Trust - it's the foundation of any relationship. It's especially crucial when that relationship is between a patient and their therapist. In order for therapy to be effective, the patient must know that what they tell their mental health professional will be held in strict confidentiality, never to be shared with anyone. And most importantly, they must believe that whatever they say, their words won't be used against them.
That's why doctor-patient confidentiality is law. But there is a situation unfolding where particularly vulnerable patients are not only forced to see therapists, but their deepest confessions are used against them. Sign to demand an end to the policy that allows Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials to use detained children's therapy notes in order to deport them.You read that correctly. Under the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) policy, minors are required to meet with counselors within 72 hours of entering the system. They are then required to meet with one every week until they are released - or deported. Ostensibly, this is to help these children deal with the trauma they have likely endured during their journey to the United States.
But Trump's ICE has been forcing therapists to hand over their therapy notes and then using them to leverage the deportation of these minors.What would be illegal in any other situation is simply considered "information sharing" between agencies when it comes to ICE and ORR.
In one case,
Kevin, a young Honduran boy who arrived in the states unaccompanied with his sister, was detained and then obligated to speak to a counselor about his past. He told the therapist some of his deepest traumas, including the nightmare he experienced after his grandmother passed and the vicious gang MS-13 occupied their home. They slept in his bed, tortured rival gang members on his patio, and eventually forced him to sell drugs for the brutal organization.
That is why he decided to run.ICE decided to take this deeply personal and traumatic information and run with it - to fight any claim Kevin had to refugee status. He is currently still in detention along with other minors around the country whose therapy notes are being used against them,all so they can be sent back to where they came from - back into harm's way.
This isn't right. What ICE and ORR are doing is a disgrace. They are forcing children to reveal their deepest darkest moments and forcing counselors to be complicit in their xenophobic deportation plan. It must end.
Sign the petition and demand an end to the policy that allows ICE, ORR, or any other department to use confidential therapy notes against refugee detainees.