good morning, everyone. good morning. welcome back. for those of you who were here yesterday, we're going tofor th yesterday, we're going to get started. good morning. it's my pleasure to welcome all of you to our second day of the best interest symposium focused on advancing protections for migrant children.

my name is jayish, the dean and director of the immigration justice clinic here at american university washington college of law. it's my pleasure to welcome all of you to the law school and i offer that welcome not only on behalf of the law school but on behalf of our co-sponsoring institution, the american university center for latin american and latino studies led by eric herbburg and dennis stitchcom and the american immigration lawyers association and our planning committee representatives. again, i thank you for everyone who has been -- [ applause ] >> yes. thank you. for all of the hard work that the planning economy has put in to making this event such a success. thanks to all of you. i know you have very busy schedules so i appreciate your willingness to be here. for those of you who were here, yesterday we had a series of enriching panels beginning to unpack some of the challenges

facing migrant youths, some of the factors across the world as well as some of the ways in which the asylum system is being challenged here in the united states, as well as how we can understand more deeply the best standard at the heart of this gathering. we're really pleased, both yesterday and today, to have such a broad range of experts in the room, not only legal experts, legal scholars and practitioners, but also folks from the social science, mental health professionals, other health professionals, really folks with a broad range of expertise. we had some very, very fruitful conversations yesterday, and i'm sure that that will continue today. through these conversations, again, we're hoping not only to understand what the challengess are, but also to identify paths forward. again, i want to acknowledge the staff from the law school, from the center who have made this event possible, including alex an dre flynn, christiana little,

many student assistants from the center for latin america and latino students and several members of the college of law including our public relations team, the special events team and others. and for many of you, i know in the room work at non-profit organizations and i know how difficult it is to get the work done without the generous support of donors who can provides the financial resources that we need to make events like this possible. i want to acknowledge with tremendous gratitude once again the sponsors for this event including jones day, kirkland and ellis, skadden, baker and mckenzie, law offices of sheila starky hun. thanks to all of you for your support. [ applause ] so we're going to be beginning our second day of the conference

with a presentation, a keynote presentation, from one of the leading experts in the field. we're really delighted to have with us today professor karen musalo. i know for many of us, she needs no introduction, but the professor is a founding director of the center for gender and refugee studies at uc hastings college of law. it's fair to say she is the leading expert on the topic of gender-based asylum and really many forms of refugee protection and asylum in the united states and overseas. that's reflected in the fact that she's a lead coau sure of refugee policy. she's authored numerous book chapters and articles and relevant to our project as well, the professor has litigated major cases in gender asylum serving as lead attorney in matter of kasingo, counsel in matter of r.a., amicus in matter of a.r.c.g. and co-counsel in

matter of a.b. she continues to public in the field and has received numerous awards for her pioneering work in this area, and today she's going to be speaking to us about how we can restore protection in the area of gender-based violence. so please join me in warmly welcome with -- warmly welcoming the professor. [ applause ] >> okay. i'm short. can people see me over the screen? i don't have a box to stand on. everybody can hear me?

so first of all, thank you for that very generous introduction. second, i want to thank the center for latin american and latino studies and american university college of law, ala, the planning committee, if i've left anybody out i apologize really. it's an honor for me to be here and speak to you. from the panels yesterday we touched on some of the root causes for migration and we talked about gender-based violence, violence against women and girls, gangs, and so what i hope to do is talk about the law that has been eviscerated by this administration to, you know, the law to provide protection and the title -- i was asked to title it "restoring protection" and i will talk about that, but i think it's important to give a little bit of the context of how this law developed and show the incredible sort of resistance to protecting women from

gender-based violence so that you understand how we got to where we are now and how we might get to a better place. forgive me for giving some of the history before i go into really the hopeful part of how i think we can restore protection. first of all, what have been some of the conceptual barriers in this area going way back to the beginning of the refugee convention, the protocol, and state parties just didn't see survivors of gender-based violence as fitting. we know the definition is somebody with persecution on account of find grounds, race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group. so harms inflicted on women weren't seen as being persecution, which is required for refugee protection. gender, you have to show that the persecution is on account of one of the five grounds. gender isn't one of the five grounds. that was another barrier. also the concept was of

government being the persecutors and often it's private actors who are the perpetrators of violence. these were seen as conceptual barriers. when the u.n. high commission refugee began to see this resistance, it put out a series of directives beginning in 1985 and i'm oversimplifying, but what they counselled state parties to do was to see that a harm would be persecution if it was a violation of human rights. really not be, you know, trapped in this concept that these are just cultural norms or religious dictates. they're violations of human rights and persecution and the particular social group ground of the definition could include groups defined by gender and the persecution didn't need to be by the state, it could be by non-state actor when the state would not protect. so there were advances and retreats over the years in the

u.s. and i'm going to focus more on the u.s. in 1996, the b.i.a., board of immigration appeals, issued the first precedent gender decision in the u.s. in a case involving female genital cutting granting asylum, reversing an immigration judge, and granting asylum for persecution of the fear of female genital cutting. this photo is in detention. we've heard a lot about detention and when she was out of detention and had been granted asylum. i love to just show that photo because i think it illustrates the dehumanization of people behind bars and just, you know -- anyway, just leave you with that thought. so even though there was this groundbreaking decision in 1996, there was a much more contentious route to recognition for domestic violence survivors. we had female genital cutting, many of us thought that would open the door to all range of gender persecution, but what --

it wasn't such an easy route. in 1999, the board of immigration appeals in matter of r.a. reversed a grant of asylum to a guatemalan woman fleeing brutal domestic violence. this was during the clinton administration. and janet reno and the justice department did two good things before the end of that administration. janet reno certified r.a. to herself and she vacated it and her justice department issued proposed regulations that would have really contemplated protecting survivors of domestic violence and other gender persecution. those regulations were proposed in 2000. they have, to this day, never been finalized. throughout the whole obama administration, we were like get those regulations and finalize them, never happened. so you just see the depth of contention around this issue.

