US Child mental health crisis tied to immigration enforcement
UC Riverside psychiatrists call for reform to protect families from trauma
RIVERSIDE, Calif. -- Aggressive immigration practices — such as detention, deportation, and workplace raids — are contributing to widespread emotional trauma among both immigrant and U.S.-born children living in mixed-status households, according to a report published by a team of mental health professionals in the School of Medicine at the University of California, Riverside.
Published in Psychiatric News, the report warns that immigration enforcement in the United States is a public health emergency for millions of children.
“Psychiatry, as both a clinical discipline and a social institution, cannot remain on the periphery,” the authors write. “The current moment calls for a reexamination of how structural and intergenerational trauma are diagnosed, understood, and treated.”
The report explains how U.S.-born children in mixed-status families face constant anxiety about their parents being detained or deported. It notes that both pre- and post-migration family separations harm children’s emotional development and academic performance. Immigrant caregivers, especially mothers, often suffer from trauma, which limits their ability to support their children emotionally, the authors write.
As national debates around immigration continue, the report urges the media, policymakers, and clinicians to confront the human costs of enforcement-driven immigration systems and to prioritize the emotional wellbeing of the youngest and most vulnerable.
“We are witnessing the effects of chronic fear, disrupted attachment, and intergenerational trauma on a massive scale,” said Dr. Lisa Fortuna, professor and chair of psychiatry and neuroscience at the UCR School of Medicine and the lead psychiatrist behind the report. “The threat or reality of separation from a caregiver fundamentally reshapes a child’s development and mental health.”
The report includes clinical case studies and community-based data that reveal how trauma is transmitted across generations and shaped by conditions such as poverty, discrimination, and fear of enforcement. It also outlines emerging models of care that are proving more effective and ethical than traditional mental health interventions.
“Psychiatry must take an active role — not just in treatment, but in advocacy,” said coauthor Dr. Kevin Gutierrez, an assistant clinical professor of health sciences in the UCR Department of Psychiatry and Neuroscience. “The mental health of immigrant children is inseparable from the systems that shape their lives.”
In the following Q&A, Fortuna and Gutierrez, who are also providers at UCR Health, answer some questions pertinent to the report.
Q: What inspired you to explore the mental health effects of immigration enforcement on children and families?
Fortuna: As chair of the APA Council on Children, Adolescents, and Their Families, I was drawn to this issue due to its growing urgency nationwide. Children and families affected by immigration enforcement are especially vulnerable to trauma, and we wanted to address the psychiatric impact beyond politics, focusing on how policy shapes mental health and how psychiatrists can respond.
Gutierrez: When Dr. Fortuna invited me to join the project, I saw it as a chance to reframe psychiatry’s role — not just diagnosing but addressing the broader social forces causing harm. We aimed to challenge the systems behind these policies and highlight our responsibility to engage beyond the clinic, especially in advocating for vulnerable children.
Q: Is there a clinical example that illustrates what this trauma looks like in practice?
Fortuna: In our article, we share a composite case called “Ana,” based on real clinical experiences. It highlights the intense anxiety children face, such as fearing parental deportation, avoiding school or therapy, and feeling unsafe even when seeking help.
Clinicians often help families create safety plans in case of separation, which, while necessary, reinforces the deep instability they’re living with. Even those pursuing legal immigration paths feel unsafe, and U.S. citizen children worry they could be targeted too, leading to constant fear and withdrawal.
Q: How are caregivers coping with this?
Fortuna: Many are experiencing intense anxiety, stress, and depression. Some are even reporting suicidal thoughts — feeling hopeless and helpless about their situation. There’s significant fear within families: children worry their parents won’t come back from work, and parents are terrified of being separated from their children. This fear leads to tension and emotional strain at home.
Gutierrez: In my practice with adults, I’ve had patients share concerns about how their children are coping. One parent told me their sons were being bullied at school by kids wearing MAGA hats, who threatened to call ICE on them. These boys are Latino, and although this kind of threat might sound abstract to some, it’s rooted in real incidents.
