Doctors Have a Name for Separating Kids from Their Parents at the Border: It's Torture.

They don’t understand.” Like many parents separated from their children at the border — either through the Trump administration’s defunct zero tolerance policy or the still-ongoing practice of splitting kids from “unfit” parents — Ms. EP had little control over when she’d see her son again or his care in her absence. One woman from El Salvador told clinicians that after being separated from her child “it felt as if my body was gone.” Another father said he contemplated suicide for the first time after he was separated from his son, “watching the TV coverage of all the deported children who were separated from their parents,” according to the report. “They wanted to give their child a chance.” All of the parents interviewed by the medical-advocacy group reported that they came to the U.S. from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras shouldering a good deal of trauma already, only to see that agony and guilt compounded by separation from their children. Physicians involved in the report recommended that the U.S. provide rehabilitative services to the parents and children, consistent with “its obligations to provide redress to victims of torture and ill-treatment.” The group also asked that the U.S. end family separation except in extreme circumstances where the parent is harming the child.