Staff working on the behalf of the Office of Refugee Resettlement are routinely drugging detained child migrants with psychotropics without their parents’ consent, according to legal filings.
The drugging allegations are among the most disturbing. One child cited in the lawsuit reported taking up to nine pills in the morning and another seven in the evening, without knowing what the medication was.
“ORR routinely administers children psychotropic drugs without lawful authorization,” a memo filed in the lawsuit on April 16 reads. “When youth object to taking such medications, ORR compels them. ORR neither requires nor asks for a parent’s consent before medicating a child, nor does it seek lawful authority to consent in parents’ stead. Instead, ORR or facility staff sign ‘consent’ forms anointing themselves with ‘authority’ to administer psychotropic drugs to confined children.”
One child, identified in court records as Julio Z., said staff at Shiloh thew him to the floor and forced him to take medication. He said he witnessed staff pry another child’s mouth open to force him to swallow a pill.
“They told me that if I did not take the medicine I could not leave,” Julio Z. said, according to the court records. “That the only way I could get out of Shiloh was if I took the pills.”
“Sometimes they give me forced injections,” another child, identified as Rosa L., said. “One or two staff hold my arms, and the nurse gives me an injection.”
The seven pills named in the court filings ― Clonazepam, Duloxetine, Guanfacine, Geodon, Olanzapine, Latuda and Divalproex ― as medications used to control depression, anxiety, attention deficit disorder, bipolar disorder, mood disorders, schizophrenia and seizures.