Immigrant kids are forcibly medicated in custody, lawyers say

Even though President Donald Trump was forced by public outcry last week to reverse his administration's policy of separating families seeking asylum or crossing the border illegally, there doesn't seem to be an end in sight to the questions it raises and challenges that lie ahead.

The child-separation policy, spearheaded by Attorney General Jeff Sessions and defended by Trump's staunchest allies, sparked national outrage and bipartisan criticism in Congress.

While in detention, the government regularly places the minors on multiple antidepressants, anti-anxiety and other psychotropic medications without telling them what the drugs are or consulting their parents, said lawyers from the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law and the National Center for Youth Law. If they refuse, they are told they will be denied release or privileges, or they are forcibly fed the drugs, they said.

After Trump's June 20 executive order to end family separation at the border, the Justice Department asked a federal judge in California to alter a 1997 national settlement agreement that bars immigration officials from detaining undocumented children for longer than 20 days so they can be held indefinitely with their families.

Trump further complicated things Sunday on Twitter by advocating immediate deportment without due process.

"We cannot allow all of these people to invade our country," he wrote on the social-media site. "When somebody comes in, we must immediately, with no judges or court cases, bring them back from where they came."

Previous administrations avoided the 20-day deadline entirely by releasing families after asking them to appear in court at a later date, according to Lee Gelernt, a lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Union. The Trump administration announced its "zero tolerance" policy in April — detaining families trying to cross the border without visas and separating the children from their parents. It now says that if the Los Angeles judge doesn't tweak the Flores settlement, as it's called, it will be forced to resume breaking up families.

In addition, parents or other custodians of the children must go through a Kafkaesque experience to free the minors from detention by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, the Health and Human Services unit that is responsible for them, according to a request from the lawyers to have a federal judge step in.

"Awakening youth in the small hours of the morning and transferring them to juvenile lock-ups without notice or opportunity to be heard breaks faith with both law and common decency," the attorneys said in a June 15 federal court filing in Los Angeles.

U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee, the same judge the Justice Department asked to modify the Flores settlement, is scheduled to hear arguments on June 29 whether the U.S. has violated the terms of the 1997 agreement by allegedly prolonging the detention of minors.

Lawyers from the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law and the National Center for Youth Law claim the Office for Refugee Resettlement "steps up" children, without giving them notice or an opportunity to be heard, on only vague suspicions that they might be dangerous. Once sent to secure facilities, children are detained indefinitely because the government suspects a potential custodian might be unfit, according to the lawyers.

"ORR's refusal to release non-dangerous children so it may engage in extreme vetting of their parents or other relatives is wholly irrational," the lawyers said. "Defendants admit as much, conceding that several of ORR's vetting practices have no empirical foundation, but are rather self-serving hedges against political reproach."

In addition, the Justice Department said, the Shiloh Residential Treatment Center, where according to the human rights lawyers the minors are medicated against their will, cares for children with a very high level of mental health needs and/or violent histories and is monitored closely by the State of Texas for compliance with its child welfare laws.

"Shiloh's Texas state license also mandates that it comply with applicable Texas state laws concerning informed consent with regard to the prescription of psychotropic medications to children in state residential treatment facilities," the Justice Department said. If a child "has a viable sponsor, Shiloh informs the sponsor about any changes in medications prescribed for the child, including starting a new medication or increasing the dose of a current medication."

The detention of immigrant minors without any court oversight predates the Justice Department's zero-tolerance policy, said Jesse Hahnel, executive director of the National Center of Youth Law, whose attorneys have been visiting facilities to monitor the conditions under which the children are held for the past year.