When in crisis “Look for the Helpers.” Who are the Helpers?
Inhumane treatment of migrant children at the US-Mexico border has captured our national attention. News outlets across the country have extensively reported on details of an international tragedy. The imagery revealing acute trauma stemming from child-parent separation, led to public outcry against the Trump Administration. Children as representative of one generation hoping for a good life, separated from their parents of another generation who were trying to fulfill that hope. The impact this will have on our generation and the next would be almost unfathomable, if we didn’t have history as a guide. The major difference being that those who are currently suffering are voyeurs of their own collective trauma. On June 20, 2018, Trump signed an executive order to end family separation, “So we’re going to have strong — very strong borders, but we’re going to keep the families together. I didn’t like the sight or the feeling of families being separated.”, Trump said.
In November, the AP released a report from an investigation revealing approximately 69,550 migrant children were held in U.S. government custody over the past year, “enough infants, toddlers, kids and teens to overflow the typical NFL stadium.” Also, it was confirmed by the AP and through a document retrieval via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) process that almost 400 more children were separated from their parents after the executive order. A considerable decrease, however, the damage has already been done. The impact on the human consciousness can be imagined without being detailed, but the resulting trauma is well- documented.
The Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) released a report in 2019 detailing extensive trauma experienced by migrants from neighboring countries, primarily Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. Caregivers at US government shelters report “heightened feelings of anxiety and loss”, cementing the long-term consequences of trauma.
A policy of Zero Tolerance, per the Texas Tribune, meant that hundreds of parents have been deported making reunification “more difficult,” and others “have been deemed ineligible for reunification.” Migrants traveled thousands of miles for a better life but had no idea what fait accompli awaited them in the United States. They were charged as criminals and separated from their families, their belongings discarded, and children thrown in cages separated from everything they knew and all they hoped for.
Mental Health professionals visiting Catholic Charities Humanitarian Respite Center in McAllen, Texas released drawings from children who were trying to describe the conditions at Custom and Border Patrol facilities. Dr. Marsha Griffin, a pediatrician and spokesperson for American Academy of Pediatrics toured the processing center in Ursula, “What these children are experiencing is extraordinarily traumatizing, it can be seen immediately and it can be seen years later,” she explained to TIME... “These are the reasons we need to help the government how to take care of children.” Social workers and other mental health professionals need to be at the front line of these issues to provide trauma-informed care and to document what is actually happening on the ground in a reliable way. If there are those among us who help the government provide a better quality of care in the current moment, we need to, simultaneously, do more than the merely help government. We need to change the conditions that prevent children and asylum seekers from receiving humane treatment. We need to change the policies that criminalize their very human existence.
In the aforementioned DHHS report as summarized by CNN, a director states that, “Every single separated kid has been terrified. We’re [seen as] the enemy,” and that “separated children couldn’t tell the difference between facility staff and immigration agents.”
Please, won’t you be my neighbor.
In times of chaos we look for safety, we look for people that can help us. ProPublica reported on access it received to a secret Facebook group of over 9,000 Border Patrol agents, where one agent responded to a news story about a 16-year Guatemalan migrant: “If he dies, he dies.”
A grown man in his 30s. How could someone around my age grow up with the same evolving access to information but develop values completely divergent from my own. My Freshman year in college was filled with experiences that no one in my family could really describe. “There will be so much to learn,” my parents told me as we drove to college passed the cornfields and farmland, that reminded them of the country they left many years ago. So now their only daughter can study at a place that boasts the ‘second largest university librarycollection in the United States’. I did hear about the parties from friends. I was at exactly what I imagined a college party would be — a bunch of students laughing spontaneously, no actual dance floor but there was dancing, no bar but everyone was drinking. There was a DJ, I remember that, because I heard the music stop. A sympathetic voice came over the mic to deliver some news. Facebook didn’t yet exist in its current format, and only a handful of us had anything resembling a smartphone to access and spread information. “Mr. Rogers is dead, pour one out.” We all stopped moving. I can’t say for certain how everyone in the room felt, but in a room full of strangers there was embrace. For a moment, all of us, now technically adults, fell silent in remembrance of a piece of our childhood, the part that fostered our innocence into hope, that told us everyone around us could be a good neighbor.
