North Texas Daily

The federal government has reported that more than 4,500 complaints have been filed reporting that minors in immigration detention centers were sexually abused either by adult staff members or other minors, according to the New York Times.

The severity of this issue should no longer be ignored, especially by the man whose policies increased the instances of child abuse: President Trump. The number of cases has risen as a direct result of his “Zero Tolerance” policy.

For example, from March 2018 to July 2018 the Office of Refugee Resettlement has received 859 complaints — the largest number of reports during any five-month span in the previous four years — according to the New York Times.

Trump’s administration clearly only cares about revoking any legal protection immigrants and asylum-seekers have. The administration has not done anything proactive to try to change the dynamic of the detention centers. Instead, he believes that separating families is the way to go.

What he fails to mention or maybe even consider is how traumatizing it is for young children to be snatched away from their family, let alone how damaging it is when there are predators preying on vulnerable migrant children.

To make matters worse, the Trump administration waived the requirements of a thorough FBI fingerprint check for employees at a site in Texas, according to NBC News. It is unknown how many employees were hired, only adding to the potential threat to migrant children. Not knowing who is being hired allows this atmosphere of danger in the detention centers to persist.

Another staggering problem is that in the facility in Texas, there were not enough clinicians to attend to the mental health of all the children. There were 2,300 children obtained, yet there were only about 1,300 employees to attend to them.

As stated previously, these children are dealing with the trauma of being thrust into a different country while separated from their family, and some of those children are being sexually abused. To not have enough clinicians on hand is an upsetting issue that should not even be a problem to begin with. Even though this problem has been solved at this specific detention center, other detention centers are still facing this exact issue.

As for the future of these children, actions should be taken in order to reduce the risk of endangerment. For starters, the government should not be separating families. Families staying together could help end the sexual abuse that is going on between workers and children.

Secondly, there should be more thorough background checks of the employees. We need to ensure every person working with the immigrants is actually safe enough to be around. Third, it should definitely be common practice to have enough clinicians at every detention center because an immigrant’s physical and mental health matters as much as a legal citizen’s.

Just because immigrants have entered the country “illegally” does not give our government the right to treat them as less than human.

Featured Illustration: Austin Banzon