The US Treatment of Immigrants Is a Human Rights Crisis. It Has Been for Years.
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It was a cold, gray day in March in McAllen, Texas. I was staffing a refugee/asylee clinic at the Catholic Charities respite center, a glamorized closet in the back of a receiving center. There had been a dramatic ice storm in the last fews days—uncommon in South Texas—and so the buses to carry families to their next destination were not running. There were tents set up to house the families—not something this center did very often, as it had only one bathroom and three showers—and so the facility felt crowded. But there was another feeling as well: an unmistakable air of hopelessness amongst the mostly mothers and children stuck in limbo.
One mother in particular stays with me. She was from Eritrea, an African nation under totalitarian rule accused of extensive human rights violations, and had traveled for two years to reach the US. She and her three children, one of whom was born along the way, had been trafficked, smuggled, abused, and forgotten. They spoke no English and had no identification or paperwork.
In most ways—in all of the ways that matter—she was like every mother: She wanted safety, care, and peace for her children. But as I sat with her in the clinic that day, I silently grappled with a hard truth: I could not guarantee her any of those things in our country.
The family separation policy recently implemented by the Trump Administration has and will continue to inflict undeserved short- and long-term physical and mental abuse on both children and parents; long-term family interment, if implemented, will be similarly traumatizing. But the sad truth is, these abuses are not new. What we are seeing now at the border is not radically different than what those of us on the front lines have witnessed for years: profound and needless human suffering inflicted upon thousands of brave mothers and fathers striking out to try to make a better life for their children.
Circle of Health International (COHI), the nonprofit I founded 14 years ago, began its work at the McAllen clinic over the July Fourth weekend in 2014, when a “mass exodus of unaccompanied minors” was arriving along the Texas/Mexico border. We began, as we do in all our work, with a needs assessment to determine what services were available. This assessment was led by a first-generation immigrant who specialized in adolescent sexual health. She found that the abuses these minors were fleeing ranged from gun violence to domestic violence. She also found that when they arrived at the US border, they were met with additional abuse while in the custody of the US Border Patrol. These human rights violations included limited hydration and nutrition (receiving only one meal and one bottle of water a day), extremely cold conditions inside the facilities, denial of medical care even when requested, and lights being left on for 24 hours.
One of our first actions when we started supporting this clinic was to collaborate with the Program for Survivors of Torture at Bellevue Hospital to determine the rates of PTSD among the population passing through the clinic. Alarmingly, the rates hovered around 80 percent—but more startling was the realization that the majority of the PTSD cases were not due to the gang and domestic violence that most women and children were fleeing; it was due to the horrific treatment they received from Border Patrol. The individuals that COHI has had the honor to care for over the last four years arrive with harrowing tales of having been trafficked along their journey, and frightened about their own security and the security of the family left behind. Yet it is their treatment at the border that causes the most lasting psychological scars.
Nor does that abuse end once undocumented immigrants seeking asylum enter the country. In 2015, we were invited to sit on a panel organized by the Center for Reproductive Rights to commemorate International Women’s Day. Afterwards, the members of this panel wrote a paper highlighting the human rights abuses taking place in the Rio Grande Valley regarding barriers to access to care. Undocumented immigrant women spoke of the lack of information regarding affordable care, the daunting bureaucracy at sliding-scale clinics, and discrimination from service providers. One woman, informed she had three months to live unless she immediately began cancer treatment, was then discouraged from applying for insurance; the hospital social worker told her, “It would be better if you went back to where you came from.”
Over these last four years, we have also witnessed an escalation in the hostile and shameful treatment of this population—an escalation that began long before President Trump took office. Two years ago, we began to see ankle monitors forcibly placed on women and even children. These monitors beeped very loudly when they needed to be charged and could not be removed, requiring our clinic volunteers to cut the pants off the mothers and children when they presented at the clinic for care. Recent reporting has also revealed the abysmal conditions at some of the privately run shelters for immigrant children, including forced druggings, physical beatings, and other abuses.
The public outrage surrounding the Trump administration’s family separation policy has been heartening to witness. But for those of us who have spent years witnessing the ongoing humanitarian crisis at our border, the overall media silence has been soul-crushing. We can only hope that the spotlight shone on this most recent egregious policy will bring to light the myriad other abuses inflicted on immigrants, so that these men, women, and children finally receive the care, attention, and protection owed to them.
Sera Bonds (SPH’04) is the founder and CEO of Circle of Health International.