This letter was started in response to the Trump administration's decision to separate children of migrant families, some as young as 12 months of age, from their parents as a result of Attorney General Jeff Session's "zero tolerance" policy on border crossers, many of whom are seeking asylum.
Over the course of 2 days (50 hrs), we collected 1,374 verified signatures from professionals all over the world who wanted to make it absolutely clear that the empirical evidence on child development overwhelmingly shows that this policy is tantamount to abuse on the young children.
This letter was posted openly here and delivered to the head of Department of Homeland Security, Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.
As of our latest update (9:00pm EST on 7/05/2018) a total of 2,019 verified professionals have signed the online letter.
The goal of this letter is to raise awareness of the long-term detrimental impacts that prolonged paternal separation can have on children, specifically with regards to the U.S. government's policy of separating migrant children at the border.
The letter is released openly in the hopes that it can also be adopted as a form letter to state and federal representatives to raise awareness of this issue.
The 1,374 original signatories on this letter are nonpartisan academics (e.g., professors, postdoctoral scholars, graduate students, research staff), clinicians (e.g., medical doctors, nurses, clinical psychologists, social workers), or other specialists (e.g., public health officials) who have training and experience with the research literature on human development, either from a psychological or biological perspective.
This list includes respected scientists in psychology, biology, neuroscience, medicine, and human development from a variety of internationally renowned universities, including:
Signatures were vetted based on either a valid research institution email address or a secondary verification via internet search.
Additional signatories are being updated on a regular basis to the posted letter on the website.
Please note, that if you signed this letter but your name does not appear on the main letter, it is because we could not verify your qualifications to address the literature on human development (e.g., only first name provided). We appreciate your support on this effort, but wanted to keep the letter signatories restricted to those who can speak to the scientific literature.
The following people were instrumental in putting this letter together:
For questions and inquiries about this letter, please contact Timothy Verstynen Ph.D. (timothyv [at] gmail.com).