The Shiloh Treatment Center, in Texas near Manvel, is one of 32 Texas facilities that is licensed to care for migrant children who have been separated from their parents. The officials there were administering psychotropic prescription drugs to migrant children without consent from the parents. This violates the state’s child welfare laws. Late last month U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee in Los Angeles ordered that the Trump administration must stop giving these drugs to migrant children without parental or guardian consent, except in an emergency.
The federal judge also ordered that the government move the children out of that facility except for children that were deemed to pose a “risk of harm.”
Government officials said they only provided the psychotropic on an emergency basis, but the judge didn’t believe it, and pointed to testimony from children who said they were drugged “every morning and every night.” Children testified that U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement staff members would sometimes refuse to tell the children what drugs they were taking or why. Some reported being forcibly injected. Children said they experienced side effects including nausea, dizziness, depression, and weight gain.
One child held at Shiloh identified as Isabella said,
“I witnessed staff members forcefully give medication four times.
. . . Two staff members pinned down the girl . . . and a doctor gave her one or two injections.”