What the Trump administration can do now to mitigate immigrant children's emotional trauma
My father was an unaccompanied refugee during the Holocaust. My organization works with immigrant children every day, and I know what they need.
Like many, I’ve been watching the images at the border with shock, sadness and horror. I can’t help but think about the unaccompanied minors my organization serves — youth who came on their own, fleeing traumatic events in their home countries — and of the children senselessly ripped apart from their parents by the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance policy.
But I also think of my father. To this day, my father remembers every detail of his childhood in Nazi-occupied Belgium. He eventually made his way to France, concealing his Jewish identity, where he survived with a distant aunt until the war was over. My dad remembers the bombs, the dead bodies, and his friend Gunther’s father who killed himself when the Gestapo came to arrest him. The fear he experienced has stayed with him his whole life. But most vivid is his memory of saying goodbye to his mother at the train station, soldiers roaming the platform, not knowing if he would ever see her again.
As my father’s son, and as a former family court judge and New York City child welfare commissioner, I know how damaging it is for children to be separated from their parents.
The executive order signed recently does nothing to mitigate the lifelong harm that has already been inflicted on roughly 2,300 children. My organization, JCCA, operates a federally-funded, long-term foster care program for unaccompanied children who have fled dangerous countries to start anew here. While we do not currently care for any children separated by the zero-tolerance policy, the lessons we have learned helping traumatized young refugees feel safe and nurtured show us what the children removed from their parents at the border need most right now.
Nothing is more important for these children than their immediate re-unification with their families.
But until they can be physically reunited with their parents as a federal judge has now ordered, these children need to hear their voices, to see them. In our program, young people are in regular contact with loved ones abroad, and are provided legal assistance with their asylum cases. One small thing the government should do immediately is to ensure that every parent detained in a federal facility has access to video visitation to communicate with their child once they are located, and that foster agencies have the resources they need to equip every child separated from a parent with Skype or FaceTime to see their face. Parents should not be deported until their children are returned to them; doing so would only worsen the emotional harm these children are enduring.
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Young victims of trauma must also be in an environment where they can gain a sense of normalcy and belonging. To start, that means being supported by social workers and foster families who speak their language and understand their unique cultures. Children suffering from trauma need familiarity and routine. They need to eat foods they are accustomed to eating, to spend time with people who know their home traditions and ways. We ask the young people in our care about what they loved at home; we make sure they can attend religious services of their faith and help bring them together with other young refugees living with foster families in their area, so they can feel less alone.
My father was an unaccompanied minor. No one faults him or his mother for crossing borders for the possibility of safety and a better future. He and his mother did what they needed to do to stay alive — much like many of the families seeking refuge within our borders today.
These children will carry the weight of this government-imposed separation for the rest of their lives. As it has with mine, the legacy of their pain will stay with their family for generations to come. But it need not be the only legacy. Our future hinges on the actions we take today to restore justice and humanity for the most innocent among us. Together, we must show these children — and one another — that our collective love, compassion and respect for the dignity of all people are greater than the shameful acts that have been perpetrated against them in our name.
Ronald Richter is the head of JCCA, a foster care provider in New York that runs a program for unaccompanied minors. He is a former family court judge and New York City child welfare commissioner. Follow him on Twitter: @RichterJCCACEO