This is also how Mr. Rogers defined his own life,
“For me, as for all children, the world could have come to seem a scary place to live. But I felt secure with my parents, and they let me know that we were safely together whenever I showed concern about accounts of alarming events in the world.
There was something else my mother did that I’ve always remembered: “Always look for the helpers,” she’d tell me. “There’s always someone who is trying to help.” I did, and I came to see that the world is full of doctors and nurses, police and firemen, volunteers, neighbors and friends who are ready to jump in to help when things go wrong.” (text via snopes.com)
Anyone born after 1970 grew up with Mr. Rogers spreading a hopeful sentiment to be kind to others, not just kind, but to look out for them too. many of us knew this wasn’t always reflected in reality, but still there was a certainty of hope. So we stood there now adults, reflecting on our childhood, and poured one out. The music started to play again, everyone kept moving.
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“In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and that nothing was true.
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
In recent months, a team of consultants at McKinsey recommended that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), “cut spending on food for migrants, as well as on medical care and supervision of detainees.” This as ICE refused to vaccinate migrant families, killing three children, as a result. The San Diego Tribune reported that on Oct. 30, nurses attempted to deliver donated flu vaccines to the San Ysidro Border Patrol station but were turned away.
On December 11th, ICE posted to Twitter a photo with children tightly holding onto each other, tweeting, “ICE honors Human Rights Day”. Yes, it was International Human Rights Day, not April Fools. Julian Castro, former HUD Secretary and current Presidential candidate, responded by saying, “Delete your account.”
More recently, doctors were forcefully arrested in San Diego for protesting their right to administer the flu vaccine to migrants as a matter of public health. At least 3 migrant children died from the flu while in custody last year. We know who the helpers are not. “They won’t let us in. We’ve volunteered to take care of patients, to be on call. We keep trying to help,” a volunteer told the San Diego Tribune.
Ubuntu, our shared humanity.
Humanity, compassion, knowledge, and empathy should not be assigned partisan labels. Social workers aspire to achieving competencies in the area of human rights and justice, following a set of core values, but don’t we all? What is at the core of your own personal values?
“When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born.” Leviticus 19:33–34
A similar sentiment, be a good neighbor, can be found in the world’s major religious texts: Bible, Quran, Torah, Bhagavad-Gita, and Buddhism, for example. Even those who don’t prescribe to any religious belief system have been to taught to abide by the “golden rule” as grounded in moral philosophy, that is― Treat others how you expect to be treated. We resonate with that which we’ve been taught, but our sense of a shared humanity is objectively inherent in us all.
Ubuntu is an expression of humanity roughly translated into English as ‘I am because we are’ from the Nguni Bantu. As Desmond Tutu explained, ubuntu “is not, ‘I think therefore I am’,” drawing a distinction between Rene Descartes’ proposition cogito ergo sum, “It says rather: ‘I am a human because I belong’.” At the foundation of our existence is empathy. To see another’s joy or suffering is intrinsic in who we are as people. (Learn more, as referenced from: Battle, Michael (2007). Reconciliation: The ubuntu theology of Desmond Tutu. Pilgrim Press.)
“My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together.” ~Desmond Tutu
From empathy to action.
So what makes people facilitate cruelty? We are a nation of laws with systems created as a result. Systems that wedded colonization to freedom, with racism as the bind. Certainly, there must be people who serve the humanity of us all, who’s heart extends further than the profits they seek to gain. We are a nation of laws, and of a people, afterall. The total colonization of a foreign land relied on the dehumanization of certain people. Inequality is exacerbated not only by people denigrated as lazy, welfare queens, drug dealers, and criminals, but by those who siphon opportunity for some and use this reductionist and dehumanizing language to oppress the many, in order to achieve their means. This allows people to look the other way when others suffer, especially the impoverished, black, brown, immigrant (referred now by the US President as “criminal illegal immigrants” or “illegals”), and increasingly migrants and asylum seekers.
