To the Editor:
Re “Push to Deport Splits Over 100,000 Families” (news article, May 19):
We are pediatricians trained to identify trauma and violence affecting children.
As ICE apprehensions rise, each of us has witnessed the effects on the communities we live in and serve: families tearfully preparing for parental detainment, older siblings caring for children whose parents have been taken and traumatized and terrified children struggling in school.
Recognizing that family separation is intentional and can be stopped is paramount to ensuring that our focus shifts to end this harmful practice.
The Brookings Institution’s estimate that more than 100,000 children — the majority of them U.S. citizens, according to the report — have been separated from their families horrifies us as pediatricians.
The American Academy of Pediatrics has long documented the harms of family separation, which include toxic stress that affects brain development and lifelong, systemic effects to mental and physical health, leaving children susceptible to chronic conditions like post-traumatic stress disorder and heart disease. The scale of this harm ripples through homes, schools and neighborhoods, creating an environment of fear that has lasting consequences for children.
As physicians, we are taught to first do no harm. The traumatic separation of any child from a loved one, let alone 100,000 children, without proper legal and medical considerations represents a profound failure of our nation’s responsibility to protect the most vulnerable.
It is time to halt this harmful practice, which disregards due process and endangers the lives of children.
Anik Patel Julia Rosenberg Sural Shah The writers are members of the American Academy of Pediatrics Council on Immigrant Child and Family Health executive committee.
To the Editor:
The Trump administration is far outpacing the cruelty of its “zero tolerance” policy from 2018, which resulted in the separation of some 3,000 children from their families, as it uses the same approach as a tool in its expanded enforcement actions. It is flouting deeply held values and safeguards that prioritize child welfare and family unity and has targeted children and their caregivers in enforcement actions.
The administration has weakened and disregarded protections that ensure that detained parents and legal guardians can make alternative care arrangements and decisions for their children if they are arrested, detained or removed. These detainees need access to legal counsel, since separation has important legal implications for families.
The administration must prioritize family unity and consider the critical role of primary caregivers when contemplating enforcement. It needs to uphold and strengthen policies that allow caregivers to ensure the safety of their children if they are separated from them.
The administration should take immediate steps to prevent unnecessary separations and restore limits on enforcement actions in or near immigration courts, asylum offices, schools, child care centers, health care facilities and other sensitive locations.
As in 2018, family separation is an outrage and cruel to its core.
Wendy Young Washington The writer is the president of Kids in Need of Defense.
The U.S. Is Losing the Trolling War
To the Editor:
Re “Iran Is Trolling Us, and We’re Not Doing Anything About It,” by Jessica Brandt (Opinion guest essay, May 26):
Ms. Brandt says correctly that the United States should respond to online trolls from hostile states with content that is equally “clever, shareable and fluent in the cultural idiom of its audience.” But who should generate that response?
U.S. government agencies have occasionally tried to produce clever and viral content, but the efforts have often been limp and small in scale. Some in government favor contracting out the work to agile, inventive public relations and advertising experts with broad experience in the meme wars. (Russia and Iran often use private contractors.) But other U.S. officials are wary, fearing that the products generated could draw criticism or ridicule from political figures and media. Therefore, little gets done.
Nothing, however, stops American individuals and activist groups from coming up with their own responses. America has a long tradition of private initiative, and the internet is open to all. The quickest and most authentic responses to those who wish America ill might well come from nimble, creative American citizens themselves.
Thomas Kent Mamaroneck, N.Y. The writer is a former president and chief executive of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
The post The Cruelty of Family Separation appeared first on New York Times.
