To: Kirstjen Nielsen, U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security, The United States House of Representatives, and The United States Senate
Thousands MORE kids separated from parents – STOP family separation now!
Reunite families now.
End family detention.
End “prosecute everyone.”
End family detention.
End “prosecute everyone.”
Why is this important?
In a stunning revelation, the Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) says that not only were "thousands" more migrant children separated by the Trump administration than previously known, but that they don't even know how many children were taken away from their families because of failures to track families as they were being separated!
To date, no one has been held accountable for this ethical and humanitarian disaster. Instead President Trump continues to demand more funding for the very agencies that separate children as a condition for reopening the government, including demanding funding that would pay for 52,000 detention beds to jail immigrant families, money to hire more agents for separating kids, and even seeking to eliminate protections for asylum seeking kids arriving at the border without a parent!
The Trump administration’s policy of purposeful child separation is a moral failure for our nation, inflicting deep trauma on already vulnerable children. Moreover, the anxiety and distrust children suffer when they are institutionalized away from loved ones can cause long-lasting mental and physical health problems, particularly for small children who need personal attention in their formative years.
Children who experience extended separation from their parents as a result of incarceration or detention are at increased risk of facing a variety of physical, mental, and behavioral health issues throughout the rest of their lives. In fact, this type of child-parent separation is classified as a specific type of trauma: an adverse childhood experience (ACE).
Family detention is not only cruel, but also more expensive than alternatives to family detention, such as the Family Case Management Program (FCMP) that the Trump administration terminated it in 2017. Under the Family Case Management Program, children and their parents were placed into a program that provided individualized family service plans and had a proven 99% success rate ensuring the family attended their hearings. The Family Case Management Program cost only $36 per family per day, in comparison to family detention, which costs on average $798 for a family (2.5 individuals).
Take action! Say NO to family separation!
To date, no one has been held accountable for this ethical and humanitarian disaster. Instead President Trump continues to demand more funding for the very agencies that separate children as a condition for reopening the government, including demanding funding that would pay for 52,000 detention beds to jail immigrant families, money to hire more agents for separating kids, and even seeking to eliminate protections for asylum seeking kids arriving at the border without a parent!
The Trump administration’s policy of purposeful child separation is a moral failure for our nation, inflicting deep trauma on already vulnerable children. Moreover, the anxiety and distrust children suffer when they are institutionalized away from loved ones can cause long-lasting mental and physical health problems, particularly for small children who need personal attention in their formative years.
Children who experience extended separation from their parents as a result of incarceration or detention are at increased risk of facing a variety of physical, mental, and behavioral health issues throughout the rest of their lives. In fact, this type of child-parent separation is classified as a specific type of trauma: an adverse childhood experience (ACE).
Family detention is not only cruel, but also more expensive than alternatives to family detention, such as the Family Case Management Program (FCMP) that the Trump administration terminated it in 2017. Under the Family Case Management Program, children and their parents were placed into a program that provided individualized family service plans and had a proven 99% success rate ensuring the family attended their hearings. The Family Case Management Program cost only $36 per family per day, in comparison to family detention, which costs on average $798 for a family (2.5 individuals).
Take action! Say NO to family separation!