Immigration policies are bad for children’s health
Research links fears of deportation with a number of conditions
New, increasingly harsh immigration policies are sending shock waves of fear throughout our immigrant communities. We see evidence of this fear everywhere, especially in families and — most tragically — in children. We are a health services colleagues — a researcher (Fairbrother) and pediatrician (Campo de Gonzalez) — in Albuquerque. We bring knowledge from our different vantage points to show how fear is threatening the health and well-being of children and whole families.
A mother recently came to one of our pediatric clinics with her 4-year-old child who had been “crying all the time” since witnessing her father being detained by immigration and taken from their family’s home. Two weeks later, the mother had taken a video, showing the child looking out of a window, waiting for her father to come home. In the video, the child is crying, asking for her father, with her eyes squeezed shut and her face grimacing as if in pain. The mother finally brought her child to clinic because the child was not eating or playing and when she did interact with the family, it was to lash out aggressively, knowing no other way to express her deep sadness and loss.
Families like this one, with one or more undocumented parents and citizen children, are most vulnerable to being ripped apart. Tragically, these are among the least logical targets for deportation. However, they represent a substantial fraction of the immigrant population: Almost 40 percent of the undocumented immigrants are parents or caretakers and about 84 percent reside with at least one U.S.-citizen child. Most strikingly, most of these parents of citizen children are long-term residents in their communities; one-third have been here at least five years. Thus, far from the rapists and felons depicted by the (Trump) administration, most undocumented immigrants are in families with deep roots in their communities.
Throughout our communities, not only in pediatric clinics but also in churches, schools and parks, parents talk about the toll this fear is taking on their families and especially on children. Both of us have heard parents describe typical mornings that include children crying and clinging when it is time to go to school. These children struggle to concentrate in class because they fear that when they return home they will find an empty home and their parents deported. And families report staying at home as much as possible, even going as far as to skip school and doctor appointments for fear of being picked up.
This fear takes a toll emotionally and physically. Researchers know now that high levels of fear and worry — called “toxic stress” — causes changes in hormones, immune responses and other body functions in ways that affect not only emotional but also physical health. Fear of deportation and of the family being torn apart acts on a body exactly as the other types of toxic stress. Recent research has shown that children whose parents are taken into custody and/or deported experience mental and emotional health problems, including sleeping and eating disturbances, anxiety, depression, poor school performance and other types of distress. Pediatric clinics are seeing all of these problems in their patients as a direct consequence of the fear our families are facing each day.
An immigrant policy that produces such disastrous and dangerous effects on families is inhumane, and moreover, it is unnecessary. No one wants dangerous criminals in neighborhoods — no matter what their immigration status. However, the more humane policy of targeting those who have committed violent crimes would remove the dangerous criminals and at the same time spare immigrants who are working, raising children and making a contribution to their communities.