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Kids cry and scream for mums at US centres, may suffer lasting damage

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US President caves to pressure over the separation of parents and their children at the US-Mexico border, signs executive order

EL PASO, UNITED STATES: US President Donald Trump has caved after condemnation from all quarters and signed an executive order to stop the separation of parents and their children at the US-Mexico border.

But a swift stroke of the pen will not mask the lasting damage such centres have had on thousands of innocent children.

At a juvenile detention centre in Virginia, immigrant children as young as 14 said they were put in solitary confinement, beaten while handcuffed and left nude and shivering in concrete cells.

The abuse claims against the Shenandoah Valley Juvenile Center near Staunton, Virginia, are detailed in federal court filings that include a half-dozen sworn statements from Latino teens jailed there for months or years, AP reported. Multiple detainees say the guards stripped them of their clothes and strapped them to chairs with bags placed over their heads.

Over at centres at the US-Mexico border children "cry and scream" for their mothers, reaching out for them through the chain-link pens where they are being held, said a paediatrician who has visited several Texas processing centres.

Ms Marsha Griffin, who has monitored conditions on the Texas border with Mexico for a decade, described her horror at what she found.

Approaching one facility, she said she heard what sounded like children playing or laughing, reported AFP.

"But when they opened the door, we saw around 20 to 30 10-year-old boys in one of these chain-link enclosures, and they were crying and screaming and asking for their mothers," she told AFP.

Their mothers, held in another enclosure just 15m away, were close but not close enough to console their children.

"Some of the mothers could see their children but couldn't get near to them, some of them couldn't see them. And the children were reaching their hands through the chain-link fences, crying and trying to reach out to their mothers," Ms Griffin said.

"It was horrifying."

Family separation is not new, but in the past it has been left to the discretion of border patrol agents.

But President Donald Trump's administration has embarked on a new "zero tolerance" policy, and the number of separations has soared.

Since April 19, more than 2,300 children have been separated from their parents, according to official figures.

Immigrants who enter the US illegally across the Mexico border, as well as those seeking asylum, are sent to a border patrol "processing centre."

There, they are separated by age and gender - with young siblings split up - and put in cage-like enclosures for up to 72 hours, until their case is resolved or the children are sent to shelters run by the Department of Health and Human Services.

But as these centres begin to overflow with new arrivals of children separated from their parents, new government solutions are emerging.

Most recently, authorities have built a camp for "unaccompanied" children in the austere Chihuahua desert near Tornillo, Texas. According to immigration lawyers, separated children are routinely reclassified as unaccompanied minors.

The outcry has been so great that Mr Trump, until now an unyielding defender of the anti-immigrant crackdown, signed an executive order to put a stop to the practice.

TOXIC STRESS

Meanwhile, doctors warn that separation can cause "toxic stress" in detained children.

Ms Griffin confirmed to AFP that even toddlers and babies are being held.

"Separating children from their parents contradicts everything we stand for as paediatricians," said the president of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), Colleen Kraft.

The AAP said "toxic stress, which is caused by prolonged exposure to heightened stress, has detrimental short- and long-term health effects ... that can contribute to chronic conditions like depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and heart disease."

Ms Griffin said: "These children go through a process of toxic stress and trauma, because they don't know what's going to happen to them and they are not with their primary caregiver."

As a result, paediatricians are calling for these centres to employ specialists trained in childcare, to comfort children and explain what is happening - but it's a struggle to get the message across.

"When we tell that to the agents, they get upset," Ms Griffin explained. "They say this is not their work, they are law enforcement, they don't have time for this."

WORLD