Biden administration wants psychological tests for migrants with separated kids

• The request comes in a lawsuit filed by migrants seeking compensation from the government.
• Thousands of children were taken from parents at the U.S.-Mexico border.
• The Justice Department is reserving the right to have a psychologist examine the children who were separated, if necessary.

The Biden administration is requesting that parents of children separated at the US-Mexico border undergo another round of psychological evaluations to determine how traumatised they were by Trump’s policy.

The request is part of a lawsuit filed by migrants seeking compensation from the government after thousands of children were separated from their parents in a policy condemned as inhumane by political and religious leaders worldwide. Late last year, settlement talks between attorneys and the government broke down.

Attorneys for the Justice Department are also reserving the right to have a psychologist examine the separated children if necessary. The evaluations are standard procedure in emotional-damage claims, but these cases are unique because the government’s role in traumatising parents and children through separations has been well documented.

“President Biden called Trump’s family separations criminal and a moral stain on the country, but now his administration is hiring doctors to try and claim the families didn’t suffer all that much,” said Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project and a lawyer for plaintiffs in the compensation effort.

Also Read

Biden will lay out plan to end hunger in the US by 2030

Biden is hosting a conference on hunger, nutrition and health in Washington,...

The migrants “allege that their mental and emotional injuries are ongoing and permanent in nature,” according to government attorneys, and that their injuries are directly related to the government’s policy. They argue that the government must have its own opportunity to examine them.

The requests were made in two separate cases filed by 11 families. There are nearly two dozen similar cases pending in other courts, and some have already submitted to psychiatric evaluations ordered by the government.

However, the parents have already sat for hours-long depositions in which they detailed what happened. According to government investigators, children who were separated from their parents displayed greater fear, feelings of abandonment, and post-traumatic stress symptoms than children who were not separated.

Some children believed their parents had abandoned or killed them. According to a 2019 report from the Department of Health and Human Services’ inspector general’s office, mental trauma caused physical symptoms such as chest or heart pain for some.

Parents studied by Physicians for Human Rights, a nonprofit collective of doctors dedicated to documenting human rights violations, had suicidal thoughts and a slew of other issues, including nightmares, depression, anxiety, panic, worry, and difficulty sleeping.

Officials in the Biden administration have criticised Trump’s policies. Democrat Joe Biden called the policies “an outrage, a moral failing, and a stain on our national character” during his presidential campaign.

Also Read

Joe Biden’s plan to cancel US student debt relief plan world cost govt. $400 bn

The Congressional Budget Office predicted that US President Joe Biden's plan would...