Children Abused in Detention

Children Abused in Detention
Fr. Shay Cullen
21 June 2018

There are thousands of undocumented immigrants that crossed into the United States in the past several months that have had their children forcibly taken from them and placed in cages in detention centers by President Donald Trump.

Church leaders of many denominations and political leaders, Democrats and Republicans alike, and millions of good-hearted Americans and the international community expressed outrage and said it is a violation of children’s human rights and a form of child abuse.

President Trump has backed down and has signed an Executive Order changing this most cruel, obnoxious and hateful practice. It was not out of compassion but public and political pressure that caused the change. Yet the immediate reuniting of parents and children is not in the order and no way has been proposed on how to do it.

The children are locked in cages in a Wal-Mart warehouse while their parents or guardians are in jail awaiting a court hearing for entering the United States undocumented. They are likely to be sent back to their South American countries where there is violence and serious human rights violations, hunger and oppression. They have a right to apply for asylum. Protecting them and approving their requests is a way rich America can help the poor. Hundreds are being deported by Trump’s Zero Tolerance Policy. One man was deported but his three-year old child was kept in US detention, many more will surely follow.

The US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the United States Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, said in a speech that the United States is and has been a staunch supporter of human rights and are leaving the UN Human Rights Council because most member countries are violators of human rights. The violation of the rights of children of asylum seekers to the US was not raised.

Many critics, including Republican senators and members of the US congress including the Democrats, have spoken out strongly against the violation of the rights of the children by Trump’s policy of separating children from their parents. There are as many as 2,500 children held in the cages separated from their parents. The wailing and crying of the children was tape-recorded and played over the internet.

Evangelicals have condemned the practice and the Catholic Bishops said it was immoral. President Trump ordered the detention through his Attorney General Jeff Sessions. He, Jeff Sessions, justified it by quoting from the Bible, a quotation used by slavers, Nazis, and Apartheid supporters in the past.

Donald Trump wrongly blamed the Democrats for the malicious practice. Trump said last January why can’t we have migrants from Norway and not from “shithole countries.” The offensive racist remark condemned non-white countries that have to swallow the insults and their hurt pride. Trump has banned migrants from several Muslim countries. He has built his political career on selfish exclusion of migrants who have helped build America. There was method and purpose behind this forced detention. Trump wants a bill passed by the congress to end this detention that is of his own design and making. The congress must approve a bill that gives him 25 billion dollars to build a wall along the border with Mexico. The politicians are calling it blackmail and some say the children are being used as hostages, pawns in his political game.

His own wife and former presidential wives said it is wrong and against the true spirit of what America is supposed to stand for. President Trump was unmoved until the outrage built to unbearable pressure. Now finally he had to back down.

It is not the Philippines. But if anyone has the courage to visit any of the municipal or city child detention centers in Metro Manila or in the provinces, bring your smelling salts and anti-depressants. If you are allowed inside you will witness the shocking deplorable and sub-human conditions where Filipino children, some as young as 10-years-old, boys and girls, are incarcerated behind steel bars like criminals.

Some are called Bahay Pag-asa or House of Hope, which are operated by local governments. But there is no hope. There are hundreds of malnourished children in overcrowded filthy cells. The public who pay for this cruel detention are not allowed inside most of the detention centers to witness the children behind bars. The politicians don’t go there.
In some Bahay Pag-asa, there are as many as twenty children in tiny prison cells that have a blocked toilet bowl that stinks to high heaven. It smells of feces and urine and the children and visitors choke on the obnoxious fumes. When one visitor did get inside she felt shock, was weak and overwhelmed. How could Filipinos treat their children like this, she asked.

In most child detention cells there are no beds, no proper toilets, nowhere to wash or shower. Some have cages for the children. They are deprived of medical care, some have untreated wounds, and others- small kids- are locked in cells with mentally challenged adults. There is little or no educational or medical services, recreation, stimulation, games comics or TV and no exercise or sunlight outside the cells. Some are sexually abused by older boys. Guards also abuse the children.

These Filipino children are abandoned by the state, cursed to suffer deprivation and punishment by local governments and forgotten by their parents or have none. Under the law, many of them are not criminally liable and must be treated as children with all their rights but they are not.

Of course, it is illegal detention and a violation of their rights under RA 7610 and RA 9344 but who cares? No one cares but a few NGOs and a few helpless government social workers and officials. In comparison, the Trump child detention centers are paradise.

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