It’s been nearly a year since now-acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement director Matthew Albence claimed that it’s no big deal that migrant children are being held in U.S. custody because it’s like being at summer camp. Maybe that’s true—that is, if it’s a summer camp where the adults have neglected to provide for the well-being of the kids.
Pediatrician Elana Levites-Agababa, whose community health center treats kids detained at nearby facilities operated by New Jersey’s Center for Family Services, said she’d noticed “a lax attitude” about how CFS views the medical needs of the kids under their care. “So, she decided to review the charts of the 90 CFS patients the community health center had seen,” Mother Jones reports. It was shocking.
Follow-up visits were not getting scheduled while an “unusual” number of visits ended up as no-shows or cancellations, “even though nearly all the health center’s clinics are within a half-hour of the shelters.” Some kids were more than two months late for booster shots, “increasing their risk of contracting infectious diseases, she said.” This is a huge danger when some facilities, like Florida’s Homestead, detain thousands of kids at a time.
Dr. Levites-Agababa reported her findings internally, but then went to the Office of Refugee Resettlement when not much seemed to change. “The agency said that after investigating Levites-Agababa’s complaint, it temporarily suspended CFS from receiving new kids until problems were addressed. But it didn’t say when the suspension happened, how long it lasted or what CFS did to fix the problems. “
The lax standards worry medical professionals like Dr. Levites-Agababa, in particular because the Trump administration at one point detained a record number of migrant children, and wants to detain even more in the future. Just days ago, the administration demanded nearly $3,000,000 in funding to increase capacity to as much as 23,600 kids.
Medical professionals have repeatedly spoken out against the detention of kids, as well as the Trump administration policy that resulted in the state-sanctioned kidnapping of thousands of children at the southern border. “Even short periods of detention,” said Dr. Colleen Kraft, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, “can cause physical and psychological trauma and have long-term mental health risks.”
Migrant children have recently lost their lives while in U.S. custody, including 16-year-old Juan de Leon Gutierrez, who had been sent to a facility operated by another company, Southwest Key. That particular location, Casa Padre, is the same facility where nearly a year ago staffers notoriously called the cops on a sitting U.S. senator who wanted to tour the facility. “American citizens are funding this operation,” Sen. Jeff Merkley said at the time. “so every American citizen has a stake in how these children are being treated and how this policy is being enacted.”
The vast majority of detained migrant kids came here alone, but some kids separated under the “zero tolerance” policy are also in U.S. custody. No matter their status, they deserve care until they can get released, and Dr. Levites-Agababa wants more fellow professionals to speak out. “They are using us as a medical rubber stamp to keep these kids detained,” she said. “And by us participating in this without objection, we’re allowing for the detention of thousands and thousands of kids to continue.”