Children are dealing with separation anxiety not as a developmental phase, but as a daily reality. One parent asked me what to do when their child came home asking, “Are they going to call ICE on us?” The parent didn’t have an answer and neither did I. That’s part of the trauma: not having answers, not knowing what’s safe or predictable anymore. Kids need stability to thrive. When their world feels uncertain and parents can’t guarantee safety, it creates chronic anxiety that harms emotional and brain development.
Fortuna: False reassurance, for example, telling a child everything is fine, can backfire. Children sense when things aren’t okay. It’s better to be honest in an age-appropriate way and validate their fears. We help families make practical plans — who the child can turn to, where they’ll be safe, how to stay in touch — to give them some sense of control amid the chaos.
Q: Are there specific age groups where the mental health impact is particularly severe, or is it affecting children across the board?
Fortuna: It affects all age groups, but differently depending on development. When infants and toddlers suffer from disrupted attachment, it can lead to issues like sleep or eating problems. School-age kids are more aware and show anxiety or fear, even if they can’t fully express it. Adolescents often take on adult roles, suppressing their emotions and facing depression or anxiety.
Gutierrez: Adolescents in particular face “parentification,” taking on adult responsibilities like caregiving or running errands due to fear of enforcement. This is common even in mixed-status or citizen families because fear affects everyone, regardless of legal status.
Fortuna: Many teens fear losing their parents or being forced into foster care. Even kids not directly affected feel the impact when their communities are disrupted, creating a sense of collective trauma and loss of safety.
Q: How should immigration policy and mental health policy intersect going forward?
Gutierrez: It’s hard to see how current enforcement can ever be humane. These practices create chronic stress and trauma in children and meet criteria for PTSD. The harm is systemic, not isolated, and affects even those not directly targeted.
Fortuna: Mental health professionals must recognize policy as a key driver of mental health. Enforcement decisions are violating children’s basic rights: safety, family, education, and identity. Until we connect policy choices with health outcomes, especially for marginalized kids, we’re overlooking the full impact.
Q: If nothing is done to address these mental health impacts, what are the long-term consequences?
Fortuna: Unaddressed childhood trauma can lead to lifelong issues like PTSD, anxiety, and depression. When kids withdraw from school, healthcare, or relationships due to fear, they miss key developmental milestones. These effects can even be passed down through generations.
Gutierrez: Children learn by watching their caregivers. When that stability is disrupted, it impacts how they relate to others and see the world. Without safe, nurturing environments, we limit their potential emotionally, socially, and cognitively.
Q: Given what you have learned in writing this report, what gives you hope?
Fortuna: I find hope in communities, their resilience, their support for each other, and their refusal to give up. I’m also inspired by my colleagues and the next generation of professionals who are deeply committed to change.
Gutierrez: The kids themselves give me hope. Despite everything, they survive, and their communities build support systems long before we show up. Our job is to strengthen those systems. Even small interventions can change a child’s future, and that keeps me going.
Journal
Psychiatric News
Method of Research
Observational study
Subject of Research
People
Article Title
Special Report: U.S. Immigration Policy and the Mental Health of Children and Families
Los Angeles (United States) (AFP) – From Uncle Sam to Superman, the US government is deploying patriotic icons and increasingly warlike rhetoric to recruit Americans into enforcing Donald Trump's immigration crackdown.
Issued on: 07/08/2025 - FRANCE24
IDIOT
Job ads promising $50,000 signing bonuses to new "Deportation Officers" have flooded social media over the past week, accompanied by jingoistic rallying slogans that declare "America Needs You."
White House officials have shared World War I-style posters, including one with Uncle Sam donning an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) baseball cap, while a former Superman actor has pledged he will "be sworn in as an ICE agent ASAP."
"So many patriots have stepped up, and I'm proud to be among them," Dean Cain, who starred as the Man of Steel in 1990s TV series "Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman," told FOX News.
