A Climate of Fear

Undocumented Immigrants and the Trump Administration

By Jaimie Seaton

In his Jan. 20 inaugural address for his second term, President Donald J. Trump said, "I will send troops to the southern border to repel the disastrous invasion of our country.”

Within hours of taking the oath of office, Trump declared that migrant crossings along the U.S.-Mexico border were a national emergency, and he would deploy the U.S. military to control them. He went on to issue 10 executive orders and proclamations aimed at remaking United States’ immigration law and policies, including suspending the Refugee Admissions program, which provides legal migration to the U.S. for people who have been persecuted or fear persecution, and ending birthright citizenship.

The Migration Policy Institute reported in late April that while the Trump administration had indeed already reshaped the U.S. immigration system, it had fallen short of meeting its mass deportation aims. “Even as the number of immigration arrests is up significantly, the current pace of deportations suggests the administration will fall well short of its stated goal of 1 million deportations annually,” the MPI article says.

The Trump administration has taken 181 immigration-specific executive actions through April 29, according to MPI analysis.

Two days after the inauguration, the pro-immigration advocacy group American Immigration Council characterized Trump’s flurry of executive orders and proclamations as a signal to immigrant communities that they were under attack. Within those communities are families with children who surely will be in the crosshairs of the administration’s agenda. Trump has plans to deport an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants, which is not possible without separating families. Nearly half of undocumented adults are parents to minors, and an estimated 5.5 million U.S.-born children live with at least one undocumented parent, including 4.5 million who were born here, making them U.S. citizens.

“They’re terrified,” said Will Francis, executive director of the NASW Texas Chapter, referring to children from mixed-status families in his region.

Children in mixed-status families are at risk of family separation, as are children with an adult who crossed the border without permission (including asylum seekers). Unaccompanied minors crossing the border also may be detained, but that would not technically count as family separation, though the mass deportation can affect them as well.

Weeks before Trump was inaugurated, advocates from various organizations talked about actions the Trump administration was expected to take and some of the ways those actions could impact the immigrant community. Undoubtedly, separating families has devastating and long-term consequences, but the mere threat also can cause significant harm.

The immigration policies of Trump and his “border czar,” Tom Homan, have succeeded in instilling fear into millions of immigrants who live in this country (both legally and illegally). It’s important to note the federal government and some states have been working to erase safe spaces and hinder advocates and others from helping the immigrant community.

The situation is grim, but social workers can still play an important role in supporting immigrants in their communities.

Impacts of Family Separations

Family separations will resume, according to Homan, a former Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) director, who is credited with designing the family separation policy at the border in the first Trump administration. In a December interview with The Guardian, Homan said he planned to reopen family detention centers that were closed during the Biden administration and that officials will not hesitate to deport unauthorized parents of children who are American citizens as a result of birthright citizenship. Because children born in the U.S. can’t legally be deported, Homan put the onus on parents to decide if they are going to take their children with them or leave them behind.

Separating children from their parents or caregivers causes emotional trauma and other calamitous consequences, but the threat also can do considerable harm because it pushes people underground. Families who fear deportation and separation may keep their children home from school, delay medical care and pull away from faith-based and community resources and support. Those in domestic abuse situations may be reluctant to go to the authorities for assistance. NASW’s Francis posits that the Trump administration is working to separate families so they’ll flee the country ahead of any sort of action against them.

Wendy Cervantes, director of the Immigration and Immigrant Families team at the Center for Law and Social Policy, said the harm done to children in a mass deportation is not a collateral consequence but is done by design.

“The research is also clear that the developmental harm to children … is cumulative. So we have to consider that these kids are going to be experiencing constant fear and toxic stress due to real or anticipated deportations of their parents,” Cervantes said. She added that they’ll also have compromised access to childcare, school and doctor appointments and may experience a loss of income if a parent is deported. “And all of these risk factors, as social workers know, are incredibly dire just in and of themselves on their own. But when you add them [up], we know that the impact is much worse, because you’re basically undermining every single aspect of child well-being at the same time.”

If the person being removed is a primary breadwinner or even a contributor to the income in a household, the removal can create or exacerbate significant economic hardship, explained Matt Haygood, MSW, vice president of children’s services at the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, a nongovernmental, not-for-profit international organization that serves and advocates for refugees and immigrants.

