“Tenía moretones en los hombros donde me sujetaron”. “Estoy tan angustiada que no concentro en nada, casi me desmayo. Me duele mucho el cerebro”. “Si piso suelo hondureño, nos matarán. Y no les importará que tenga un hijo”. Decenas de miles de solicitantes de asilo de México y Centroamérica esperan en la frontera entre EE.UU. […]

“I had bruises on my shoulders where they held me down.” “I’m so anguished that I cannot concentrate on anything…. I faint, my head hurts.” “If I step on Honduran soil, they will kill us. And they will not care that I have a child.” TIJUANA, MEXICO – Tens of thousands of asylum seekers from […]

New PHR clinical research details how current U.S. asylum policies that restrict asylum seekers’ right to enter the United States inflict further trauma on them every day they must wait.

El Salvador’s 12-year civil war in the 1980s and early 1990s devastated the country, with more than 75,000 civilians killed and thousands of children separated from their families, many of them kidnapped by the Salvadoran military. An estimated 2,300 children were handed over for adoption in the United States and Europe. In 1994, PHR began […]

Names have been changed in this post for security purposes. Although Maria is just 13-years-old, she already suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and major depression, reports Dr. Carol Kessler, a child psychiatrist and member of the Asylum Network at Physicians for Human Rights (PHR). Originally from El Salvador, Maria fled to the United States after […]

In June 1989, PHR sent a medical mission to El Salvador to investigate and report on allegations of violations of medical neutrality and other human rights abuses committed by both sides in the civil war. This report documents the obstruction of health care to the civilian population; the assault, intimidation, arrest, torture, and execution of […]