About four years ago my friend Allen, an internal medicine doctor in New York who runs the Bellevue/NYU Program for Survivors of Torture, called me because he needed a pediatrician to go with him and a small group of advocates to visit Artesia, N.M.

I asked, “Why Artesia?”

He told me there was a military training center that had hurriedly been converted into a holding area for family units fleeing Central America who had been apprehended at the border and were being transported to facilities like these for processing. A small group of us was allowed to tour the facility, talk to staff and interview mothers who were there with their young children.