going forward, you know, miss r.a. herself was granted asylum by an immigration judge. it was at a level that didn't result in binding precedent. there was another high-profile of a mexican woman miss l.r., granted at the level of an immigration judge, not binding precedent and it wasn't until matter of a.r.c.g. in 2014 that we actually got a binding decision saying that domestic violence could be the basis for an asylum claim. think about that. all the way from 1999 to 2014 to get a decision that domestic violence could be a basis but that would not be long lived because of the trump administration. so what did a.r.c.g. do? as i said first precedent decision recognizing domestic violence. it had a narrow legal holding. i talked about the particular social group definition and how that could be used in cases

involving gender persecution, so it had this narrow holding saying this social group defined by married women in guatemala unable to leave was a valid social group and subsequent, even though it was a narrow holding, advocates really came in and used a.r.c.g. to successfully advocate for other cases. so not just of married women, but unmarried women, girls forced into sexual relationships with gang members, child abuse survivors. a.r.c.g. not revolutionary but advocating really expanded to use it. what happened? sessions, during his time as attorney general, certified a case called a.b. to himself and used a.b. to reverse a.r.c.g. and in reversing a.r.c.g. he reversed a grant of asylum to

miss a.b. you know, what does the matter of a.b. do? this little -- hate to show you a photo like this so early in the morning but what can i say? the reason i add this is because when the attorney general did this and i was actually contacted by a reporter for the "washington post" and i'm very proud of the fact that this back to the dark ages is a quote from what i said to the reporter, i said, you know, this refusal to recognize gender violence or domestic violence as a violation of women's rights and as a basis for asylum is just yanking us back to the dark ages of how we conceptualize women's rights. so that was the headline there. i show that. it's true. the point that i was making and i think those of you in this room that know the tortured history of winning recognition that women's rights are human rights, this was kind of pulling us back.

okay. this is just a photo of miss a.b. who, like many asylum seekers, has chosen to maintain her anonymity. just to give you a sense of the person herself. she did, if we had time, i would have shown you, she did, along with human rights first, did a short video about talking about the persecution. so her case had very strong facts. this isn't a case where the attorney general was looking for, you know, a weak case. she was married to her abuser. she had three children with him. the abuser's brother was a member of the salvadoran police. extreme physical violence over the entire length of the relationship. the police were largely unresponsive and when i say largely unresponsive, to the point that one time they issued her a protective order, her husband, beating her threatening

her with guns and knives and the police say why don't you serve this on your husband. i think anybody who thinks about an enraged husband and telling a woman to serve, you know -- to both show she went to the police and serve a protective observer is absurd. she moved away and the abuser tracked her down. even after the divorce he raped her after the divorce and he told her that nothing but death would set her free from him. so what -- so on those facts, what did sessions do in the decision of matter of a.b.? i wanted to distinguish here between what sessions attempted to do and what he actually could do legally because he's not operating in a vacuum. there's a body of precedent. so what he tried to do was to foreclose all claims based on domestic violence, other gender violence, and fear of gang claims.

he has this broad language, generally, you know, claims by persons pertaining to domestic violence or gang violence will not qualify for asylum. he's trying to send this message, don't grant these claims. but the actual legal holding is much narrower and there's a lot of what lawyers call statements about what the attorney general thinks. so he rejects the social group formulation that unmarried women, you know, unable to leave, that actually had been a formulation developed by the tept of homeland security itself and as i said approved in a.r.c.g. but he said that wasn't -- didn't meet the standard for legal standard for a particular social group. remember i told you that persecution has to be on account of, and, you know, with domestic violence we say the violence is on account of this person being a woman in this relationship. that's why the man abuses her. and that's what domestic violence experts will say. what sessions said is, this is

just personal. it's to the about gender. to try to separate out and say domestic violence is not about gender, this is what i mean about the ludicrousness of this. so what are the actual holdings of a.b. in . . . . . and not the government, it should be easier for the person to internally relocate and escape the persecutor.

he said these things in the decision without any basis really more of an opinion. so what happened in terms of challenges to a.b. this is where the restoring protection and what's happening, what are the strategies part begins. so i'm going to go over these four areas. challenges of the a.b. decision in the context of expedited removal. litigation of ms. a.b.'s individual case. nationwide trends and diecision making and strategies. expedited removal. after matter of a.b., or matter of a.b. and guidance that usic issued after a.b. strongly implied that individuals with fear of gang cases couldn't pass that screening standard that someone must pass if they're in

expedited removal. if you're in expedited removal and you don't meet the screening standard for credible fear, you are removed and you're not permitted to apply for asylum. so what the government was trying to do was just anybody who appeared with a d.v. claim or gender violence claim or fear of gangs to say well, after a.b., these figures don't qualify. so there was a challenge to that, grace v whitaker where the district -- a district court judge in the district of columbia issued a conjunction. they argued that the attorney general committed many legal errors in his a.b. decision. and the judge agreed. and he issued an injunction against the application of a.b. in this way, incredible fear. that was a huge step because it prevented the government from

just preemptive screening the people out and not permitted them to apply for asylum. of course the government has appealed and we are awaiting a decision from the d.c. circuit court of appeals. and we don't know which way it will go. for now, these a.b. and cannot be used as a justification to screen people out in the credible fear process. litigation in her own case. when an individual is denied asylum, in that individual case, you appeal it, and then through that appeal hope to have the underlying decision reversed. so after the attorney general issued his decision in matter of a.b., it was sent back to the immigration court where we were permitted to put in more evidence. we put in about 1,000 more pages of evidence about gender violence in el salvador,

inability of government to protect. but the immigration judge denied it again. couch is one of the judges who has about a 95% asylum denial rate. it's not normal. for those of you who don't practice immigration law, not normal. and he was also just recently appointed to be a judge. he was elevated, promoted to the board of immigration appeals. but point i'm making is it was remanded back to the same judge who denied it initially and he denied it again. so we appealed to the board of immigration of appeals. we submitted our briefing just last month. and we're waiting for the board of immigration appeals to decide. the board of immigration appeals theoretically could find for her. not likely, but if the board of immigration appeals denies, then we get up to the fourth circuit court of appeals. in a federal court where if we

preva prevail, we would hope to get reversed a lot of the legal reasoning in matter of a.b. and i should say i spoke about grace v. whitaker, but that only applies to credible fear. that doesn't restrain judges who want to deny because of the merits a.b. case. in the face of this decision in matter of a.b. that tries to fore close the claims, what is happening in reality to decision making? the center for refuge studies we assist attorneys and attorneys tell us about the outcomes in their cases. it's not a representative sample. it's not comprehensive. it's that sample of attorneys who ask for help from us, and so also we wouldn't have any prose cases. people can't or don't know about us or don't seek our system.

