As the Trump administration’s policy of separating parents from children at the border has sparked outrage across the country, teachers are speaking out and joining nationwide protests.
Under the administration’s new “zero-tolerance” policy, in which all cases of illegal entry are referred for criminal prosecution, 2,342 children have been separated from their parents and detained in holding centers since early May, the Department of Homeland Security told reporters today.
News reports from the detention centers describe teenagers and young children, some under the age of 5, held in what the AP has described as cages built from chain-link fencing.
As a teacher, as a parent, as a Texan, I’m horrified by what’s happening to immigrant children. Please join me in signing a petition to stop the separation of children from their parents: https://t.co/Q34W7LwXR7
— Shanna Peeples (@ShannaPeeples) June 18, 2018
Research has shown that separating children from their caregivers, especially at a very early age, causes toxic stress that can have lasting effects on the body and the brain.
Over the past few weeks, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Physicians and the American Psychiatric Association have all issued statements opposing the policy, saying that family separation causes permanent and serious harm to children’s health.
A petition organized by psychiatrists, social workers, and other counselors had more than 15,000 signatures as of Tuesday. The authors of the petition, who know through research and clinical experience the developmental consequences of traumatic stress, wrote that they feel a responsibility to alert the public and appeal to the Trump administration.
On Twitter, some educators are saying the same. One teacher wrote that she has worked with students who have experienced trauma, and she knows the challenges that children who have been through these circumstances will face.
this past year the children i taught haven’t been from immigrant families, by and large. different demographics in Central Va. but i’ve learned about trauma and children here.
— Tess Krovetz (@tesskrovetz) June 19, 2018
those children’s brains are in CONSTANT fight-or-flight mode, which (according to a seminar i took on anxiety this year) means they basically can’t learn as much as they are capable of.
— Tess Krovetz (@tesskrovetz) June 19, 2018
they’re also (anecdotally speaking) sleep-deprived, struggling with separation anxiety (and not “i miss my mom,” but “i recently saw a relative GET SHOT AND DIE, will that happen again?”)...
— Tess Krovetz (@tesskrovetz) June 19, 2018
...and it seems much more challenging for students who have experienced trauma to form healthy relationships with teachers or peers. the trust they should have in the world is shattered.
— Tess Krovetz (@tesskrovetz) June 19, 2018
Others have said that the family separations and the conditions inside the detention centers qualify as child abuse. Teachers are mandated reporters, and are required to report suspected abuse of children in their care to the appropriate authorities—some teachers said these conditions constituted violations they would have to report in any other situation.
I’m a teacher. I’m a mandatory reporter. If I saw or heard of this in my daily world, it would be reported.
— E.V. Reed (@fromthepidgin) June 18, 2018
@KamalaHarris @SenFeinstein @RepBarbaraLee the Republican Party is participating in child abuse. I am a mandated reporter because I am a teacher. There are child abuse laws in Texas and mandated reporters. Can the children be released under this law?
— Wanda-San (@jensax) June 19, 2018
I’m an art teacher and therefore a mandated reporter of child abuse @realDonaldTrump end this now #impeachtrumpNow #StopSeparatingFamilies https://t.co/sSDib68vsz
— Sarah Duffy (@maguireduffy) June 19, 2018
Teachers have also been among the thousands who have taken to the streets in protest of these policies. At the Families Belong Together Rally in Los Angeles, one of almost two dozen protests that took place around the country on June 14, many protesters were teachers in the Los Angeles public school system, the New York Times reported.
“They can’t focus on school or the future if we just take out the welcome mat,” Elizabeth Kenoff, a special education teacher, told the Times at the rally.
Another California teacher, Elizabeth Osborne, drove more than 200 miles to protest for the day on Monday outside of a detention center in El Cajon—the same facility that Rep. Nancy Pelosi had toured earlier that day.
She told local news station KEYT that current policies remind her of historical events she’s taught, including the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.
“I just don’t think we should repeat that,” she said.
Other educators have said the new border policy is reminiscent of other state-sanctioned family separations throughout American history.
On Twitter, Django Paris, an associate professor of language and literacy in the college of education at Michigan State University, noted the similarities to the federal government’s Native American boarding schools in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. These schools separated parents from their children, often against their will, and attempted to force students to abandon their cultural heritage.
Colonial nation-state schooling has always been about separating Native children, Black children, children of color from their families, sending them away from family and community, sending them to a place that devalues their languages, knowledges, lifeways...
— Django Paris (@django_paris) June 19, 2018
Photo: In this photo provided by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, people who’ve been taken into custody related to cases of illegal entry into the United States sit in one of the cages at a facility in McAllen, Texas, on June 17. —U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Rio Grande Valley Sector via AP