Source: United States House of Representatives – Representative Mike Quigley (IL-05)
U.S. Representative Mike Quigley (D-Ill.), with U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Angela Alsobrooks (D-Md.), led over 55 of their colleagues in pressing Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on the impacts of ICE’s violence on children, including lasting physical and psychological trauma.
“ICE and CBP operations that treat children like collateral damage threaten their physical and mental health and wellbeing… This disregard for child welfare undermines the government’s core child-protection obligations,” wrote the lawmakers. “Yet your agency does not appear to be taking any action to speak out against or investigate the impacts of the Trump Administration’s immigration agenda on children.”
Under the Trump administration, children have been exposed to increasingly violent and intense immigration enforcement operations. ICE has carried out raids at schools, daycare centers, and even a child’s birthday party. Here in Chicago, ICE agents forcibly detained a daycare teacher in front of her students and deployed tear gas near an elementary school, sending children running and teachers scrambling for cover. Even when children are not the direct target, their exposure to this violence creates lasting trauma.
“[ICE and CBP’s] practices have triggered national outrage and risk traumatizing children and depriving them of access to education and basic services, with lasting consequences for their behavioral, physical, academic, and emotional well-being,” wrote the lawmakers.