Antipsychotic medications are reportedly being forced upon immigrant children detained at the federally funded Shiloh Treatment Center near Houston, according to a lawsuit filed in federal court by the LA-based Center for Human Rights & Constitutional Law.
Children are being dosed with medications like quetiapine, known by its brand name Seroquel, an atypical antipsychotic used to treat bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. The minor children receive these medications without parental consent, and oftentimes below the age deemed safe for administration.
I have personal experience with these drugs. I take Seroquel at night — it staves off my mania and has sedative properties. It helps me get to sleep.
I wouldn’t dream of taking Seroquel in the morning or middle of the day because it would turn me into a zonked-out zombie. But this lawsuit alleges that the drug was indeed given to kids in order to sedate them.
And while the Shiloh Center is reserved for youth with behavioral and emotional issues, the kids are being given these drugs irrespective of any diagnoses.
And according to the Texas Tribune, a psychiatrist in charge at Shiloh, Dr. Javier Ruíz Nazario, was not board certified because he failed to renew his certification.
The Office of Refugee Resettlement, which oversees centers such as Shiloh, does not require psychiatrists at facilities to be board certified unless they are administering psychotropic drugs, which Ruíz Nazario was doing.
The lawsuit alleges that some children were told the drugs they were being given were vitamins, and that they wouldn’t be allowed to see their parents again if they didn’t take the “vitamins.” Those children who refused were given shots against their will, being held down during injection. State law requires parental consent or court order to permit medications like these to be administered.
“The supervisor told me I was going to get a medication injection to calm me down,” a child told the website Reveal News, which is run by the Center for Investigative Reporting. “Two staff grabbed me, and the doctor gave me the injection and left me there on the bed.”
Different drugs allegedly being administered include antidepressants, seizure medications, and pills for Parkinson’s Disease, in addition to the antipsychotics. Some children reportedly felt disoriented and could not walk after taking the medication. They’ve also reported experiencing side effects such as dizziness, drowsiness, and fatigue.
“If you’re in Shiloh then it’s almost certain you are on these medications,” said Carlos Holguin, a lawyer representing the Center for Human Rights & Constitutional Law. “So if any child were placed in Shiloh after being separated from a parent, then they’re almost certainly on psychotropics.”
“The staff told me that some of the pills are vitamins because they think I need to gain weight,” says one child in the lawsuit. “The vitamins changed about two times, and each time I feel different.”
Another child alleges in the lawsuit that staff would intentionally provoke patients before medicating them.
“They made us act violently so then we bad [sic] to be given shots,” he alleged. “The staff would insult us and call us names like ‘son of a whore.’ They often did it in English, but I understood some English so I would know what they were saying and get really angry.”
The lawsuit was filed a few days after the Trump Administration’s “zero tolerance” policy came into question because it separated children from their parents who had illegally brought them across the U.S.-Mexican border.
After mounting pressure for the administration to take a more humanitarian stance, President Trump signed an executive order on June 20, ending family separations at the U.S.-Mexico border.
At the time, 2,342 children had been separated from their families, according to the Washington Post.
These actions are the equivalent of treating children worse than animals. It is despicable and inhumane. Not only are these medications not safe for children of all ages, but no parental consent is being given, which is against the law. Anyone who broke this law should be held accountable.
Thousands of people marched this weekend, from LA to Chicago to New York and Washington, DC, in protest of the Trump Administration’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy — still in effect but now no longer separating families.
