Trump's plan to put children in a cage indefinitely while refusing them vaccines is an ethnic cleansing for all to see

Autopsy reports showed that Felipe, age 8, Carlos, 16, and Wilmer, 2, had the flu when they died in the custody of US immigration agents. If two plans announced by the Trump administration this week are finally passed, there will certainly be more names to add to this list of dead children.

Two steps led to this potential public health disaster. The first, unsurprisingly, is the imprisonment of children. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Health and Human Services (HHS) announced a new rule to release the federal government from compliance with the Flores settlement. Flores was designed to protect children in the custody of US immigration bureaucracies against abusive practices. Other protections include the need for children not to be held in an unauthorized detention center for more than 20 days. Under the new Trump regulation, children could be detained indefinitely while processing their immigration file.

Second, refuse the flu vaccine to imprisoned children. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) issued a statement to CNBC stating that "because of the short-term nature of CBP's detention and the complexity of the current vaccination programs, neither CBP nor its health service providers administer vaccines." to the people in our custody. "

The same day, the Trump administration had decided to keep the children in detention for an indefinite period. CBP has publicly stated that it will not provide flu vaccines because they do not keep the children long enough.

Why is this absurd position so dangerous? After all, flu is relatively common – since 2010, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) estimates that between 9.3 and 43 million people are infected each year.

But the danger was clearly spelled out in a letter to representatives Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) and Lucile Royal-Allard (D-CA) of public health experts affiliated with Johns Hopkins and Harvard. In the letter that DeLauro and Royal-Allard, the powerful House Credit Subcommittee Presidents, sent on August 5, 2019, to DHS and HHS, the experts explained that influenza is much more dangerous for children. detainees.

At least three children (Felipe, Carlos and Wilmer) have died of complications from the flu, out of approximately 200,000 children in prison. In the United States, in the last influenza season, there was one death per 600,000 children. In other words, children who are responsible for CBP are nine times more likely to die of influenza than children in the rest of the United States.

In their letter, public health experts explain that "detention centers are at high risk of an influenza epidemic" and, with citations in the scientific literature, explain the epidemiological foundations of this increased risk. They also note that the CDC recommends that all children over 6 months of age be vaccinated against influenza in the absence of medical contraindications.

CBP is aware of the recommendations that influenza vaccine should be given to children over 6 months of age. He also knows that influenza epidemics are more likely in detention centers and that children in prison are at higher risk of death from influenza. Still, CBP still refuses to offer the flu vaccine. Cruelty, as we often say in 2019, is the point.

But giving the flu vaccine to children is not enough to solve the public health crisis. The kids are just not part of the prison.

Even if, to a lack of awareness, this is not a moral mistake in itself, imprisoning children is, in the language of public health research, an "unfavorable experience of childhood". The researchers determined three categories of ace, namely abuse, neglect, and household dysfunction. Being imprisoned involves the three categories of ACE. The more children are exposed to these experiences, the more likely they are to have serious negative consequences for their health. These experiences are associated with an increased risk of ischemic heart disease, stroke, suicide, depression, COPD, alcoholism, liver disease, cancer and more.

I know that the Trump administration is aware of overwhelming scientific evidence regarding trauma. When the administration announced for the first time its intention to terminate the Flores colony, I helped organize clinicians through Kids Do not Belong in Jail for the purpose of submit comments in response to the draft rules. Hundreds of highly qualified experts explained to the administration, with great care, how children would suffer permanent harm as a result of their imprisonment in immigration detention centers. But this administration does not care about overwhelming epidemiological evidence. We are harming, perhaps irreversibly, a whole generation of children who have fled to our homes, begging for our protection.

Cruelty is the point.