Don't Let The Trump Administration Jail Immigrant Children Indefinitely!

The Trump administration has proposed regulations that would keep immigrant children and families in jail-like detention centers indefinitely.

The conditions in many detention centers are deplorable and stories of abuse, including sexual abuse and exploitation, abound.

Family detention is also damaging parent-child relationships and could have lasting consequences for these innocent children. We know from extensive research that toxic stress can alter the development of a young child's brain – permanent changes that can lead to learning problems, emotional problems and lifelong dysfunction.

Can you imagine the stress these young children – including some babies – are experiencing? Suddenly they are taken away from their family, placed in an unknown environment, and cared for by people speaking a language they might not understand.

If the Trump administration's proposed regulation passes, already traumatized children will experience more trauma. We can't let that happen.

Sign the petition and and tell the administration that you strongly oppose these new regulations and that you believe the US should not expand child detention.
Subject: DHS Docket No. ICEB-2018-0002

I am writing to oppose proposed new regulations described in DHS Docket No. ICEB-2018-0002. If enacted, these rules would require immigrant children to be held in detention centers indefinitely. The Flores agreement settled decades ago put in place commonsense, humane protections for immigrant children in U.S. custody. These protections included a maximum 20 days in detention and required the facilities children are detained in be managed by licensed child welfare agencies.

By removing these protections, already traumatized children will experience more trauma. Already stories of abuse and neglect of children housed in detention centers abound. Family detention has also proven to damage parent-child relationships and puts their physical safety at risk, including for sexual exploitation and abuse.

Toxic stress, like that which children in long-term detention experience, can alter the development of a young child's brain—permanent changes that can lead to learning problems, emotional problems and lifelong dysfunction. Toxic stress occurs when a child's stress response is activated frequently or for a prolonged amount of time and they either lack the ability to end the stressful experience or don't have a supportive adult to help them through it. Healthy brain development for children requires the presence of a safe, stable and responsive caregiver, regardless of their place of birth, citizenship status or whether the caregiver is biological or adoptive.

I believe we must put the well-being of children first. For that reason, I strongly oppose these new regulations and I believe the US should not expand child detention.

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