By: americasvoice.org | Editorial credit: Stephanie Kenner / Shutterstock.com

Washington, DC — Across the country, the high costs of the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda are becoming increasingly clear, from disruptions in key American industries to strains on local communities, as highlighted in a new economic analysis released last week.

Yet the impact reaches beyond financial and operational concerns. We all are watching as entire communities across the country are being terrorized by militarized ICE raids and the Trump takeover of cities like D.C. Caught up in this chaos are the most vulnerable among us – children.  Both U.S. citizens and immigrant kids are being directly affected and harmed by immigration enforcement actions, as a new study from mental health experts at UC Riverside School of Medicine – and news accounts of back to school concerns for children across the country – show.

Joanna Kuebler, America’s Voice Chief of Programs, said: 

“No child should have to go to school, living in fear – whether from the violence of guns or the violence of sudden deportation of kids and their parents. Too many families and too many children in too many places are paying the price for Trump’s mass deportation crusade. Ripping families apart and hunting long-settled hard working immigrants isn’t just destroying communities, it is devastating the mental health of children. The cost of mass deportation goes well beyond the economic turmoil to include the harm to our kids. That’s downright barbaric. There is a better way.”

A new study from mental health experts at the University of California Riverside School of Medicine and published in Psychiatric News highlights some of the harms. “The Special Report, U.S. Immigration Policy and the Mental Health of Children and Families” found that “children in mixed-status families often live with chronic anticipatory anxiety that a loved one could be detained or deported. These fears have been shown to lead to school absenteeism, academic disengagement, and heightened emotional distress….These experiences weaken attachment bonds, erode emotional security, and interfere with healthy development.”

Meanwhile, national media are highlighting how back to school seems different this year in many schools and classrooms across the country.

• The Washington Post “This back-to-school season, educators prepare for ICE encounters,” noted, “As the Trump administration increases its enforcement actions, broadening whom is detained and where raids are conducted, parents fear that school campuses — once considered off limits to federal agents under long-standing ICE policy — won’t be spared from the crackdowns.”
• ABC News “Immigrant families fear Trump’s deportations as children return to school,” noted, “​​During the first several months of the president’s second term, Esmeralda Alday, former executive director of dual language and English as a second language migrant education for the San Antonio Independent School District, said fear permeated through the immigrant families in her district unlike anything she had seen before. Some mixed-status families — where one or both parents are undocumented but the kids are U.S. citizens — unenrolled from the district after Trump took office, according to Alday. She said it was not only due to the perceived threats from ICE but some families also received detention orders in the mail.”
• CBS News “Los Angeles’ immigrant community beset by fear, uncertainty as students return to school,” noted, “According to Carvalho, in LAUSD — the second-largest school district in the nation, with more than half a million students — an estimated one in five students are part of an immigrant family, in which at least one parent is undocumented. He hopes his district’s new safe zone measures are enough. “Why have immigration enforcement actions so close to schools, where a 16-year-old, a 15-year-old, may actually be misidentified as an adult?” Carvalho asked.”
• CNN “Some parents miss drop-off in Los Angeles as immigration fears dampen excitement of first day of school,” noted, “Parents like Anna Bermudez and her husband arrived at Brooklyn Avenue School with their children and noticed many parents were absent compared to previous years. “It sucks, and it’s horrible and heartbreaking,” said Anna Bermudez, whose son attends eighth grade at the school. “It should be a happy day, and bringing our kids to school feeling safe. But the fact that you don’t feel safe, even dropping them off, you know? It’s very emotional.””
• The Guardian, “Community rallies around LA teen detained by Ice while walking dog,” noted, “Benjamin Marcelo Guerrero-Cruz was supposed to be starting his senior year of high school at Reseda charter high school this month. But just days after his 18th birthday, masked Ice agents detained him as he walking his dog in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Van Nuys in what his family described as a kidnapping. The agents allowed his dog to run loose, and treated Guerrero-Cruz like a criminal and joked while arresting him, his family said in a GoFundMe.”

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