Trauma Inflicting, Not Trauma Informed: The U.S. Federal Government's Double Standard toward Migrant Children
The Trump administration continues to treat migrant children at the U.S. border in ways that are contrary to child welfare principles that Congress has established for the states. Why this double standard when it comes to children?
In February 2018, the U.S. Congress passed, and President Trump signed, the Family First Prevention Services Act (FFPSA) (also referred to as the Family First Act), as part of the [ 3]. As its title suggests, FFPSA prioritizes keeping children with their families and attempts to reduce the number of children removed from their homes. In addition, this act minimizes funding for congregate and institutional care of children, recognizing that children do best in less restrictive family settings. Finally, this act requires a "trauma-informed" approach that applies evidence-based strategies. It has been hailed as the most dramatic change to the child welfare system in nearly 40 years ([15]).
When it comes to children at our border, these principles are blatantly ignored, even though children crossing our southern border can face protection risks as serious as those for children in foster care ([12], [13]). As social workers know well, states hold primary responsibility for child welfare services, with federal influence wielded legislatively through financial reimbursements and programmatic supports. By contrast, the care and custody of migrant children (both accompanied and unaccompanied) falls under the authority of the federal government. Thus, the federal government in effect operates a parallel child welfare system somehow not bound by the same guidelines imposed on the states.
As Congress was passing FFPSA—designed to minimize states' removal of children from families, to reduce nonfamily foster care, and to require trauma-sensitive and evidence-based practices—the federal government was simultaneously gearing up to violate all these principles in its own child welfare system for migrant and asylum-seeking children. Consequently, the federal government is legislatively saying one thing and administratively doing another. Specifically, FFPSA requires that the federal government
- support states in reducing the removal of maltreated children from their families, while on the other hand the Trump administration has been intentionally separating migrant children from their families while detained by federal immigration authorities.
- require that funded child welfare programs apply "recognized principles of a trauma-informed approach ... to address trauma's consequences and facilitate healing" (§ 50711(a)( 2)(e)( 4)(B)), yet the Trump administration has been simultaneously inflicting trauma on migrant children through the unnecessary separation from parents and caregivers, and for reasons not based on the best interests of the child. Despite a policy alteration that would maintain family unity by authorizing the detention of children with their families ([14]), many children remain separated due to the federal government's apparent disregard for basic humanitarian protocols that could make reunifications faster and easier ([ 7]).
- limit state reimbursements to those child welfare services that are "promising, supported, or well-supported practices" (§ 50711(a)( 2)(e)( 4)(C)), whereas the Trump administration has been implementing approaches with migrant children that meet none of these guidelines, and which instead have been condemned by child welfare practitioners and religious leaders ([ 5]; [11]). Even family detention, the purported policy alternative to separating children from their families, has already been condemned ([16]).
- create limits on federal payments for institutional placements of domestic children rather than foster family homes, while the Trump administration nonetheless has placed migrant children into shelters that house hundreds of children at a time, even up to 1,500 children in one shelter ([ 6]).
At root, the federal government has violated the most fundamental principle of decision making about children: prioritizing the best interests of the child over other factors including, and especially, political ones. The concept of best interests of the child forms the foundational building block for the international Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC): "In all actions concerning children ... the best interests of the child shall be a primary consideration" (CRC, Article 3). All U.S. states and territories likewise have statutes that require consideration of a child's best interests in questions of custody, placement, and other critical issues. A core guiding principle in such decision making is the "importance of family integrity and preference for avoiding removal of the child" ([ 4], p. 2).
As the U.S. federal government has implemented policies that inflict trauma on children, rather than being informed by trauma's consequences, and that prioritize political interests over children's best interests, social workers have a unique duty to speak up for the voiceless and to work for justice. At the micro level, social workers and allied professionals can respond and attest to the traumaand stress caused by removing children from their families ([ 1]; [ 2]). At the mezzo level, social services organizations can speak to the impact on communities and community-based organizations of fracturing families and generating mistrust toward public servants. At the macro level, social workers can organize, protest, and engage in policy analysis to demonstrate the rights-violating and principle-defying nature of these current government practices ([ 9], [10]). Ultimately, we must identify a better way forward.
As a profession built on the principles of social justice, dignity and worth of the person, and the importance of human relationships ([8]), social workers must use our individual and collective voices to critique these contradictory and harmful practices and demand that our government apply the best of our child welfare knowledge to vulnerable children within our borders, regardless of their immigration status. Furthermore, those of us who are educators can inform our students of these policy issues, and of this parallel child welfare system, so that tomorrow's social workers continue to work for justice that applies to children of all backgrounds.
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