this is what we know. we've seen 50 unpublished cases in fear of gangs where there were 37 denials and 13 remands back to the immigration judge, and generally the bai cites the matter of aa.b. and says after what the general decided in matter of a.b., you know, whatever. not positive. doesn't grant. in immigration court we've seen something different. we've seen 170 asylum or withholding grants. in d.v. or partner abuse, child abuse cases. although there's many denials also. i don't want to paint an overly rosy picture. we've seen at least 145 denials. but one interesting development and this will be more for the people sort of in the weeds on legal issues and legal theories here. that after the attorney general struck down the social group and said unmarried guatemalan women

unable to leave, there's a simple social group that advocates had been trying to get recognized for a long time which is just gender and women. so to just say el salvador and guatemalan women, and a number of immigration judges have been granting on that simple articulation of social group. again, that's a positive thing. there are a number of circuit court decisions. some positive. but i don't want again to paint an overly rosy picture. but you could just see i did little pithy quotes from them. this was a case where the first one where the woman had proposed a social group similar to the one that sessions rejected in a.b., and the court said well, you know, her case is weakened, but it doesn't automatically defeat her claim, recognizing that each case has to be judged on the facts and the record. and here a judge had done

exactly what i just said and granted on just gender and nationality. and then the board had reversed saying it was too broad. and the ninth circuit said no, no, that's not too broad. go back to the drawing board and look at this again. these are some positive developments. also people are raising because of social group basis hasn't worked that much in cases involving women who are asserting their rights not to be beaten, attorneys are putting forward a political opinion basis. remember, that's one of the five grounds, and feminism is a political opinion, or the belief that the woman has the right not to be subordinated and beaten by her male partner. this is being recognized by the courts also. and this court remanding to consider that this is political opinion basis of the claim might have been a legitimate basis. then there's more negative decisions. i know i'm running quick out of

time. this gonzalez case was a little bit more mixed where the court said you know, matter of a.b. doesn't ban the cases, but the bia was reasonable in finding that this wasn't a viable claim. and similar thing in this 11th circuit case. so circuit court decisions all over the place. what are some of the broader strategies in we're tracking, assisting attorneys j helping them build a record, litigating miss a.b.'s case, and we're tracking cases nationwide at the circuit court in bia levels. that's where we can win precedence. for instance, by tracking, and my last slide will give you information about how you could report an outcome in a case so we can no what's happening. because we're intervenining in ways in these cases to bring our expertise to bear. there's five d.v. case coming up for argument in the ninth

circuit next month. and we have asked for them to be consolidated and putting an am kus brief and the attorneys are giving us argument time. so this is the ninth circuit is a generally variable circuit. we're looking to see if we can develop good law at the circuit court. and we're at the executive level. we're hopeful and planning around a change in administration, and a lot of you in this room have worked on a lot of new strategies i'm talking about, but there's a big book coordinated by immigration hub where looking at what are all the changes we would want in a new administration, and we're working on this broader issue of humanitarian protection which includes a call for the reversal of a.b. and other bad attorney general decisions. we've been working with a lot of the presidential candidates. the staff of a lot of candidates, and most of the major candidates have said that pledge to reverse a.b. if they were elected.

so legislative and i'm almost through. i know i'm running over time. i have two or three more slides. we've also -- there's a marker bill, refugee protection act that's been introduced many times. and many had the chance of being enacted. but if there is -- if the 2020 elections are positive and the senate and the house might be more amenable, and so we've actually worked with congressional staffers to fix key terms in the refugee definition that really get in the way not just of gender claims but fear of gang claims, children's claims. you name it. it would be by -- to remove a lot of the requirements that have been put in that really have been significant barriers. and then there's a number of congress members that are interested in stand alone bills to address a.b. finally, we're trying to do a lot around public education and

messaging to build a broader movement and so we have a website called immigrant women 2 where we have women sur visors of violence granted asylum telling their stories, and we have been working with local activists across the country to get at the city council or county council level, resolutions about approving the a.b. i remain honeful on this issue. my last slide, i'll quickly mention a couple of things. those of you who are attorneys who don't know about us, we provide expert consultations, technical assistance, different kinds of resources in these cases. please reach out to us. as i said, we're trying to track outcome and cases. there's how you can reach us to tell us the outcome in a case. there's our immigrant women

website. as some of you know, we started a database of expert witnesses and a number of you in the room are experts and are either in the database. experts are important in these cases now. and then one resource that you might be interested in is this article matter of a.b. one year later that two of my colleagues wrote. it gives more detail, those trends that i had just one or two slides about what's happening at the i.j. and the bia and the circuit court level, they're detailed in a much more standed nature in this law review. so thank you very much for your time. i was going to try to leave time for questions, but i think i ate up all my time. i leave it to the organizers to decide what to do with me. thank you, everyone.

>> i think what we'll do, it's not your fault you don't is questions. we didn't put in enough time for questions. this remind me i wanted to remind the audience that we have question cards on the tables. fill those out. there will be staff circulating that you can hand the question cards off to and they'll bring them to the moderator. if you had questions for karen, we can incorporate those in the questions and answers period for lindsey harris's panel. i'll invite lindsey and the panelists for the family separation panel. give us about 30 seconds and they'll get started.

it's always intimidating to be the person to speak after

karen. as one of my early mentors, i think for the last 15 years when i was a law student i found her presence and ongoing leadership in this site to be inspiring but also comforting to know that she is still doing this and in this with all of us and leading the way. thank you very much, karen, for your remarks. my name is lindsey harris. i'm a professor at the university of the district of columbia school of law. it's one mile away from here. i teach an immigration and human rights clinic. today i have the honor of moderating this incredible panel of advocates and we're going to take you perhaps even deeper into the dark place that steven manning referenced yesterday. it feels like this whole symposium has been in some ways building to this panel and it was a dark moment as we think about family separation. when i say a dark moment, i don't mean to be misleading.

the family separation crisis, manufactured by this administration in 2018 by no means began in april of 2018 when attorney general sessions announced a zero tolerance policy. it's by no means over today. as we'll discuss, family separation exists under previous separations and continues to operate today. i think what happened in 2018 was certainly -- which led to mass family separations was a dark moment in our history and one from which we're continuing to recover. it was also a moment that catapulted the treatment of immigrant children into the public spotlight. and our national conscience. we saw mainstream media for the first time engage in issues in a way we haven't before. this was headline news, and also there was such a ground swell of public support opposing the separation of immigrant families. so if there's any silver lining

to this administration's relentlessly cruel and racist policies in immigration, it is that we have new segments of society and i know many of you in the room have been in this fight for a long time. far before the trump administration. but also perhaps some of you have joined this fight in response to what you've seen. so one silver lining for me is this new generation of immigration advocates who are more aware and more engaged in the issues than ever before. we're going to skip bios. you can find them in your program so we can focus on substance. if you take a look at the bios, you'll confirm for yourself that the advocates on this panel we're privileged to have with us today are indeed some of the many courageous individuals who have fought on the front lines alongside immigrant families and children in the last few years and well before. so i think we should really start with a round of applause in welcoming michelle, ashley, christy, and michael to the

stage today. >> we're going to try to do this as a conversation. i'll start with christy. as we said, family separation, zero tolerance, have become hot button issues amid headlines since 2018 but can you share with us a little bit of the history behind the policies, where did they come from? did they exist before they exploded into mainstream media? >> sure. thank you, lindsey. so i have been reflecting a lot kind of on the panels yesterday and thinking about the principle of the best interest of the child, and i think that that's a really important framework, because a lot of what happened during family separation during the crisis and before is really due to the fact that there is no guiding principle around the best interest of the child in the border context. and especially for families that are arriving at the border.

