U.S. Senator Edward Markey stood alongside Massachusetts’s most prominent doctors, psychiatrists and pediatricians to address the profound health consequences experienced by children and families when separated at the U.S. border with Mexico.
An hour-long roundtable with healthcare professionals, EBNHC administrators and staff preceded the senator’s public remarks. The gathering took place last Friday in Maverick Square, outside the East Boston Neighborhood Health Center.
Markey emerged from the discussion with sharp criticism directed at the Trump Administration and U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s approach. His focus was the administration’s new, so-called “Zero Tolerance” immigration policy.
“This policy refers all adults who improperly cross the southwest border for federal prosecution — regardless of whether they came to this land fleeing violence, poverty, or persecution.” Markey explained, noting that Last month, Attorney General Jeff Sessions unveiled the Trump administration’s new, so-called “Zero Tolerance” immigration policy.
The senator characterized this Zero Tolerance approach as an anti-immigrant dragnet literally ripping children from their parents’ arms while mothers and fathers were being taken into custody and separated from them.
The Administration’s recent policy has resulted in the separation of more than 2,300 children from their mothers and fathers over the previous five weeks.
According to Markey, as these separations occur, both the President and Sessions have downplayed the severity of the trauma inflicted on children and families.
“It is unconscionable that the Trump administration’s policies are not only compounding the anxiety and hardship these children have already experienced, but are potentially setting them up for a lifetime of adverse health outcomes.” Markey stated. “Many of these immigrant families are trying to escape violence, trauma, and adversity in search of a healthier, more secure life,”
Medical research demonstrates that children exposed to repeated and compounding traumatic events—similar to experiences many of these children have already endured—face negative health outcomes throughout their lives, including elevated mortality risk. Markey referenced this research in his discussion.
Markey drew on medical evidence to explain how toxic stress develops when a child’s stress response system is consistently activated without supportive, dependable relationships, particularly during formative developmental periods. This can heighten vulnerability to mental illness, substance use disorders, heart disease, diabetes and various other chronic conditions.
“We’ve all heard the audio recordings of children crying, and wailing, and pleading in detention centers for their parents. Their cries went unanswered. Their pain went untouched.” Markey posed. “What could we otherwise think when a breastfeeding newborn is ripped away from its mother? Or when a toddler is taken from a father as it learns to walk?,”
Markey underscored that major physician organizations—including the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the American College of Physicians—have voiced opposition to Trump’s family separation policy because of the irreversible emotional and physiological damage. The border situation exemplifies why these organizations have taken their stance.
“People from across the Commonwealth and country marched, and protested, and shouted, and resisted — until finally, even President Trump could not ignore it. On Wednesday, he signed an executive order he says addresses the problem he created. It does no such thing. The executive order does not rescind the zero tolerance policy. It reaffirms it. If the President has doubled down on prosecuting all parents as criminals, it is unclear whether these barbaric family separations will in fact stop. And if, as the President claims this executive order requires, families be kept together, then children — some as young as newborns — would end up incarcerated with their parents in criminal custody.” Markey concluded. “The American people recognized the heinous suffering this administration was inflicting on vulnerable immigrants and are speaking out to say ‘this will not stand’,”
The senator contended that President Trump had merely substituted one form of confinement for another, emphasizing that families and children should not face incarceration for seeking refuge.
“Long ago, this country decided that the indefinite detention of children would not stand. The Flores Agreement — a landmark settlement from 1997 —established basic protections for how immigrant children must be treated in our care. Now, President Trump has created a crisis that threatens the Flores Agreement and would undermine the humanitarian protections it provided. Worse still, President Trump is asking the Pentagon to carry out his cold-blooded order of indefinite detention. He has instructed the Secretary of Defense to provide existing military brigs or to construct new military facilities to lock up these families. This disgraceful directive harkens back to the internment camps of World War II — one of the darkest chapters in our nation’s history. Let’s be clear, President Trump first manufactured this crisis at the border, and his new executive order makes it worse. The cruelty is not over — it is just better disguised.” Markey asserted. “That is an abomination,”
Markey emphasized the longstanding U.S. principle that children must not be detained in jails or military facilities, and that asylum seekers should not face criminal treatment.
“We proudly remember our families came here across a border—whether land or water—knowing this country meant a new start. We are better than this. We must be better than this.” Markey stated. “We welcome immigrants for their contributions. We seek immigrants for their talents,”
During the question period that followed, a reporter turned to Dr. Lisa Fortuna, a prominent child and adolescent psychiatrist at Boston Medical Center, asking whether separating children from their parents constitutes child abuse.
Dr. Fortuna responded, “I have been asked this question several times and I would say if I encountered this type of treatment of children in any other setting I feel that I would have to call Child Protective Services and report the treatment,”