Editor’s Note: This blog entry from the IJFAB Blog Editor provides background on the current US handling of undocumented immigrants crossing at the southern border, on increased detention of immigrants generally including the role of for-profit prison corporations, and on shifts to policy on asylum claims by women fleeing domestic abuse in nations with poor protections for them. This blog entry also provides a link roundup at the end of positions from the United Nations, the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Nurses Association, and the National Association of Pediatric Nurse Practitioners as well as some links on health and asylum-seeking to escape violence including domestic violence.
A screenshot from a CNN interview with American Academy of Pediatrics President Dr. Colleen Kraft in which she says that the family separation policy amounted to child abuse.
A furor has rightly risen in response to the news that the Trump Administration’s changes to US implementation of immigration law involved increased detention (as opposed to what had previously derogatorily been termed “catch and release”) of persons arriving in the US with children and without documentation. This extended not only to those crossing the border without documentation but also to those applying for asylum immediately upon contact with ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) personnel. This policy has been termed “family separation.” As Motherboard reported, one of the ways that this has been accomplished is a change to ICE’s risk assessment software that simply returns “detain” as the automated recommendation in nearly all cases even for immigrants with little or no criminal history. Reports indicate that ICE is preparing to build more tent cities to house large numbers of unaccompanied minors and adult detainees indefinitely, above and beyond the ones already in use and the over 115 locations in which undocumented immigrants are detained by ICE. These tent cities are reportedly far worse than the images of them that the Trump Administration has released. In addition, they cost more than keeping kids with adult caregivers with whom they arrived or placing them in permanent structures.
In 2013, an article in International Political Sociology called “Private Detention and the Immigration Industrial Complex” detailed the role of private for-profit prison corporations in immigration detention policies, and in preventing substantive immigration reform. In 2017, National Public Radio reported in January, before Trump’s inauguration, on the possible implications of his policies for these corporations, and later that year in November on big profits for these companies as immigration detention increased. With the radical increase in detentions currently ongoing, the US government is issuing increasing contracts to private entities for temporary and permanent immigration detention facilities, as well as planning to potentially use US military bases as detention facilities, possibly for minors.
The focus of these policy changes has been undocumented immigrants from Mexico, Guatemala, and elsewhere in Central America who have been arriving at the southern border, either via established ports of entry or via dangerous desert crossings. While adults arriving with children used to be treated differently from others, now all are treated similarly and children are separated with the adults with whom they arrived, often moved to distant shelters or even placed in long-term foster care. Whether the children will be reunited with family is uncertain. How their cases will be handled once separated from the cases of the adults with whom they arrived is uncertain. In principle, policies against incarcerating children are at the root of this separation, and in principle such policies make sense for child welfare. However, one reason that prior administrations often treated adults arriving with children differently is that incarcerating children is harmful and immoral but so is separating them from known and trusted adult caregivers.
With all the hue and cry from both Republicans and Democrats, as well as the UN, over family separation policies, Trump signed an executive order purporting to stop family separations but making no indication of reuniting families that have already been separated and still using the phrase “indefinite detention.” The increase in enforcement and detention has not changed. The role of private prison corporations has not changed. The damage done will not be undone. And more damage will be done. NPR has a nice explainer on what the executive order does and doesn’t do, as does the DC Fox News affiliate. A U.S. court has recently ordered that separated children be reunited with their caregivers, but it is unclear whether the administration will comply, or even can do so given how haphazard tracking of locations of children and associated caregivers has been.
The executive order did not solve this problem, and the long-term mental and physical health problems mean that as bioethicists we cannot look away. The long-term issues of justice and discrimination mean that as feminists we cannot look away.
Of particular interest to feminist bioethicists should be the shift in policy of no longer granting women asylum for domestic abuse when their nations refuse to protect them, even though the US has done so in the past. You can read more about this in Rafia Zakaria’s article “On Sending Women Home to Die: what denying asylum to victims of domestic abuse means, in real life.” Other forms of gendered violence, such as harassment of LGBT folks and others who do not conform to gender and sexuality norms of their countries of origin, may also no longer qualify if the violence is not an official state policy but rather is tolerated by the state. Sometimes, their case is not clear cut even when the state is the perpetrator, as in the case of Udoka Nweke who presented himself at a port of entry with an asylum claim based on Nigeria’s anti-gay laws.
That should be enough background to get things going. For your bioethical reflection, here are some useful links on health issues related to these new policies.
- New England Journal of Medicine : “The Suffering of Children” by Fiona Danaher, M.D.
Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy has a Journalist’s Resource: “Family separation: How does it affect children?“ - From the American Medical Association: “Doctors oppose policy that splits kids from caregivers at border“
- Official statement of the American Academy of Pediatrics: “AAP Statement Opposing the Border Security and Immigration Reform Act“
- “AAP president: Trump family separation policy is ‘child abuse‘”
- AAP News: “AAP a leading voice against separating children, parents at border“
- General statement on handling immigration and health care from the American Nurses Association: “Nursing Beyond Borders: Access to Health Care for Documented and Undocumented Immigrants Living in the US“
- Statement of the National Association of Pediatric Nurse Practitioners: “NAPNAP Statement Opposing the Border Separation of Children and Parents“
- Kaiser Family Foundation: “Key Health Implications of Separation of Families at the Border (as of June 27, 2018)“
- The UN human rights office has been covering the issue: “Children ‘as young as one’ involved in US separation of migrant families“
- The UN has spoken out: “Policy of separating families to control migration ‘unlawful and violates rights of the child‘”
- A 2013 article in American Journal of Public Health: “Asylum Seekers, Violence and Health: A Systematic Review of Research in High-Income Host Countries“
- The RAND Corporation of all places (a think tank that often offers moderate to conservative advice on international affairs and military issues): “Restoring Asylum Protections for Victims of Domestic Violence“
- The Conversation: “Do abused women need asylum? 4 essential reads“
- 2017 article from the Journal of Homosexuality: “Persecution Experiences and Mental Health of LGBT Asylum Seekers“
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While the IJFAB Blog Editor initially thought it might be best to respond early on, she is glad to have waited until such a host of rich resources and analysis was available to provide as background and a link roundup.
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