The Trauma of Being Stuck at the US-Mexico Border

Asylum seekers are enduring a mental health crisis as they remain stranded at the U.S./Mexico border waiting for an immigration process to restart, reports Emily Green of VICE. 

Santiago, a 4-year-old boy confined with his father to a one-room apartment in a dangerous border town, wakes up crying nearly every night: “My family, my family.” He is among the thousands of people still affected by the Trump administration’s Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) or “Remain in Mexico” policy. César José Barrios Pichardo, a psychologist with Doctors without Borders, has spent two years offering therapy sessions to asylum seekers in the border town of Matamoros. “At the beginning we saw a lot more acute stress,” Barrios Pichardo said. “Now, the depression is almost structural. Infinite waiting, constant changes, the lack of a stable process.”  

KJ