The history of this great nation is wedded to grave injustice. There will always be oppressors and those willing to look the other way. There have also been those driven to change and progress. Empathy stamps out ignorance. While it’s not the only driving force towards change, it is necessary. Action is required for change, but empathy creates the desire to act.
Taking action towards change.
On the House floor, in June, the House and Senate both passed competing bills that serve to protect migrants at the border. “These are not drug dealers. Or vagrants or criminals. They are simply people fleeing a horrible situation in their home country for a better life.” said Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-NY). The purpose of the bill was to protect children and codify better facility conditions. This did not satisfy the more progressive democrats in the House, like Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-NY) highlighting that it didn’t go far enough, saying instead “we should defund ICE.” Abigail Tracy of Vanity Fair reported on government officials first-time visits to detention centers, this included Madeliene Dean, a Democratic Congresswoman from Pennsylvania who responded, “The world and this country should cry out to this administration to end this inhumanity today.”
Julian Castro visited a facility in his home state of Texas. Castro is advocating to decriminalize border crossing, by calling for an end to Section 1325 of Title 8 of the United States Code, which designates illegal entry into the U.S. a misdemeanor felony, making it a civil issue, not criminal. Criminalizing border crossing allows leads to family separation when the parents are incarcerated. In a show of solidarity, Castro not only called for legislation but escorted asylum seekers across the border, who had been waiting months after being turned away by Customs and Border Patrol. Cory Booker, Beto O’Rourke and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus also did the same at the Border.
Some of the strongest rebuke has come from the Social Workers in Congress, Reps. Barbara Lee and Karen Bass. Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D-CA) recently led a trip for Congressional Black Caucus members to the border and highlighted the devastating effect of our cruel immigration policies, releasing a statement: “Trump’s white nationalist agenda has been harming immigrants since Day 1 of his presidency. This hearing showed us exactly how Stephen Miller and Trump have been working to keep people from “s**thole” countries out of America. These cruel and bigoted policies have no place in a nation built by immigrants from all walks of life, and we all must keep pushing back so that his xenophobic vision of America does not become our America.” Lee said.
In times of crisis, you can find scores of people working to towards a resolution and for change. There is reason to hope. Outside of Congress, a number of non-profit organizations have worked tirelessly to provide service to these migrants, groups like Families Belong Together, El Refugio, among many others. It’s important to remember that these organizations are filled with passionate people who lead the charge. Some organize as a community to combat inhumane policies. This October, a group of activists (and organizations), like the Florida Immigration Council and The National Center for Youth Law, landed a victory after advocating for the closure of private prison company running the Homestead detention center, the “largest and most controversial” federal children’s shelter and operating “for-profit child detention center.”, per the Miami Herald. This shelter housed thousands of migrant children since early 2018.
A major force in this fight against cruelty is a grassroots organization founded in 1986, RAICES Texas which is still led by community activists with a mission to “defend the rights of immigrants and refugees, empower individuals, families and communities, and advocate for liberty and justice.” RAICES has heavily prioritized the use of mental health professionals in the ‘intervention’ process. A trained clinical social worker, Miriam Camero, wrote in an email to supporters, “Our clients have courage like you would not believe. Hopefulness to still smile despite life’s struggles. A profound sense of family and community. A strong desire to help others, despite their own situation… Migration has been practiced for thousands of years by our ancestors. Migrating for safety or a better life and opportunity for loved ones is a universal human experience, and behind every immigration statistic is a mother, father, individual, or child struggling to survive.”
“A strong desire to help others, despite their own situation.”
Social Work, the helping profession.
The psychological and physical impacts of family separation have been well-documented, and can have permanent negative consequences, especially for children. The severe trauma of being separated from one’s parents or guardians at a young age can also lead to invasive traumatic memories, attachment disorder, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, trust, abandonment issues, and identity crises. (For more: Child Neglect: A Guide for Prevention, Assessment, and Intervention, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services)
At the Border, Social workers primarily act as case managers, and conduct intake interviews to gather information that will document the whereabouts of family members as they move through the visa application process. In New York, hospitals treating children separated at the border have identified evidence of mental illness and suicide in the children, and residual trauma in social workers, physicians, and other health professionals attending to their care. This was addressed by NYC Health and Hospitals CEO, Mitchell Katz, for source.
