Our East Harlem Community has a long and proud history of activism and working together with mutual community-wide support to face the challenges of poverty and disparities in income, resources and health outcomes that have always plagued our community. For more than four decades, the East Harlem Community Health Committee, Inc. (Health Committee) and Human Services Consortium of East Harlem (Consortium) have provided monthly forums for dozens of nonprofit health and human services agencies and advocates to coalesce and unite with a commitment to holistically improve the health and well-being of East Harlem.

The broad-based membership of the Health Committee and Consortium have watched in horror the “zero tolerance” policy which has resulted in the brutal separation of families who enter the United States seeking asylum. On June 19, 2018, our community was alarmed to learn that hundreds of children as young as nine months who had been forcibly separated from their parents were being relocated thousands of miles from the border to our community–proving once again that “all politics is local” and forcing us to speak and act on behalf of those families who have been victimized and stripped of their basic human rights without due process or consideration of their immediate or long term well-being.

The intense trauma and long term psychological impact of this forced separation cannot be over-stated and builds upon the pre-existing baseline of significant trauma experienced by the children and their families as a result of the situation in their home countries from which they are seeking refuge and as a result of a long, dangerous and frequently violent migration to our border. Doctors Without Borders has issued a press statement detailing the hardships encountered, affirming that the “death of family members, assault, kidnappings, extortion” and violence and mental trauma is akin to what is experienced in war zones.

Gabrielle Shapiro, MD, a Board Certified Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist with professional ties to three respected East Harlem institutions (Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Boriken Health Center and Union Settlement) and Chair of the American Psychiatric Association’s Council on Children, Adolescents and their Families, urges that “the government must immediately assess each child in its custody and reunite them with their parents as soon as possible. The longer they’re in custody and in an attachment-deprived situation, the greater the ramifications on their later development, including their biological, cognitive development and social and psychological development.”

Children belong with their families and must be returned to their parents as soon as possible. We are concerned with reports that record-keeping of individuals “in custody” has been imperfect, and support all efforts to ensure that information is available to support reunification of children with parents at all stages in the legal process.

The Health Committee and Consortium support the immediate reunification of families and resolution of this crisis which has created additional strain on an already-overburdened foster care system in New York and other states. Children need their parents and should not be the pawns of politicians.

We seek and support the immediate resolution of this tragically barbaric situation.

Very truly yours,

Lew Zuchman, Coordinator
Human Services of East Harlem

Mali Trilla, Co-Chair
East Harlem Community Health Committee, Inc.

Dorothy Calvani, Co-Chair
East Harlem Community Health Committee, Inc.

Contact: Erika Donovan Estades / [email protected] / 917-776-8985