there's no real consideration of the best interest of the child when border patrol processes family units. a lot of that, the absence of having that, laid the ground work for this to be able to happen. right? and a lot of those problems are still with us today, and i'll go into that in more detail. we still don't have like a guiding set of principles or standards relating to the best interest of the child in terms of processing a family at the border. so it is important to recognize that family separation didn't just start during zero tolerance. it was going on long before. it was going on in the prior administration. although to a much lesser extent. and i did want to mention that back in early 2017 kind lirs and women's refugee commission did a report calling betraying family values. that report came out of

advocates starting to recognize that this was a problem, and i think fearing it could be a much bigger problem in the current administration. and the report documented several instances of separation at the border. you know, instances of separation of siblings, of family units, extended family units and the lack of tracking and all the problems related to that. but also forcible separations in some cases of buy logical parents and children. and then as we know now, later in 2017 advocates started to see a very disturbing number of forcible parent/child separations. we know now that was from the pilot project happening in the el paso border patrol sector where the administration was basically testing out this teary that what would happen if parents and child were forcibly separated. there wasn't, of course, there wasn't a lot of thought that

went into that. there were huge problems with it. there were huge tracking problems. i think also just going back to the report from 2017, all of the recommendations from that report are actually very relevant still to today. the report identified massive failures by the government to provide tracking systems to connect families to know which parent went with which child. and those systems were never put into place and we saw the horrific consequences of that during the zero tolerance period when the government struggled to connect parents and kids. ashley, you'll touch on the reunification process. one of the key recommendations from the report was that dhs should improve the tracking systems, start talking to oro, develop better standards. but also and i think this is really important, that dhs

should also consider the best interest of the child in all processing custody removal and repatriation decisions. another key recommendation was dhs should require the hiring of child welfare professionals to oversee. the recommendations are from early 2017. they did not get implemented and laid the groundwork for all of the chaos and the horrific consequences of zero tolerance. i think it's also important to point out even now after we've been through the horrors of family separation, we still do not have those standards in place. cbp still is not evaluating the best interest of the child. they don't have to evaluate the

best interest of the child. we've been through so much litigation, but in many ways very tragically we're kind of back in the same place that we were even back in 2017, and i'll get into more detail later. there was a recent decision from a case that gave permission to dhs basically to continue to separate parents and children in many circumstances where there are questions about parenting or where the parent has a prior criminal history. so i think it's -- again, just going back to the processing, we know now that kind of in that split second bayically where border patrol makes the determination to separate a parent from a child, that very small kind of process doesn't take long for them to make that

determination, but the last thing and rippling effects are profound. we know immediately after that decision is made the child could be sent 3,000 miles away to an or facility. the parent goes to an adult facility or the parent is quickly deported from the united states and the child is left in the facility. still, there are huge and pervasive problems with information sharing between the two agencies with information sharing between orr and advocates or attorney for children. and it's hard to reunify parents and children, even when an improper separation has occurred. there have been at least 1200 children separated since the end of zero tolerance policy. i think that's an important starting framework again, where we're still in this position where we're fighting for better

standards. where we're fighting for better framework in place. but not to take us to too darker pessimistic of a place, but i think we're still where we started in 2017 to sum it up u. >> so the policy was -- april 2018 was when this came to public awareness. and as it was alluded to and spoken about yesterday, there were organizing efforts and getting americans, our communities out in the streets to protest this, resulting in action from the white house to end family separation. can you speak to some of the legal challenges to family separation? there have been a couple cases. i'm hoping you can speak to how the challenges have played out in the courts.

are they resolved? the cases i know are still ongoing. >> the main family separation case i think as everyone knows as the mizel versus i.c.e. case. this was filed on behalf of a woman separated from her child before the zero tolerance was official. it was more during the pilot project phase. the judge in the southern district of california who has presided over the case issued an injunction enjoining the government from separating parents and children and finding the separations violated due process and the constitutional rights of family integrity. and i know as we're going to hear from ashley in a moment, around that -- after the injunction, there was this massive effort to reunify parents and children, and that we saw really when the -- all the issues related to tracking

and data and information -- in the late -- the late spring kind of around that same time period a couple of additional challenges were filed. there was the dora bee sessions case filed and the mmm case. so the dor a case was pretty focussed on the fact that parents when they had had their credible fear interviews and reasonable fear interviews after they had been separated from their child did not have a meaningful opportunity to present their claims for release, because they were so understandably upset by the fact that they were separated from their child. the trauma was enormous. how can you ask someone to really be in a mental state that you need to be in to focus on their asylum claim at that moment. so that was the crux of the dora

case. the mmm case was more focussed on the child's procedures. all three cases were grouped together before the judge for the negotiation of a settlement agreement that ended up covering certain aspects of the cases or some of the key issues in the cases. and also a steering committee was created to assist with the reunifications particularly with locating parents deported from the united states without their children. i should just note that at kind we are a member of that steering committee along with the women's refugee commission and justice in motion. so we actually meet weekly even now to discuss various ongoing issues related to the steering committee's work. the settlement agreement that came out of the three cases when they were grouped together was the result of a lot of

negotiation by the different attorneys that were involved in the cases. but it was -- kind of from my perspecti perspective, it was hard for all those issues to be grouped together. there were a number of people involved. i think we came out with a really imperfect result. kind was not involved in negotiating this settlement agreement. the settlement agreement entitled parents who had not passed their credible fear interviews or their reasonable fear interviews to have the opportunity to have a review of their cfi or rfi, they were not entitled to a completely new review. but they could have a review before the asylum office. and it also granted the right to anyone whose notice to appear had not been filed at the time of the settlement agreement to actually file an application for asylum as though they are affirmative. which is interesting in that did

end up being a nice benefit for a lot of people. but the big problem remains that not all of these things have been fully implemented. the asylum offices haven't really even -- a year and a half later they haven't gotten training or guidance about how to do this. we've had a couple of cases go forward through the processes, but not a lot. there's a lot of people waiting, and kind of wondering what's going to happen. and the one year filing deadlines we're hitting at the same time. for a lot of our -- in our case, the -- we have a few hundred cases in hotel at kind. we just had to go ahead and kind of preserve that one-year filing deadline without knowing what was happening with this process. the other element of the settlement agreement, i'll cover quickly, was the opportunity for in cases where parents had been deported from the united states without their children, for, quote, rare and unusual cases to

be brought to the attention of the court for consideration of the possible return to the united states of those parents. there was a lot of confusion about what that term really meant rare and unusual. every situation in which a parent was deported separated from their child and deported without their child should be rare and unusual. it is absolutely egregious. every circumstance, but certain cases were identified through the work of this steering committee which made thousands of calls to those parents and then partners on the ground at justice in motion went out to visit with those parents and meet with those parents. found that a number of parents one had very serious protection concerns. or two, and also had very serious violations of their due process rights, and in the

