Updated: Comments by Angela Raven-Roberts and Bilge Bassani: Children held at the US Mexico border

Angela Raven-Roberts

Great ideas! It would be good as senior and very experienced staff from the world’s premier child agency.   We could volunteer to work quietly with the organizations trying to deal with this situation in the ground. I am sure they are overwhelmed and inexperienced and of course all the attention will be on the flak and ire that this is causing maybe folks can find out which organisations ate working and quietly also offer help. Regards Angela


Angela.


Bilge Bassani

I agree with Angela. I have posted several articles in LinkedIn and tweeter. It is an unconscionable situation. While I understand the politics behind the silence, I am sorry that UNICEF and UNICEF Committee for USA have been quiet about it. 

I am the President of FXB USA ( NGOwith 501 c status ) and affiliated with their policy arm
( FXB Health & Human Rights Center at Harvard School of Public Health). 

If there were a campaign, I could offer FXB USA Web, FaceBook account and tweeter feed to amplify UNICEF Retiree's message and activities . Best regards, Bilge


Bilgé Ögün Bassani


Angela Raven-Roberts

Thank you for this. I hope UNICEF and retirees are campaigning to support the children in crises at the US border. Many experienced CP folks already in US can be galvanized to support the people trying to sort out this mess. Regards Angela

"Lawyers who visited a border station in Clint, Texas, this week told the Associated Press that during their visit, they encountered small children who had been taken from their parents under the Trump administration’s family-separation policy, some of them infants and toddlers, who are receiving little time or attention from adult caregivers or supervisors. Instead, some detained children receive affection and care—such as being held, rocked, bathed, fed, and even changed—only from other, slightly older detained children. As the AP reported Saturday:


Three girls told attorneys they were trying to take care of [a] 2-year-old boy, who had wet his pants and had no diaper and was wearing a mucus-smeared shirt when the legal team encountered him.


“A Border Patrol agent came in our room with a 2-year-old boy and asked us, ‘Who wants to take care of this little boy?’ Another girl said she would take care of him, but she lost interest after a few hours and so I started taking care of him yesterday,” one of the girls said in an interview with attorneys.'"


https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2019/06/immigrant-children-border-parentification/592393/