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Related: About this forumImmigrant shelters drug traumatized teenagers without consent
Immigrant shelters drug traumatized teenagers without consent
Caroline Chen and Jess Ramirez, ProPublica Published 12:04 p.m. ET July 20, 2018
Fleeing an abusive stepfather in El Salvador, Gabriela headed for Oakland, California, where her grandfather had promised to take her in. When the teenager reached the U.S. border in January 2017, she was brought to a federally funded shelter in Texas.
Initially, staff described her as receptive and resilient. But as she was shuttled from one Texas shelter to another, she became increasingly depressed. Without consulting her grandfather, or her mother in El Salvador, shelter staff have prescribed numerous medications for her, including two psychotropic drugs whose labels warn of increased suicidal behavior in adolescents, according to court documents. Still languishing in a shelter after 18 months, the 17-year-old doesnt want to take the medications, but she does anyway, because staff at one facility told her she wouldnt be released until she is considered psychologically sound.
Gabrielas experience epitomizes a problem that the Trump administrations practice of family separation exacerbated: the failure of government-funded facilities to seek informed consent before medicating immigrant teenagers. Around 12,000 undocumented minors are in custody of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement. The majority crossed the border unaccompanied, while more than 2,500 were separated from their parents while Trumps zero tolerance policy was in effect from April to June.
Emotional distress and mental health issues are prevalent among these children, sometimes a result of traumatic experiences in their home countries, at other times triggered by being separated from parents at the border, or by fear that they will never be released from ORR facilities. Former shelter employees, and doctors and lawyers working for advocacy groups say the shelters lack sufficient counselors and too often turn to powerful psychotropic drugs when kids act out.
More:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2018/07/20/immigrant-shelters-drug-teens-separated-parents-without-consent/807183002/
Editorials and other articles:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016211365
niyad
(112,435 posts)Wellstone ruled
(34,661 posts)in those Kiddie Jails.
ROB-ROX
(767 posts)Another government plan to experiment on HUMANS. This is a plan right out of the NAZI game book......CONCENTRATION CAMPS........I think states with lots of republican voters do not CARE about these PRISONS,but in OTHER states this bizarre process would be RESISTED.......