context of the separation and many of them were coerced so they were told that they would not see their children again unless they agreed to be deported or there were other serious defects in the process like they never had cfis, rfis, et cetera. i'll wrap up quickly here, but just to say that after a lot of back and forth, and negotiating with the department of justice, ultimately the judge ordered the return of 11 parents to the united states. he really went through the records and the files of every parent to find those cases where there was like that coercion or serious defects in the process, and then there was also another huge effort to bring back 29 of the deported parents to the port of entry. many people may have heard about that. just one more thing to mention is that in 2019 as more

extensive reports emerged that family separation had really started back in 2017 in the pilot project, the judge upon a motion also agreed to expand the class. and i think that was a pretty remarkable aspect of the history of the litigation. he decided to expand the class going back to july 1st, 2017. so then the government had to account for all those additional hundreds of kids that were separated going back into 2017. and then turn over all of the names to the steering committee. so that's why the work of the steering committee is really continuing along now, and we're all working together to try to contact those parents to confirm if they've been in touch with their children to see if there are any serious concerns like some parents that have been contacted have said i want my

child back in the case of parents that were deported. and i don't know how to do that. so then we've been able to kind of connect them up with different partners and with justice in motion for next steps. so that's kind of the current state of things. we're still trying to contact families that are in the united states. it's turned out that a lot of -- it's a lot harder to find families in the u.s. than it is in central america. so the steering committee sent out letters recently to a lot of the members of the expanded class. i'll throw it out that you may potentially if you're working with kids in the expanded class or with parents, some people may be getting those letters that are coming from the steering committee at some point. >> okay. thank you. that's so helpful. as you said, some and not all of these families have actually been reunited at this point. so we're going to shift a little bit to talking more about the reunification process. ashley, i know you and your organization have been deeply involved in this.

i'm hoping you can share your experience in working with the families through the reunification stage. >> sure. first, thank you so much to american university center for latin america and latino studies for having this important conference. i do want to talk a little bit about the work that the u.s. conference of catholic bishops and the lutheran immigration -- did. but i want to point out that we're only talking about 1100 family units we reunified in june, july, and early august. and there were many families who are still separated. i think it's important to talk about what happened, and why in many cases we're still seeing many of the same issues. we were -- thanks in part to many of the efforts of the lit

gators, particularly from the missl case, we were approached by the trump administration because they needed to comply with the order to reunify certain families. and they needed assistance to do this. we think we were approached because uac partner providers. we also have extensive experience and presence at the border with our respite centers and different points. i think it's really important to understand that in the moment that this happened, there was no clear cut plan for reunification. that can be applied to us as national agencies with national presence and experience decades of experience in this area. and i it can also be applied to

hhs and the department of homeland security. i think the individuals working for the government on the ground worked every bit as hard as we did day and night to do this. but you could say we were building the airplane as we were flying it. i have a report that we and the lutherans did on kind of the story of the reunification that's available outside. it talks a little bit in more detail. but i want to highlight a couple things. first, per the litigation, the children were kind of grouped into two different groups. one was the five and under and one was 5 through 17. the way the reunification occurred for the age 5 and under is that we were entrusted to bring children who have been identified to certain sites and

then reunify them with the parents who would be transported to the individual sites. there were concerns about the trauma these tender age children have experienced. we as part of trying to be i think as responsive as possible to the family and the reunification, offered services after. we offered our contact information, where the families were going. of that small number of under five children, i'd say we had about a 15% response rate. parents wanted nothing to do with followup services from anyone. they were terrified. once we finished the phase one, we moved to children to be reunified, children 5 to 17. for this the department of homeland security and hhs

decided that children would be brought to the detention facilities where the parents had been identified. they would be reunified pending an interview, and then they would be sent to either a catholic or a lutheran respite center along the border for that reunification to occur. stabilization in the immediate sense to occur and then the families moved on. for that effort, we with the lutherans were able to reunify approximately 1025 family units. the lutherans and our partnership were able to assist approximately 200 family units. and the catholic network assisted about 900 family units. i will say to you that there were so many moments i think of real concern with kind of how the process was going, how children were going to reunify with their parents.

what that would look like in terms of their stability going was any clear cut way to ensure that their data was correlating with our data as we sought to reunify the children with their

parents. you know, again, the stage two group, we did try to offer social services and we did try to ensure a lot of the families can at least have access to legal information or know your rights. we saw a higher degree of participation in terms of what i would describe as quasi post release services. not as much as we'd like, in part because of the trauma the families had to reintegrate. to find stable housing with family and friends, and the great obstacles for encountering meaningful legal services and access to the assistance. that being said, there were a couple moments i think where the existing framework of legal services shines through. many of you may be familiar with the help desk that's implemented. california was one of the

largest destinations to the families we saw, and we had a really hard time ensuring that we could get a legal screening and know your rights. the information help desk in los angeles was able to actually make contact with four or five families that had gone there and helped them. and help us identify them and ensure they were on the path to getting some of assistance. i can't say enough as we think about the importance of the programs that they are everything. we have to continue to fight to maintain legal orientation. and so help desk and we also have to work to scale them up to respond to the increased detension that we're seeing. while that was a positive thing, i do want -- i think we're going to talk about this later, but the data collection issue still remains and it's particularly -- it seems as if lessons have not been learned. our report similar to the

lutheran kind women's refugee report gives recommendations to just adjust best practices. i think we're going to talk more about this. i think it's vital to understand that while we as a community were able to come together and really capture national consciousness and initiate a turnback, these issues are still occurring. and we do have to work harder, i think, to press for just basic access to services. and transparency of data as well as eliminating these sort of separations that seem to be so casually occurring every day. >> thank you so much, ashley. i don't know about everyone else in the room, but listening to all of that, i try not to get emotional as a human being, as a parent. i wanted to build on what ashley shared and ask michelle if you can walk us through some of the needs the families have legal and nonlegal that you've seen. i know that clinic, your

organization through the defending vulnerable populations program and even more specifically now the projects that you have, the national reunite a family assistance project has been working hand in hand with these families and with various partners. >> thank you so much. to the planning committee, we have a couple soldiers from the army that have been created over the years. we are very grateful to him on many fronts. so yes, as christy was saying, it's hard to find populations in the united states. you wouldn't think it would be hard tore find them in the united states as opposed to guatemala, honduras or el salvad salvador, but it is. we learned it on a pro bono project. a few years ago. and the mothers, the family

detention was mothers and children detained and still are, in texas. and when you're getting released from detention, they were going all over the country. we were noticing the rate of orders of deportation, the rates were skyrocketing. we figured out how to get in touch with the mothers so we can figure out how to get them the information to courts to be able to navigate the immigration process and give them information on how to avoid the order of removal. we created a facebook online private community secret group for the mothers. and that is now over 3,000 mothers. we started it as clinic. but now asap, a great organization. they now have created ways of

making sure the families know the information and how to reach them. given that experience, we created a facebook book for the separated families. i think it's everyday changes. i think over 220 parents who allow us to understand what they're face, how we can respond. another way we know what's happening is through as lindsey was saying the national united family assistance project. that in particular is similar we lead with. asap and the organization innovation law lab has tried to tie together this data piece that ashley was talking about that's so important. it's a national database done in a confidential manner. we have partners across the country who when they find out there's a family out there, they put their information into the database and that way we know where they are. their hearing is coming up.

