters. “Some of the kids I spoke to were traumatized, some could barely speak,” said Michelle Brané, director at Detention and Asylum Program at the Women's Refugee Commission, who toured CBP facilities last Thursday. (Rayasam, 6/20)

Take a closer look at the "tender age" shelters, as well as the bigger detention facilities —

The New York Times: What’s Behind The ‘Tender Age’ Shelters Opening For Young Migrants
The shelters were intended for children under the age of 12, referred to as “tender age” detainees, who are entering the detention system in ever-larger numbers under the Trump administration’s practice of separating children from parents who enter the country illegally. Many are toddlers and babies and require special care, and their numbers have been rising since last month, when the government enforced a “zero tolerance” policy on people crossing the border. Eestimates suggest that more than 2,400 children under the age of 12 are now in federal custody, including many who have been separated from their parents. (Dickerson and Fernandez, 6/20)

The Washington Post: At Least 3 'Tender Age' Shelters Set Up For Child Migrants
The Trump administration has set up at least three “tender age” shelters to detain babies and other young children who have been forcibly separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border, The Associated Press has learned. Doctors and lawyers who have visited the shelters in South Texas’ Rio Grande Valley said the facilities were fine, clean and safe, but the children — who have no idea where their parents are — were hysterical, crying and acting out . Many of them are under age 5, and some are so young they have not yet learned to talk. (Burke and Mendoza, 6/20)

Kaiser Health News: 1 In 5 Immigrant Children Detained During ‘Zero Tolerance’ Border Policy Are Under 13
The Trump administration has detained 2,322 children 12 years old or younger amid its border crackdown, a Department of Health and Human Services official told Kaiser Health News on Wednesday. They represent almost 20 percent of the immigrant children currently held by the U.S. government in the wake of its latest immigrant prosecution policy. Their welfare is being overseen by a small division of the Department of Health and Human Services — the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) — which has little experience or expertise in handling very young children. (Luthra and Taylor, 6/20)

Reveal: Everything We Know About Texas-Regulated Facilities Holding Migrant Children: Violations, Numbers And More
Many of the thousands of children separated from their parents at the southern border under the Trump administration’s paused “zero tolerance” policy went to one of Texas’ 32 state-licensed facilities. Those shelters, licensed as child care providers that may accept unaccompanied minors as well as children taken from their families, have a long history of regulatory inspections that have uncovered serious health and safety deficiencies. (Walters, Murphy and Cameron, 6/20)

The New York Times: The Billion-Dollar, Secretive Business Of Operating Shelters For Migrant Children
The business of housing, transporting and watching over migrant children detained along the southwest border is not a multimillion-dollar business. It’s a billion-dollar one. The nonprofit Southwest Key Programs has won at least $955 million in federal contracts since 2015 to run shelters and provide other services to immigrant children in federal custody. (Fernandez and Benner, 6/21)

Meanwhile, allegations of abuse start to emerge —

The Associated Press: Young Immigrants Detained In Virginia Center Allege Abuse
Immigrant children as young as 14 housed at a juvenile detention center in Virginia say they were beaten while handcuffed and locked up for long periods in solitary confinement, left nude and shivering in concrete cells. The abuse claims against the Shenandoah Valley Juvenile Center near Staunton, Virginia, are detailed in federal court filings that include a half-dozen sworn statements from Latino teens jailed there for months or years. Multiple detainees say the guards stripped them of their clothes and strapped them to chairs with bags placed over their heads. (6/21)

Reuters: U.S. Centers Force Migrant Children To Take Drugs: Lawsuit
Immigrant children are being routinely and forcibly given a range of psychotropic drugs at U.S. government-funded youth shelters to manage their trauma after being detained and in some cases separated from parents, according to a lawsuit. Children held at facilities such as the Shiloh Treatment Center in Texas are almost certain to be administered the drugs, irrespective of their condition, and without their parents' consent, according to the lawsuit filed by the Los Angeles-based Center for Human Rights & Constitutional Law. (6/20)

The Associated Press: Rights Group Worried About Immigrants Dying In Custody
Huy Chi Tran was awaiting deportation at an immigrant detention center in Arizona when he was found unresponsive. A week later, he was dead. Initially rushed to a medical center, the 47-year-old Vietnamese man died after being hospitalized for a week. He was the seventh person to die in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody during the current year that began Oct. 1. (Snow, 6/20)

Even as lawmakers worry about the political fallout from the zero-tolerance policy, the House's immigration bill seems to be headed toward defeat —

Politico: GOP Immigration Bills On Brink Of Collapse
Speaker Paul Ryan’s carefully crafted immigration bill appears headed toward defeat after tensions boiled over in the House ahead of Thursday’s vote. In a rare dispute on the House floor Wednesday, Ryan and House Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows argued loudly with each other over what exactly was going to see a vote. At one point, looking down his glasses, Meadows angrily gestured at Ryan. (Bade, Caygle and Bresnahan, 6/20)

The Wall Street Journal: Vulnerable Republicans Feel Heat From Uproar Over Migrant Families Issue
About 50 protesters gathered outside the office of Republican Rep. Jeff Denham this week to denounce the practice of separating immigrant children from their parents on the southern border. “It makes me almost cry,” said Gary Peichoto, a 68-year-old retired nurse practitioner from a rural part of Stanislaus County. “It gets me more emotionally involved in the whole aspect of getting Denham out of office.” (Andrews and Lazo, 6/20)