ICE, the agency chiefly responsible for the recent, divisive masked raids on farms, factories and Home Depot parking lots across the nation, is pulling out all the stops to hire new officers at a staggering rate.
Flush with $75 billion in extra funding -- making it the highest-funded US law enforcement agency, ahead of even the FBI -- ICE has been tasked by Trump with deporting one million undocumented immigrants per year.
To do so, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has pledged to hire 10,000 new officers, in a process that would swell ICE's ranks by a whopping 50 percent.
On Wednesday, Noem scrapped pre-existing age caps that prevented over-40s from becoming deportation officers.
Student debt forgiveness, generous overtime pay and enhanced retirement benefits are all being flouted -- alongside language about the opportunity to "Fulfill your destiny" and "Defend the Homeland."
"Your nation needs you to step into the breach. For our country, for our culture, for our way of life. Will you answer the call?" read one post on Department of Homeland Security social media accounts.
'All-hands-on-deck'
DHS officials say they have received 80,000 applications since the recruitment campaign began less than a week ago.
But critics have quickly highlighted evidence that the aggressive drive may not be working as effectively as officials claim.
Dozens of officials at FEMA -- a separate agency that deals with emergency disaster response -- have been reassigned to ICE and threatened with losing their jobs if they do not move, the Washington Post reported.
DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told the Post the move was part of "an all-hands-on-deck strategy to recruit 10,000 new ICE agents."
An ICE pilot program offering agents additional cash bonuses for deporting people quickly was scrapped less than four hours after it was announced, when its existence was leaked to the New York Times.
And some local law enforcement agencies that have cooperated with the federal immigration crackdown have complained that they are now seeing their own officers poached.
"ICE actively trying to use our partnership to recruit our personnel is wrong," a Florida sheriff's office spokesperson told CNN.
-'Kryptonite' -
Perhaps the highest profile and most scathing response has come from "South Park," the popular animated TV satire that is becoming a thorn in the Trump administration's side.
In a recent episode, hapless school counselor Mr Mackey is offered an ICE job after a seven-second-long interview, immediately handed a gun and sent on a raid of a children's concert.
"If you're crazy, or fat and lazy, we don't care at all," says a fictional ICE job advert.
"Remember, only detain the brown ones. If it's brown, it goes down," orders Noem's character during a satirical sequence set during an immigration raid in heaven.
ICE raids have been accused using racial profiling by rights groups.
Meanwhile, the recruitment drive has been hailed by conservative outlets.
Fox News celebrated the news that Superman actor Cain had enlisted with the headline banner "Illegals, meet your Kryptonite."
Supportive comments on the channel's Facebook page included "Now that's a REAL Superman."
Several others pointed out that Superman, a beloved comic book hero who is closely associated with American patriotism, is "quite literally an alien immigrant."
© 2025 AFP
US judge orders temporary halt to new 'Alligator Alcatraz' construction
Miami (AFP) – A US federal judge ordered a temporary pause on Thursday to further construction of the migrant detention center in the Florida Everglades known as "Alligator Alcatraz" in a case filed by conservation groups.
Issued on: 07/08/2025 -
District Judge Kathleen Williams issued the temporary restraining order in a lawsuit filed against the Trump administration by Friends of the Everglades and the Center for Biological Diversity.
The detention center, built on the site of an abandoned airfield in the Big Cypress National Preserve, can continue to house immigration detainees, but the Miami-based judge ordered an immediate two-week halt to new construction while the suit proceeds.
Friends of the Everglades and the Center for Biological Diversity are arguing that the detention center threatens the sensitive Everglades ecosystem and was hastily built without conducting the required environmental impact studies.
President Donald Trump, who has vowed to deport millions of undocumented migrants, visited the center last month, boasting about the harsh conditions and joking that the reptilian predators will serve as guards.
The name "Alligator Alcatraz" is a reference to Alcatraz Island, the former prison on an island in San Franciso Bay that Trump recently said he wanted to reopen.
The conservation groups that filed the lawsuit welcomed the judge's ruling.