We can draw a parallel between migrant detention centers today and the Japanese internment camps of the 1940s. More than 120,000 people of Japanese descent were removed from their homes and placed in internment camps as a government response during the aftermath of Pearl Harbor.
In the early 1940s, the term ‘social work’ as a modern profession was relatively new. Still the term appeared throughout literature and in testimony during this period. In Facilitating Injustice, Yoosun Park, MSW, PhD, provides one recollection of the social worker response to this atrocity. Park notes that the Social Service Review reported the “state and local social workers loaned by the California State Department of Social Welfare” executed part of the removal and/or their registration into the camps. At the federal level, the Nisei (or Nikkei) meaning second generation, those not born in Japan, i.e. US citizens were removed from their homes. The injustice was mandated by bureaucratic institutions, the facilitation of that injustice was complicity and by their willingness to remain silent against cruelty. Of course, as Park reminds us, “the actions and motivations described here occurred in a period rife with fear and propaganda.”At the federal level, the Nisei (or Nikkei) meaning second generation, those not born in Japan, i.e. US citizens were removed from their homes in what was called “enemy alien”evacuations. A high ranking government official, Lieutenant General John Lesesne DeWitt, provided recommendations to the Department of Justice and President Roosevelt stating: “In the war in which we are now engaged racial affinities are not severed by migration. The Japanese race is an enemy race and while many second and third generation Japanese born on United States soil, possessed of United States Citizenship, have become “Americanized,” the racial strains are undiluted.”
The study of trauma could benefit from using a broader lens, resulting from the undeniable ‘legacy of trauma’ apparent throughout history. Intergenerational trauma, collective trauma, and historical trauma are used somewhat interchangeably. A Native social worker, Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart, PhD, defines historical trauma as the ‘cumulative emotional and psychological wounding, over the lifespan and across generations, emanating from massive group trauma experiences.’ Yellow Horse Brave Heart uses “Historical Trauma Grief Response” as healing method in Indigenous communities. The ‘unresolved grief’ from this trauma can appear as: survivor’s guilt, depression, anger fear, suicidal ideation, PTSD, and others.
Aaron Denham in Rethinking Historical Trauma analyzes the history of trauma, the impact, and behavioral response, “accordingly, the subsequent manifestations of or reactions to historical trauma, which may vary from expressions of suffering to expressions of resilience and resistance.”
Most of these migrants and asylum seekers are going against all odds, to find a better life for themselves and their families away from the only place they considered home because of the history of trauma that persists. And so, Migration could be an act of resilience in response to ‘collective trauma’ or ‘historical trauma’? Their presence is a reminder of survival/our own need to do what it takes to survive.
Survival runs in tandem with resilience. Dr. Tricia Bent-Goodley, professor of Social Work at Howard University, discusses the history of black social workers pioneers who worked in times of collective trauma. Black Perspectives and Social Work Practice outlines how black social workers are well-equipped to understand the intersectionality of trauma and resilience when working with a individuals and communities. These pioneers conjointly valued the spatial relation of a holistic approach to problem-solving, according to Bent-Goodley, in their approaches to issues and structural social problems that weren’t neatly compartmentalized. In response, the “categories of services and programs delivered were holisticin nature, for example, Ida B. Wells-Barnett established the Negro Fellowship League and room, a centeron State Street in Chicago, to producejob coachingand placement, literacy, economic opportunities, selectionaccess, parenting, manhood development activities, returninitiatives, and health care to the hordes of African Americans that were a part of the great Migration.” Quite exemplary of intergenerational trauma.
Slavery was abolished in 1865, then there was the Great Migration, Jim Crow, mass-incarceration, over-incarceration, the surveillance state, and the policing of black neighborhoods, and lynching past and oresent day. The resilience is evident in our ability to carry on, but systems must change for holisitc healing to take root. True change should not reinforce oppression; therefore, true healing must coincide with liberation.
