Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Trump Officials 'Very Comfortable' With Immigrants' Treatment In Detention Facilities
The New York Times: Migrant Detention Centers Are ‘Like A Summer Camp,’ Official Says At Hearing
Not until the day it was announced did senior officials from three key agencies learn of the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy to deter migrants from illegally entering the United States by threatening jail sentences and separating children from their parents. At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday, the officials said they were given few instructions and had no plans for reuniting the families when the policy was announced on April 6. One official, Cmdr. Jonathan D. White of the United States Public Health Service, said he learned of it from watching television. (Nixon, 7/31)
Reuters: U.S. Senior Official Says He Flagged Risks For Children From Border Separations
A senior official at the U.S. agency charged with caring for migrant children believed separating them from their parents carried "significant risk" of harm and said on Tuesday concerns had been raised internally before the Trump administration made it official policy. Jonathan White, a senior U.S. Public Health Service official, told Congress that the Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), where he worked until March 2018, had "raised a number of concerns" about the proposed policy in the year preceding its implementation. (Torbati and Cowan, 7/31)
Bloomberg: Trump Official Says He Warned Of Child Trauma From Family Separations
"There is no question that separation of children from parents entails significant potential for traumatic psychological injury to the child," Commander Jonathan White, a Health and Human Services official who led the agency’s family reunification efforts, told the Senate Judiciary Committee at Congress’s first hearing on the separations of thousands of families at the border. Senators of both parties demanded answers from White and other Trump administration officials, and Democratic Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois called on Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen to resign to accept responsibility for violating the nation’s "bedrock values" on families. He said that, "incredibly," Nielsen had claimed on Twitter that the U.S. didn’t "have a policy of separating families at the border. Period." (Epstein, 7/31)
And in more news —
Reveal: Judge Orders Government To Release Immigrant Kids From Troubled Shelter
U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee’s ruling Monday orders the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement to move immigrant children out of the Shiloh Treatment Center in Manvel, Texas, and into less restrictive housing unless a licensed psychologist or psychiatrist determines that a child “poses a risk of harm to self or others.” The judge’s order, issued in a federal court in California as part of a long-running class-action case, affects about 25 immigrant children held at Shiloh, a collection of small buildings and trailers on rural land south of Houston with a troubled history. (Williams and Smith, 7/31)