do they have counsel or not? that's one of the pieces of the database. it allows us to focus on the families who do not have counsel, try to find them counsel. that database we know, for example, there are 100 families just in this area of d.c., maryland, virginia who have hearings coming up who do not have counsel. if you're interested in representing one of the cases or helping, let me know after the panel. what are the buckets of needs that the families are facing? well, there's legal needs. transportation. mental health needs, of course. of course. interpreters. the last one is like protection from scams or protections from i guess yeah, generally scams. i'll talk about that last. but given the hasty manner in which the whole thing was done. even our luggage is better connected to us after a flight than these children were to

their parents. that's insane. given the manner which was done and the families were reunited we have parents who don't have their complete immigration files. as we were trying to place the cases, we have no idea where in the process these parents are. you need another credible fear interview? have you -- what do we do next? we had no idea. that was a first hurdle. and we ended up filing a lot of foyas. that's in litigation. once we figured out where they were in the process, they needed a motion to change venue. what happened with the families, it happened also with family detention with the mothers and children. those cases were venued along the border. they were reunified at the shelters, lutheran and catholic shelters. they were venued there. not where they were going to their loved ones in the interior of the united states. already they're at a

disadvantage. they have to do a motion to change venue in english, and they may need an attorney for that. they probably should have an attorney for that if possible. right? and/or just go to the hearing. travel all the way back to where lots of trauma was going to be triggered again. in addition to having to travel and expend resources. getting changes of venue was the first hurdle. not to mention judges who at the courts, for example, in el paso, where issuing extra requirements in order to get the change of venue approved. right? so they definitely did need attorneys at that point that we realized that. we also looked to motions to reopen. of course, some of the families had not gone to their hears because they didn't know where they were needing to go. they were going to the i.c.e. check-in. they thought that was court. that happened a lot with the family detention situation we saw from the facebook group. there's a lot of parallels and lessons learned.

we've been filing motions to reopen. we do them in house at clinic, even though they don't have direct services. our direct service providers is our nonprofits network across the country. we've engaged law firms to do this work as well. it's something that could be done remotely. that's something we took from the family detention lessons learned. we did motions to reopen for a lot of those mothers and we also have a report on that. we had 100% reopen success rate. so far so good for the families that had been separated with their motions reopened. we are willing to take that up to the court of appeals if needed. so the other thing, second thing is transportation. we have been lucky in certain areas to find counsel in one of the ways we have found counsel for the families is to

actually -- the report they issued in addition to the national reunited family assistance project database we learned that florida was the number one recipient state of the families. mostly in central and northern florida. we were able to place two attorneys specifically devoted to representing the families. primarily the around immigration court was one of our affiliates this. we had two fellows. we have found some really wonderful attorneys fully accredited reps to take on the cases. the next hurdle was the families didn't have transportation. they couldn't get to court. we had a partnership with lyft so that lyft could help us get the families there. we would dispatch lyft to go pick them up and take them. that's the second need and how we've tried to respond through the two ways that our facebook and our database. mental health needs. that's an ongoing need.

trying to get funding for the mental health assessments and also this isn't just about an assessment in court. it's an ongoing need. and if they don't get it, it's -- i really worry about that, especially for the children. right? but we see the trauma come through in so many ways and it's really hard. the interpretation needs, these families have a lot of rare indigenous language needs we have not really seen before. that's an extra cost we had not prepared for in our funding. for example with the fellows in florida, but we do need additional funding and services for indigenous language interpreters. if you are such a person out there in the audience, if you know anyone, please come see me after. and then last bucket, if you will, protection from scam. it's kind of a plblanket term.

a lot of families are having wage an hour issues. they're not getting paid for the work they do in a lot of the states of the south. mississippi, alabama, take note that we just had a big raid in mississippi at the poultry plant there. the wage an hour scams, and then also just this past weekend we heard of families getting phone calls saying you need to call within the next three hours to give us this information. if you don't give us this information, you're in trouble with immigration. a total scam. i called and figured out that it was a scam. they're susceptible to some scams. this happens to immigrant p populations. saying if you get a call from immigration that says return our call, give us data, that's not immigration. don't call them. let us know right away. so that's another way that, again, the facebook group has

been really helpful as well. so i think that's -- as if those needs were not enough, i think i'll end with a rundown of the needs. >> again, i forget to press this thing. we have so much experience on this panel and so much to share with you. we had hoped to talked about the issue of damages and litigation on behalf of the families to seek damages. i urge you to come up and talk to the panelists after. there's a brief break right after this panel. i think michelle and christy in particular have insight on that. we also are hoping to get to talking about the issue of family separation and how it intersects with other issues we've been discussing. the migrant protection protocols. there's a slip. i said prosecution protocols. that's really what they are. sorry. advocates call them migrant

procushipr prosecution protocols. i want to get the michael. we have been talking a lot about families and a lot about data. and in a sense that can be dehumanizing. i really want to bring this back to michael for a case study and help us understand some of the very obvious, but i think it merits further expiration. some of the physical and mental health consequences of separation for the families, for the children. >> sure. i'd be happy to. thank you all for having me here. not a pleasant topic, but i'm glad to have the opportunity to present when i met the child that i will be talking about today, it was disturbing to hear what she had been through, and i was ashamed that i am a citizen of a country that would do that to a person. whenever i have the chance to talk about it, i take it, even though it's not a pleasant thing to talk about. so i'm a psychologist.

and i had the opportunity in this case to provide a psychological evaluation for a child who had been brought to this country by her mother. and separated from her mother upon crossing the border into the united states. and the goal of the evaluation was to show how the experiences in her home country were impacting her emotionally. but -- and also show the risks if she were forced to return to her home country. and i think what was most shocking to me in this situation was -- well, first, she was one of the first children that i had met who had been separated from a parent. this was in -- i met her i think six or eight months ago. i think the separation took place in 2018. and upon having the experience, i kind of had the sense i'd see more and more of this, and i have started seeing more and

more of this because of the timing. as anyone can imagine, there's a significant emotional impact. psychological impact when children are separated from parents, especially when there's a forced separation. that's true for any child. that they're at higher risk of depression and anxiety. when we talk about ptsd, we're usually talking about perceived threats to someone's physical well being. threats of death. threats of sexual violence. threats of physical violence. however, when we think about the emotional experience of being separated from one's primary care giver, particularly in the setting of coming to a new country, being exposed to different languages, the fear that comes with immigrating, make no mistake, it is an

existential threat for the children. it is perceived as a risk of being in the same way that we perceive risk when we're afraid of being physically harmed. another point that i really want to hit on is that many of these children are already more vulnerable than the average child at the time they're brought to this country. a good way of thinking about it is considering the ace's study in the clinical world. the ace's stoudy is a big deal. what the study has shown is that children who are exposed to one or more of these adverse childhood experiences are at risk of significant long-term challenges. and so the adverse childhood experiences detailed in the study are those associated with abuse. being a victim of physical, verbal, emotional abuse, sexual

abuse. neglect, or living in extreme poverty, and then there are household factors. being raised in a home where a care giver abuses alcohol or a