Creating a response to collective trauma signals a shift towards a more humanistic social work, in which Malcolm Payne describes that “Humanistic principles are at the heart of social work, yet they are often overlooked in the managerial drive for better control of risk, and resources.” — harkening back to the foundation of social work as a progression, advocates for the impoverished and marginalized and also, against those hold a referendum on power.
Within the last few decades there has been a generational shift in our societal values, which doesn’t consequently signal a permanent trajectory of progress. In the field of social work we must embrace the role of the learner, as well. In Just Practice, Janet Finn, outlines the teaching-learning process we can engage in with our clients or “participants.” This creates a space of ‘cultural humility’ and ‘critical rethinking.’ Although we analyze the role of social workers throughout history, we can unlearn presumptive certainties about the populations we serve and, as Finn goes further to say, ‘disrupt assumptions.’ I recently came across an unattributed quote that said: “if there can be generational trauma, then there can be generational healing.” We can help foster the healing, if we break the cycle of harm.
The National Association of Social Workers (NASW) founded in 1955 recently released a statement calling this current crisis “malicious,” going on to state: “The decision to separate children from their parents as soon as the parent crosses the border into the United States is both harmful and inexcusable. More concretely, the policy directly imperils the health and safety of immigrants.”
For a full list, check out NASW list of resources here.
How can we all help?
Whether you’re a social worker, other mental health professional, or just a concerned citizen, below are a few ways that you can help:
1. Donate- make sure it’s verifiable charity or a trusted source. While monetary contributions are necessary & useful, there are limitations. The limitations of monetary donations it’s conditions on achieving a benchmark. Some actions can’t be directly evaluated, like presence and support. You can find ways to give are providing shelter, offering discounted mental health services to service providers, and more.
2. Volunteer- many of the organizations mentioned ‘above’/in this article need volunteers to
3. Stay informed and don’t let this be normalized.
4. Help the Helpers- Support those on the front line with funds, protection, and amplifying their work.
5. Call you Congresspersonand advocate for some or all of the below recommendations
6. Sign a petition-Add your name to a petition addressed to Congress so policy changes can be made, as requested by the people. Are you a social worker? Sign this petition based on below recommendations.
7. If an organization, partner with mental health providers and professionals, i.e. social workers, psychologists, social psychologists, public health practitioners, to ensure holistic and trauma informed care; create a space for non-Spanish speaking social workers to aide with policy and advocacy.
Recommendations
In Understanding the complexity of US immigration policy, I’ve made the following recommendations to aide in the care of asylum seekers and child migrants and their families:
- In accordance with NASW, rescind “the ‘zero tolerance’ immigration policy that would prosecute families who attempt to cross the border and forcibly separate children from parents is malicious and unconscionable”
- Completely end all family separations
- Bill for mental health services
- Hear/Pass Bill for H.Res.499- Condemning the Trump Administration’s systematic cruel and inhumane treatment of migrants, particularly children, at the southern border. Currently, 63 cosponsors
- Repeal section 1325 which decriminalizes border crossing, so that asylum seekers and migrants will be charged under civil and criminal
- Ensure organizations providing services / in contract are qualified and funded and have a mission to serve.
- Abolish immigration prisons — Reevaluation of imprisonment as a central means of regulating migrants and migration, for more see entry into the Boston Law Review.
“We are the Helpers.”
A human savior is someone who assumes the despondent have no ability. We are helpers, not saviors. Embracing resilience as strength, and recognizing oppressive systems as a weakness that creates legacies of pain. Unlike the historical trauma that we see remnants of today, this generation of traumatized children and adults have access (or eventually will have access) to the global reaction of the cruel treatment they’ve had to endure. Imagine grappling with the collective trauma, and processing that hardly anyone did anything to construct an end.
There are hundreds of reports describing this as inhumane and malicious, this is good. Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi suggested “the House will soon move a series of bills designed to protect migrant kids.” This is good too, but we need bills to actually be passed into law. There are people on the ground ready to implement, to move from empathy to action to change.
And for that, to the dozens of organizations, the hundreds of volunteers who make sure people are treated humanely in this country, the thousands who donated, and to the activists who fight for equal treatment and future progress — Thank you for being a helper.
