Panel Discussion
On Tuesday, September 25, Alianza Latina, The Schubert Center for Child Studies, the Social Justice Institute, the Begun Center for Violence Prevention Research and Education, the Center on Trauma and Adversity, and the Center on Urban Poverty and Community Development convened a panel to discuss the experiences of immigrant children and teens detained at the southern border, including the legal context for family separations, medical and therapeutic guidelines for youth exposed to trauma, issues of consent for treatment, long-term consequences of internment, and options for advocacy and activism for allies.
Introduced by Dr. Francisca García-Cobián Richter (Research Assistant Professor, Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences) and moderated by Dr. John Flores (co-director, SJI), the panel featured:
- Dr. Sana Loue, SJI Leadership Collective Member; CWRU School of Medicine
- Gabriela Sehinkman (The Centers for Families and Children)
- Dr. Jane Timmons-Mitchell (CWRU School of Medicine; Begun Center for Violence Prevention)
Click here to watch a video of the event on YouTube.
Resources
For those interested in learning more, this list of resources was compiled by the event panelists. Please visit our Online Research Guide for additional information.
- Migrant Family Separation Congressional Testimony by Dr. Jack P. Shonkoff
- For the most recent information relating to legal efforts against family separation, visit the American Immigration Lawyers Association website. They are sponsoring a petition related to the Flores Settlement Agreement.
- Applying a Community Violence Framework to Understand the Impact of Immigration Enforcement Threat on Latino Children: A Social Policy Report. View the two-page report brief by clicking here.
- The Coalition on Human Needs, an alliance of national organizations working together to promote public policies which address the needs of low-income and other vulnerable populations, has links to policy analyses and research, political news and advocacy organizations.
- The resource hub ZERO TO THREE, recently established in partnership with the National Child Traumatic Stress Network and the Alliance for the Advancement of Infant Mental Health, provides policy statements, information, social media tools and direct connections to mental health providers in areas affected by the recent policy decisions to separate families at the U.S. border.
- For Private Prisons, Detaining Immigrants Is Big Business: A surging inmate population in the 1980s led to a boom in for-profit prisons. Today, privately run prisons have become the government’s default detention centers for undocumented migrants. Article from the NY Times
- In a three-part series, “The Daily” (a NY Times podcast) examines the repercussions of a U.S. policy that led to more than 2,000 migrant children being separated from their parents.
- Legal Filings Reveal that Immigrant Shelters are Overmedicating Unaccompanied Minors: an article in Pacific Standard, an online news that mixes rigorous reporting and narrative journalism with peer-reviewed research and is fiercely committed to covering social and environmental justice.
For those interested in donating to help support access to legal counsel for detained immigrants, consider supporting these organizations: