N.Y. Attorney General Claims Separated Children Are Suffering Extreme Trauma

While information on the  health and well being of the children separated from their parents at the border is sketchy at best, the Attorney General of New York provided some frightening details on what’s happened to several young people who’ve been relocated to her state.

N.Y. Attorney General Barbara Underwood announced that 321 children separated at the border from their parents are now living in New York in the care of eleven different provider agencies.  One agency said the children range in age from four to twelve years old. The youngest child was a nine-month-old baby.

Underwood said in a statement that the children are suffering extreme trauma.

• For example, a South American boy who was separated from his father at the Mexican border was rushed to the hospital because he was about to jump out of the second-story window of the group home where he was sent in early June after being forcibly separated from his family; the distraught child verbalized that he wanted to jump because he missed his parents.
• Twelve other young immigrant children who were separated from their parents at the border have been treated for physical and mental illnesses at New York City hospitals. One child was suicidal and others were treated for depression and anxiety.

New York was one of 17 states to sue Donald Trump on Tuesday over his administration’s separation policy. The lawsuit was filed in Washington state and seeks to declare Trump’s policy unconstitutional.

“Keeping children separated from their parents is inhumane, unconscionable, and illegal — and we’re filing suit to stop it,” Underwood said in a statement.