>> and she remembers being afraid that she would not see her mother again, in part because a guard told her that her mother was probably going to get deported. so she developed a reasonable fear she would not see her mother again or her mother would not be in the same country let alone in the same facility. over the course of the week that she was separated from her mother, gabby made a friend and it was helpful for her to have a friend because she could keep each other warm, which is for me very disturbing. and imagine after the week apart to be reunited with her mother, they came to the washington, d.c. area, where they were with

extended family members. gabby was obviously glad to be reunited with her mother. s she experienced a severe emotional decome pensation. her mother described it as gabby going crazy, like a tantrum. so sort of tantruming like a toddler. she had difficulty regulating her emotions. her mom described that gabby was having many symptoms of ptsd including memory symptoms. so frequent nightmares, having difficulty not thinking about what had happened. she had symptoms of depression, sad much of the time. she was extremely irritable and mom described severe challenges. gabby was unable to sleep on her

own where she had been for many years. she and her mother started coslooeping again. and these persisted for about a month as gabby readjusted to being with her mother and trying to mend the damage to the relationship that the separation had caused. i saw gabby approximately one year later. so and by that time, both gabby and her mother initially described how she was doing pretty well. the tantrums had long faded. she was sleeping well. she had started school and was doing fairly well in school. my experience with gabby was not that she was doing well. i had a lot of trouble i think kids this age have a sense of what it means to see a psychologist even if they don't quite cognitively know what that means, that they're going to

have to talk about their feelings, traumatic experiences, and gabby presented as a child who had been through severe trauma. she was extremely withdrawn with me, it was really hard to develop much of a repor or much comfort in our relationship, avoided eye contact, focusing by -- i never once was able to get anything resembling a smile out of here. i'm not saying that's what she's like in her day-to-day life, but that's what she was like with me. and even though her mom said she was doing well, more generally speaking, there were other kind of signs that underneath the surface there was still a lot going on in terms of responding to trauma. so i did some pro jective testing which is basically test that's designed to elicit more in terms of potentially

unconscious or underlying distress. a chosen a future of a shield with a parent and they're doing -- describe what happened next. they wanted to read some of the details about her responses, because they were really striking. so i chose her ten yards and kind of get a sense of what are the themes of what she's describing. she described a childhood feeling sad or fearful in response to these cards. some of these cards are designed to elicit that, some are not. on these there's either the word sad or scared with afraid. she described people feeling angry on at least five occasions due towards reflecting positive emotions on just one occasion. she also described children as fearful and -- safety and protection. children she described a girl who quote, wanted to be protected because of what was happening. she described a story of children hugging each other

because something bad is happening that they don't want to see and are protecting each other. she described a child feeling afraid because of a nightmare. also afraid because of a nightmare and also afraid of reality, scared of what she will see, in shock, quote. in the story, she used not real but veryscared. she also described an incident in which a woman is being forced to kiss a male, a male is forcing himself on another -- on a woman, and in certainly describes as many girls specifically who are at risk of physical danger. so as you can tell been her presentation during the interview, her responses on projected testing, despite the fact that she's quote/unquote doing well and recovering, and

quite frankly given her experience i think she is doing really well. despite that there's still a lot going on underneath the trauma, it's still there. and my goal in addition to sort of detailing all of this in the report and presenting it to the loir lawyers so that they can use it for the family, make sure she get what they need, to make sure that mom understands, one, that it's completely normal what gabby is going through, what she went through and what she's going through, immediately after, the fact that these things are -- that her behavior is improving and yet there are still these challenges. that is completely normal and preparing mom for the fact that even though she's doing well now, still at risk of long-term challenges. one thing that comes up that might trigger the underlying

emotional distress that i want kind of mom to be on the lookout for including meeting with me, including meeting with lawyers, including what potential court dates might be coming up, and obviously encouraging the family to seek therapy for her, which is a hard sell, given that gabby did not want to talk about this and the last thing she wanted to talk about, talked about being -- gabby is like i said is was the first child i saw endured the parent/child separation. i think i've seen a few more since then and i fear that more -- >> thank you so much, michael. >> so michael just painted a picture of the devastating short and long-term consequences that the families of separation had. and we know that this is still happening. we have a couple questions from the audience. but another question here for

the panel is, can you give any examples of how families are still being separated, that we know it's not technically through the current policy but how does the remain in mexico work and operate with many other policies that -- this entire 2018 and so it is today to force to be separated? and that could be really any of you. >> sure. well, going back to dwkind of wt i was alluding to the ongoing issues in the litigation of this kind of like general lack of standards from cdc, so parent/child separations are continuing to happen. and unfortunately from the ruling from a few weeks ago from judge sabra, they just can continue to separate when there is basically when there's a parent criminal history issue.

and that is like very easily troubling to us. because, you know, as we know, like, there are many different types of like criminal offenses that do not mean that someone that is -- someone would be unfit to be a parent or someone that's a danger to their child. we've been keeping a close eye own that to for about a year now, and we really saw last spring, we started to see like a very disturbing uptick again in separations. and we know now there have been over one thousand kids since the injunction in june of 2018. most of those are due to criminal history. some were due to communicable disease. we even have a case where a dad was separated from his daughter -- tested positive. the judge did ultimately find that separation to be unlawful. thank goodness.

but i think this demonstrates what the ongoing -- of cdc and the wide discretion that they have can make those separations at the border, and unfortunately because of the ruling from a few weeks ago from judge sabra, they are permitted to continue to do this when the parent has a criminal offense. and again it does not have to be a criminal offense that necessarily involves any consideration of being fair to the child. i think we're still -- we're still kind of digesting that order, to be honest. i think we're still trying to think about, you know, possible strategies for moving forward. there is one piece of good news that i'll mention, that in the recent appropriations, the news that went through, there was funding appropriated for child

welfare professionals to be located at the locations, which this is great. and, you know, could be an enormous achievement. but now they are supposed to implement that within a few weeks, and how much is that going to actually happen? and, you know, but that could be a big step. that could certainly help. the other thing i'll mention briefly and i just want to chime in too, but the interaction with mcc. separation family separations that we're seeing domestically are down in the last few months, but it's really as a result of mcc. families instead of being separate rd being sent back to mexico. but we're seeing what we're calling the fourth iteration of family separation now, which is some families that were subject to mcc, different circumstances, sometimes we're hearing from

