Lisa Fortuna, MD, Weighs in on an ACLU Immigration Lawsuit

Lisa Fortuna, MD, Director of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, was quoted in an NPR story about an ACLU case against immigration authorities in which a child was allegedly separated from her mother.  Dr Fortuna, who is also a co-founder of Refugee Immigrant Assistance Center Community Counseling, has also filed an amicus brief in the lawsuit.

The Plaintiff in the case,  Ms. L, is a Congolese asylum seeker who first arrived in the country in San Diego with her daughter.  Immigration officials there did not speak her native language Lingala, but Ms. L was able to communicate with them in the little Spanish she knows that she left Congo fearing near certain death.  Ms L. is Catholic, a group that has faced retaliation for connection to peaceful protests against President Kabila.  Several days after she arrived, her daughter was taken from her without a hearing and sent to a facility in Chicago.  At the time of separation Ms L. could hear her daughter screaming to be returned to her mother in the next room, and contact has been limited to infrequent phone calls.

Dr Fortuna’s amicus brief focuses on the long term and irreversible physiological, developmental and psychological issues periods of separation can create for traumatized children.  As she is quoted to say in the NPR piece, “I don’t think we want to be a society that does that to children.”

On another note, Dr Fortuna was listed by New Harbinger Publications as one of “13 Badass Psychologists… Who Happen to be Women.”
See #4 here!