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Draft 2 of Report Detention Center
Draft 2 of Report Detention Center
Does detention center cause trauma? To find out the answer, we did some research.
According to the Quartz, Charles Nelson, a pediatrics professor at Harvard Medical School who
conducted a landmark study of Romanian orphans in 2000 that is still ongoing, previously told
Quartz that “the longer a child spends in an adverse or neglectful environment, the more difficult
it will be to shift that child’s developmental trajectory back to even keel.” Separation also
triggers children’s stress response in a sustained and dangerous way. Although the Trump
administration ended its separation policy in June, more than 12,000 children remain in custody,
many of them housed in temporary facilities operated by Southwest Key, a charity that operates
migrant shelters in Texas, Arizona, and California. But Southwest Key centers have been
accused of hundreds of violations of state codes, ranging from poor medical care to child abuse,
and the company failed to prove that it conducts the required background checks on all its
child-care workers. Now, the Department of Justice is investigating Southwest Key for possible
So far we have visited sal castro middle school and interviewed three young girls. One
girl shared her story which encouraged the others to share their story as well. Also in our 12
grade class we interviewed three student that went through a similar experience but one person
went through it with his sister as well. Our hypothesis is that detention centers do cause trauma.
We have created a survey to interview the kids who went to detention centers.
The population are the young kids who went to detention centers. The sample is the kids
who were in detention center and are now attending Global Studies High school or Sal Castro
Middle school. We intend to study the kids who got caught migrating for a better future and
getting sent to detention centers. What happened to young kids after getting caught migrating?
Those who got caught either went to a detention center by the border or got sent back to their
country. We intend to interview those who have experience being in detention centers. We want
to know if detention centers cause trauma? Some say, that detention centers cause trauma
because those in the detention center do not know what day it is or not being able to see the
sunlight or the moonlight. Most of the times they are really worried because they don’t know
what to expect and spend their time overthinking of what can happen next.
The results are that young kids sometimes migrate with their parents. Most of the kids we
interviewed migrated alone. They saw how kids from age 4 years and up got separated from their
parents and how younger than 4 years old were able to stay with their mom.The kids were never
aloud to go outside and if they did they would make them stand in a line and count them and
when they came back in they would count them again. Some got transfer from one place to
another because it was getting full. The buildings looked really big and even colder than a
hospital.
Most of the undocumented teens come from Central America. Some of the reasons they migrate
is because of poverty and war. Most of the young kids who didn’t go through difficult times were
able to speak up and talk about their experience since they weren’t so long in detention centers.
But the ones that went through a harsh time didn't not want to be interviewed. ¨………..¨
KEY WORDS
❏ Trauma
❏ Detention center/ Heliera
❏ Family separation
❏ Rules
Detention center