This week, the Trump administration announced a new rule that would allow it to indefinitely detain migrant families who have crossed the U.S. border illegally.
The new rule aims to replace the Flores agreement, a 1997 court settlement that limits the amount of time children can be detained by the government to a maximum of 20 days.
Psychologists say indefinite detention could have a lasting impact on the development and mental health of these children.
"If the regulation goes through ... we're going to see additional harm done to children," says Luis Zayas, a clinical social worker, psychologist and dean of the school of social work at the University of Texas, Austin.
A recently published study in Social Science & Medicine found 32% of children at a detention center showed signs of emotional problems. The study involved interviews with 425 mothers of children at the detention center, who completed a questionnaire about mental health symptoms in their kids.
"Overall, we found high rates of emotional distress in these children," says Sarah MacLean, an author of the study and a medical student at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York.
They showed symptoms like wanting to cry all the time, to be with their mom; conduct problems, such as fighting with other kids or having temper tantrums; or only wanting to interact with adults, she adds.
These symptoms were far more common in the children who were recently reunited with their mothers after being forcibly separated from them once they crossed the U.S. border compared to children who hadn't been separated from their parents.
MacLean also interviewed 150 kids aged nine to 17 years at the same detention center about whether they were experiencing symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.
These are symptoms "like re-experiencing, having flashbacks of trauma or nightmares about the trauma," explains MacLean.
Her study found that 17% of the children showed significant symptoms of PTSD. "And [they] likely would be diagnosed with PTSD if they saw a physician," says MacLean.
Most Central American children in U.S. immigration detention centers have already experienced layers of trauma by the time they arrive here — in their home country and on the journey, says Zayas.
MacLean's study couldn't distinguish whether the emotional problems and the PTSD experienced by the children at the detention center were because of their past traumas or from being held — or a combination of everything. But her findings confirm previous studies done in other countries.
Research by the Australian Human Rights Commission found that children in detention facilities suffer from mental disorders and the level of problems grow with time in detention, says Kristen Torres, director of child welfare and immigration at First Focus on Children, an advocacy group in Washington D.C.
The study found that 34% of children in detention had diagnosable mental health disorders, and nearly 85% of children and parents said their mental health was affected by detention. Sadness and constant crying were their most common symptoms.
A 2004 study in Australia found that all children and adolescents in detention met the criteria for PTSD, major depression and suicidal thinking.
Zayas, who has done psychological evaluations of children and families in immigration detention centers, said in nearly every child he has seen over the past five years, there's been some detrimental effects on their mental health.
"I met an 11-year-old boy who began to wet his bed after the strain of detention and having been held in medical isolation with his mother because she had gone on a hunger strike," he said. "I've had suicidal teenagers, who saw no point in living anymore because they don't know what their future holds."
Normally, being with their parents protects kids psychologically and helps them cope with trauma and stress. But that protective shield is often eroded in detention, says Zayas, because parents are stressed by confinement, too.
"Parents who are under the stress of detention not only transmit that stress and anxiety, and depression to their children, but their roles as parents are upended," he says.
Their authority is undercut, and they can't comfort their children as well.
'We found high rates of emotional distress in these children.'[/pullquote]Studies of mothers in family detention centers show they had high levels of hopelessness and depression, says Torres.
"They were unable to have a proper parent-child relationship within the detention center," she says.
Children and families in detention feel threatened by their environment, says Zayas: "It's not the normal experience of children to be living behind walls with barbed wires on them."
"There are prison guards who loom large, who are often gruff and not sensitive, because they are prison guards. They're not guardians," says Zayas.
Research shows that chronic stress and adversity affects the development of kids' brains.
"It affects regions of the brain and functions that have to do with cognition, intellectual process, with judgment, self-regulation, social skills," says Zayas. "And it really troubles me that there will be thousands and thousands of children who will be scarred for life."
Some children might bounce back once they're released from detention, he says, but many will need long-term mental health care to recover from their traumas.
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