A country traumatized
by Tom Sullivan
A federal judge in Connecticut on Friday issued a preliminary ruling that children separated from their parents at the hands of U.S. border officials have suffered "irreparable injury" and "trauma as a result of their unconstitutional separation from their parents." The court ordered the government to present a plan for treating the children's post-traumatic stress:
Judge Bolden’s decision is the first ruling in the country to find that the government’s cruel and illegal family separation scheme violates the constitutional rights of children, and not just parents. The ruling was issued in the cases of two children detained in Connecticut who filed suit in federal court on July 2nd to challenge their forced separation under the Trump Administration’s “zero tolerance policy.”Connecticut Legal Services provides additional background:
Holding that the separation violated the children’s due process rights, and finding that the children are suffering from acute post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a result of the government’s conduct, the court ordered the government to act immediately to address the trauma it has caused the children. Specifically, the court ordered the government to produce the children’s parents in Bridgeport at a July 18 status conference; provide daily video-conferencing between the children and their parents; and propose a treatment plan to begin healing the wounds inflicted by the government’s actions.
J.S.R. and V.F.B. are two of the more than 2,000 children taken forcibly from their parents at the southern border in the past months. They're the only two of those children held here in Connecticut.CNN reports this morning:
J.S.R., age 9, fled Honduras with his father after his grandparents were murdered and a body was left in his family’s backyard. When J.S.R. arrived in the United States to seek asylum in June of this year, he and his father were locked in what J.S.R. describes as a “hielera” – an icebox – in a detention facility in South Texas. While J.S.R. was asleep, immigration agents took his father away and lied to the child about his father’s whereabouts. He has been detained in Connecticut since June 16. Since he got here, he has been allowed to speak with his father only once.
V.F.B., age 14, came to the United States with her mother seeking refugee from persecution in El Salvador, after her step-father was murdered outside the church where V.F.B. was praying. While V.F.B. and her mother were detained at a Texas facility, immigration officials sent the child to shower. When she returned, her mother was gone, and immigration authorities pretended not to know where she was. V.F.B. has been in Connecticut since May 16, and has been allowed to speak with her mother only once.
The forcible separation of children from their parents is a betrayal of U.S. law and Connecticut values. The Constitution State believes in family, freedom, and fairness. CLS went to court to hold our government accountable to our values, and to win release and reunification for two children who – like every one of our children – deserve Connecticut's love and support.
In the letter dated July 15, the 54 detainees at the Port Isabel Service Detention Center in Los Fresnos, Texas, write in Spanish that their children don't recognize their voices anymore, and feel "abandoned" and "without love."Yes, there are some smiles. But in some of the reunion videos, the children display a flat affect and express little emotion to being reunited. In one I saw over the weekend, a small boy showed no reaction and barely stopped sipping from a drink pouch as his mother wept and hugged him. Others of the smallest children no longer recognize their mothers.
The parents say they are not criminals and came to the United Sates in order to save their lives and those of their children.
"We were not prepared for the nightmare that we faced here. The United States government kidnapped our children with tricks and didn't give us the opportunity to say goodbye," they write.
The parents say they have heard little about their children in the more than a month that they've been separated. Their kids, they say, are living amidst strangers and they have been told that some are living with new families.
"Each day is more painful that the last. Many of us have only had the chance to speak to our children once (this is very difficult because the social workers never answer). The children cry, they don't recognize our voices and they feel abandoned and unloved. This makes us feel like we are dead.
"With all this trauma; the nightmares, anxiety and pain that this government has caused us and our children, we still have to fight for our asylum cases," the letter continues.
An Ohio woman was arrested on Friday for spray painting a racial slur, "Hail Trump" and a swastika on the front of her neighbor’s home.The house is for sale by an African-American Realtor. Her picture is on the yard sign which was also vandalized. Edelen is charged with "criminal mischief, ethnic intimidation, and criminally damaging property."
Patricia Edelen was caught on another neighbor’s surveillance cameras Friday night spray painting the offensive words on the Ogden Ave. home in Toledo, ABC 13 reported.
Toledo Police Sgt. Paul Davis said Edelen had multiple warrants and tried to run away from officers during the arrest.