Abuse of migrant children must not be ignored by US

The aftershocks of the Donald J. Trump administration’s ill-conceived and inhumane family separation policy at the U.S.-Mexico border continue to rumble in.

The latest appalling revelations of chilling irregularities came earlier this week during a congressional hearing where House Oversight Committee members and the nation learned that thousands of immigrant children placed in U.S. detention facilities have reported being sexually abused while in government custody, according to data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

The federal Office of Refugee Resettlement, which oversees caring for under-age immigrants, received more than 4,500 allegations of sexual abuse and sexual harassment between 2015 and 2018, according to the HHS and Justice Department data. Of those complaints, some 1,300 were serious enough to refer to the FBI for investigation and possible prosecution.

Rep. Ted Deutch, D-Fla., an oversight committee member, presented the documents to the committee Tuesday.

“I am deeply concerned with documents that have been turned over by HHS that record a high number of sexual assaults on unaccompanied children in the custody of the Office of Refugee and Resettlement,” Deutch said. “Together, these documents detail an environment of systemic sexual assaults by staff on unaccompanied children.”

PORN, MOLESTATION, RAPE

Complaints regarding HHS employees and federal contractors who were hired to run detention centers involved molestation, statutory rape and adults who showed pornographic material to children in their care. The reports span fiscal year 2015 under the Obama administration through late last year. A noticeable uptick in complaints took place while the Trump administration’s policy of separating migrant families at the border was in place, the reports revealed.

Given the scope and duration of the abuse allegations on top of the litany of other abuses uncovered over the past year at such detention centers, Deutch’s outrage is fully justified. These latest reports demand a full-throttle investigation into all aspects of family separations and detention of young minor children by U.S. authorities.

Human compassion for these vulnerable victims demands no less.

Fortunately, members of that committee shifted their investigation into overdrive this week by agreeing to issue subpoenas against several key Trump administration leaders, including U.S. Attorney General William P. Barr, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar in a 25-11 vote.

We hope those and other leaders cooperate fully with the investigation and that the probe ultimately produces much more stringent safeguards to protect uprooted children from such horrors.

After all, this week’s revelations of sexual abuse stand as but the latest examples of irregularities with the short-lived Trump family separation policy in particular and the long-standing procedure of detaining in government camps all children who attempt to enter the United States alone. Some 13,000 unaccompanied migrant children are in the custody of the ORR.

Last year, for example, a class-action lawsuit alleged that many migrant children at Shiloh Treatment Center in Manvel, Texas, had been administered powerful psychotropic drugs and forced injections without the consent of their parents. According to the filings, the drugs made the children listless, dizzy and incapacitated, and in some cases unable to walk.

In addition, state investigators in Virginia also found that children had been beaten, handcuffed, and placed in solitary confinement at Shenendoah Valley Juvenile Center.

And just last month, the administration acknowledged that thousands of children affected by the policy remained separated from their families, with officials uncertain of the exact number of them and where they are now. Clearly, even though the president’s “zero tolerance policy” was repealed by executive order five months after its implementation in the wake of near-universal condemnation, its aftereffects continue to leave legions of families in a state of turmoil and fear.

Additionally, detention policies that long precede the Trump presidency also clearly need a closer examination into their effectiveness and humaneness.