"We're pleased that the judge saw the urgent need to put a pause on additional construction, and we look forward to advancing our ultimate goal of protecting the unique and imperiled Everglades ecosystem from further damage caused by this mass detention facility," Eve Samples, executive director at Friends of the Everglades, said in a statement.
Elise Bennett, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, said it was a "relief that the court has stepped in to protect the Everglades' sensitive waters, starry skies and vulnerable creatures from further harm while we continue our case."
"We're ready to press forward and put a stop to this despicable plan for good," Bennett said.
The ruling was also welcomed by the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida, which joined the case.
"The detention facility threatens land that is not only environmentally sensitive but sacred to our people," tribal chairman Talbert Cypress said. "While this order is temporary, it is an important step in asserting our rights and protecting our homeland."
The detention center is also the subject of a lawsuit filed in another federal court claiming that detainees are not being given access to attorneys and are being held without charges.
© 2025 AFP
Trump demands new US census as redistricting war spreads
Washington (AFP) – US President Donald Trump on Thursday ordered officials to work on a new census excluding undocumented immigrants, as the White House presses Republican states to draw more favorable voter maps ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
Issued on: 07/08/2025 -
Trump called for a "new and highly accurate" census that he wanted based on unspecified "modern day facts and figures" gleaned from the 2024 election.
"People who are in our Country illegally WILL NOT BE COUNTED IN THE CENSUS," he said in the social media post.
The US Constitution since 1790 has required a census every 10 years that counts the "whole number of persons in each state" -- including people in the country illegally.
The next one is not due until 2030, although preparations for the enormous task are already underway.
Trump did not make clear if he was referring to the regularly scheduled population count or if he wanted a special survey undertaken earlier.
The census is used to determine how many members of Congress are elected from each state, and the Pew Research Center estimates that ignoring unauthorized migrants in 2020 would have deprived California, Florida and Texas of one House seat each.
It is also used for apportioning votes in the state-by-state "electoral college" that decides presidential elections and for allocating trillions of dollars in federal funding.
Trump attempted similar moves in his first term, including the addition of a citizenship question to the census, but was blocked by the Supreme Court.
The justices declined to rule on whether the millions of people in the country without legal status should be excluded.
Trump's call for a new census comes with state-level lawmakers and officials in Texas locking horns over a new electoral map that would likely net Republicans up to five extra House seats in 2026.
Threats to lawmakers
More than 50 Texas Democratic lawmakers have fled to multiple Democratic states in an effort to block the passage of the proposed blueprint during a special legislative session.
Texas Republicans have threatened to arrest them, and US Senator John Cornyn announced he had successfully petitioned the FBI to help state and local law enforcement locate them.
Republican governors in several other states are exploring new maps in a bid to protect the party's razor-thin majority in the House, which would flip next year with three Democratic gains.
Vice President JD Vance was scheduled to visit Indiana on Thursday to discuss redistricting with Governor Mike Braun and press local Republicans to eke out another seat for the party.
Politico reported that Republicans could draw as many as 10 new seats ahead of the midterms and are targeting Ohio, Missouri, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida.
In Indiana, Braun said any redistricting conversation would be "exploratory," as the state's maps were drawn fairly in 2021, Indianapolis public broadcaster WFYI reported.
Democrats have vowed to retaliate with their own proposals, possibly in New York and California, the country's largest states.
Texas legislators were evacuated from their suburban Chicago hotel on Wednesday morning following an unspecified threat.
Democratic Illinois Governor JB Pritzker authorized state police to guard the group, and insisted that the FBI -- which investigates federal crime -- and Texas authorities had no power to return them.
"They're all allowed to visit Chicago or Illinois and take in the great view of our lake and our city and enjoy the the the great restaurants that we have," he told the leftist MeidasTouch podcast.
"But they won't be taking anybody home with them or away from the state. We are protecting those Texas House Democrats, and they are protecting, frankly, the entire country, in what they do."
© 2025 AFP
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