Despite the call for and the ‘official’ end to family separation, migrant children are still being ripped from their families.

As of December 2019, at least 1,100 children have been taken and forced into dangerous and inadequate facilitates where they are subjected to sleep on mats on cold floors, care for younger children, and suffered well-documented cases of sexual abuse.

Many families were fleeing legitimate threats of violence to themselves and their children in their home countries, and hoped for safety upon reaching the United States. Instead, children were torn from their parents’ arms, in most cases with no explanation at all.

Families were lied to and told their children were going to receive medical care. When parents understandably expressed distress, many were ridiculed by detention center staff and border patrol.

In a new report published by Physicians for Human Rights, a nonprofit of medical professionals who investigate human rights abuses, physicians found that family separation at the border rises to the level of torture.

According the United Nations, torture is defined as:

[...] any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity [...]

The psychological effects of family separation include trouble eating, sleeping, anxiety, and nightmares –– just to name a few. All of these symptoms are consistent with post-traumatic stress related to torture.

Sign the petition demanding that Congress end the torture of migrant families now. Reunite families immediately and end family separation for good!