kids that their parents disappeared in mexico. and then the kids are presenting at the port of entry and being processed and placed in o.r.r. i think some families are making the difficult decision to do that intentionally because families don't feel that their kids are safe in mexico. they're being threatened or the kids are ill. so families are deciding to have kids present at the port of entry. at times now we have seen about 40 cases like this, where kids now are in custody were previously -- the mcc program. there's also a slightly different take on that too, we are hears of some instances where border patrol has processed the family unit and had a question of parentage, meaning that they suspect that the parent is not the real parent or the biological parent or not the legitimate legal

parent. and they have then placed the parent in mcc and processed the child under the cbpra so the child can go to the facility. i just heard a story a few days ago about a kid that pulled out -- that cdc ripped up the birth certificate and said we don't believe this is true and sent his dad back to mexico. >> i would just echo again we provide services for unaccompanied children. we are as our other uac service provider, children who were part of a family subject to mcc who are now designated as uac and in o.r. custody. because we did a good job of explaining it. i want to go back to say, status issue, yet again this is not something that's in the uac portal. this is not something that's being tracked formally despite

many alarm bells and regulations requiring that type of tracking. so what are we as service providers doing? we have implemented guidelines for our social workers to start to ask some of these questions. i know we've worked with other legal service providers and other uac service providers are doing this. but it is really important to understand that, you know, some of the lessons learned clearly have not been learned and it's children's well-being at stake here as we see this fourth iteration. it is an issue, we are seeing more children who are in this, and, you know, we are in a roomful of lawyers. but i don't think anybody needs to think twice about some of the legal complications that come from this, let alone the social service needs for a child who's been subject and now is an unaccompanied child according to this. >> one clarification question. and there are questions that you could do that he we are not

going to get to so i invite you to come up here. okay. so one qualification question, you mentioned that some parents are still separated based on criminal offenses and the fact that there is illegal reentry. >> the short answer is yes, i think there is -- i think i have some confusion about the language of the broad order on that point. and i think -- i don't think it's like totally clear. yes, it may basically be to the stage that illegal reentry, you know, is basically the same as a criminal felony offense, and therefore an exemption from the class. but i think the expectation is that those parents after they're

processed for illegal reentry should have the right to be unified with their child, but they can be still separated for the interim period. >> and a lot still seems to need to be worked out. this question is for michael. how can the mental health care providers or agencies partner with local public school systems to identify cases of students enrolled and find mental health support for them and their families? do you have any ideas of how people can get involved? >> good question. i'm glad to hear the school system brought into it, because honestly that's where a lot of kids are being identified and where they're spending their time, right? but also identified, and lots of kids are receiving services there. i think that there's a big -- in care and i think dr. neuman might be able to say more about this.

to try to quantify aces, try to screen for aces, and i think the primary care setting is probably more appropriate because a school setting may not be the right place to ask about these things, which is hard because the goal is for guidance counselors and school psychologists to pick up on these things too. unfortunately they tend to get -- when kids are starting to show behavioral problems, as as we know when kids are depressed, they often don't look depressed in the way adults do. they tend to act out and cause criminalizing behaviors. so oftentimes the psychologists get involved when children start to act out. i don't think i have any silver bulet answer for how to help. is this a question -- >> it was about engaging with

the schools. but i think for anyone out there interested in in engaging, find lawyers in the room, we have ideas on how we can help these families, i like what michael has done by providing connections, providing ongoing services. >> as lawyers, the goal is one, normalizing it, helping families understand that these are traumatic experiences, and as a result even if it's not something that technically qualifies for -- stratrauma-rel systems, avoidant systems, trying to avoid memories or things that remind you of the trauma, symptoms in terms of negative alterations in cognition or moods, not enjoying aspects of life, inability to -- and then the final category is -- sleep disturbance,

concentration issues, irritability, helping parents understand, one, that it's normal. it's normal for parents to have these experiences, it's normal for children. just because they're safe that doesn't mean these symptoms aren't going to persist. gabby, i hope i hammered that -- and, you know, in this world of helping the family connect to a place where the child is at least being monitored from a psychological, emotional perspective. so a primary care center, where they have access to mental health services that are tied into primary care services, i think those are always good steps that as lawyers you all can use this to make sure the family is aware and they understand that it's normal and that the family has some type of support and monitor for

psychological distress or mental health problems that might come up. >> thank you so much, michael. we are heading into a break. there were great questions from you all. if anyone else wants to come up, there were questions around the privacy around the facebook group for relief families and separated families and there are questions around the technicalities, what if the kid ages out, was under 18 when they came into the u.s., a question about children who have died in u.s. custody, and another about families being terrified of having to receive services and thinking about, how do we get through that and enable families to get the services for which they may be eligible? i hope you will join me on thanking or panelists for the work they have done. [ applause ] thank you for sharing your experience with us.

we have a break i think until 11:25 for the next panel. thank you.

c-span, your unfiltered view of government, created in 1979 and brought to you by your television provider. today a discussion of african-american history from 1776 to the present day at an event hosted by the woodsan center in washington, d.c.

wive live on c-span3, online at c-span.org, or listen live on the free c-span radio app. follow campaign 2020 to nevada this weekend. saturday night live at 11:00 p.m. eastern, democratic presidential candidates joe biden, pete buttigieg, senator amy klobuchar, tom tie steyer, senator bernie sanders and senator elizabeth warren speak. and on sunday live at 5:00 p.m., joe biden, pete buttigieg, senator amy klobuchar and tom steyer speak at a forum on infrastructure. live coverage on c-span, watch on demand at c-span.org, and listen on the go on the c-span radio app. they say this is the panhandle of texas is the only way you can watch your dog run away for two weeks. >> the majority of the towns in the cities of the panhandle

wouldn't exist if it wasn't for the coming of the railroad. ♪ ♪ yellow rose in texas ♪ no other one but me ♪ she cried so when you left her ♪ ♪ nearly broke my heart ♪ if we ever meet again ♪ we'd never go apart c-span is on the road. we travel to amarillo, texas. >> amarillo is in the center of the panhandle. we call ourselves the capital city of the texas panhandle. i think our superpower here in the city of am lilo is that we think regionally. >> with the help of our partners we'll learn about the history and literary life of the city and surrounding area as we talk with local authors and visit

historic cites. >> it's a lot like it has been for thousands of years. you come across this huge trough, the second largest in the country. >> he came for the public school system, and then in 1916 to 1918 she came back and got a fact you willty position here. sometimes artists don't write so we don't know what they said. she's roe lific. this says so much more about this artist, struggling with the things you can imagine yourself struggling with, which is so relatable. so she's not this like grumpy anti-war figure. >> join us this saturday at 5:30 p.m. on c-span2 book tv and sunday at 2:00 p.m. on c-span3 american history tv, as the c-span cities tour takes you to amarillo, texas. next the state of the state