Government Medical Experts Say Detaining Migrant Families ‘Poses High Risk of Harm’

By Miriam Jordan

July 18, 2018

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LOS ANGELES — The Trump administration, faced with a public outcry over the separation of migrant families at the Southwest border, has said it is exploring a major expansion of family detention centers. But two of the government’s own medical consultants said this week that they had identified a “high risk of harm” to migrant children housed at such facilities.

A series of 10 investigations over the past four years, conducted during both the Obama and Trump administrations, “frequently revealed serious compliance issues resulting in harm to children,” the two physicians, Scott Allen and Pamela McPherson, said in a letter to the Senate’s Whistleblower Protection Caucus.

The doctors said they had “watched in horror” as migrant children were separated from their families over the past several months in a bid to deter illegal border crossers. But they cautioned that the Trump administration’s fallback position may not be much better.

Read more at https://nyti.ms/2mvijyB.

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