The emotional toll of seeing a family member removed and/or deported also is profound. “There’s this kind of ongoing high alert anxiety of, ‘Could this happen again? Could this happen to others? Could this happen to me?’ That really creates a lot of anxiety and stress for kids,” Haygood said.

Unaccompanied Minors

For the past two decades, when children under the age of 18 have arrived unaccompanied at the U.S. border, they’ve been processed by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and transferred to the Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) facility. The ORR partners with private and nonprofit organizations to provide shelters for the children and is required to care for them until they are moved to a shelter or a sponsor comes forward to care for them while their immigration case is heard—which can take years. Sponsors can be parents or legal guardians, close family members, distant relatives or family friends.

Lorie Davidson, LCSW, is vice president for children and family services at Global Refuge, a nonprofit organization that aids newly arrived immigrants and refugees and facilitates family reunification. She explained that Trump’s deportation policies pose a threat to these children in a few ways. First, the legislation that allows those from noncontiguous countries without lawful immigration status—or a parent or guardian who’s able to care for them—to stay in the country until their case is heard could be overturned. This would mean these children would not be allowed to cross the border and would be stuck in Mexico.

The second threat is that those children who have already gone through the process and are living in a mixed-status household face the possibility of being separated from their parents or guardians.

“These children have already been living in highly traumatic situations, whether that is a daily threat of community violence, abuse, neglect or extreme poverty, and they have made this very difficult and dangerous journey to the U.S.,” Davidson said. They’ve been reunited with a loved one and are finally starting to feel safe and secure and now face the threat of being separated from an adult caregiver or potentially removed from the country that has provided them that sense of safety.

“(These threats are) highly traumatic and it causes children to feel extreme anxiety and depression, and that can manifest in many ways,” Davidson said. “You can see behavioral changes. Children may become more isolated—they’re afraid to go out; they’re afraid to go to school.”

Moreover, it puts the unauthorized parents or guardians in a situation where they must choose between taking the child (who has been given legal status or is allowed to be in the country until their immigration case is heard) back to the country from which they escaped or leaving the child in the U.S. without them.

“To be able to work with a child and a family over a period of time to get them to start to feel safe and secure, only to have it all over the media [again] that there are going to be mass deportations and that families will be separated, it’s devastating,” Davidson said.

One impact of the zero-tolerance policy of the first Trump administration was that, because information was shared between the ORR and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), sponsors of children ready to be released from custody were reluctant to go through the process.

“They did not want to be targeted for immigration reinforcement. So what that meant was kids were lingering in federal custody for longer periods of time because sponsors didn’t want to complete the process or requirements,” said Haygood of the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants.

It was announced in February that ICE officials would again have access to the database of unaccompanied minors, and HHS announced that fingerprinting would be required for all adult sponsors (and adult household members) of unaccompanied minors. That same month, a leaked ICE memo outlined a then-new effort to deport unaccompanied migrant children.

No More Safe Spaces

In an early January interview, Davidson expressed concern that the new administration would not respect decades-old policies that protected “sensitive areas,” such as schools, hospitals and churches, from immigration enforcement. Davidson’s fears about the new administration not respecting the policies were validated. The day after Trump’s inauguration, DHS announced it was reversing guidance that restricted two key federal immigration agencies from carrying out immigration enforcement in so-called sensitive locations. As a result, the two agencies are allowed to enter schools, churches and hospitals in pursuit of those with undocumented status.

The statement from the DHS said in part, “Criminals will no longer be able to hide in America’s schools and churches to avoid arrest. The Trump Administration will not tie the hands of our brave law enforcement, and instead trusts them to use common sense.”

“School is supposed to be safe. A student’s supposed to go to school and know that they’re there to get an education and to build their social emotional development and to see friends and to be around adults who support them,” NASW’s Francis said, adding that if school becomes a threatening space for immigrant children, social workers have to think about how they can make the space less threatening. He suggested providing groups for the children and asking the school district if attorneys would be available to support the social workers.

The Center for Law and Social Policy’s Cervantes noted that many of these locations can restrict ICE’s access to their facility if ICE doesn’t have the correct authorization or the right kind of judicial warrant to enter those facilities. For example, a school administrator or whoever is interacting with that ICE officer can ask them to leave until they can return with the proper warrant, and also can ask for time to have someone review the warrant.

Cervantes said her organization is training staff that might interact with ICE agents how to determine whether ICE has the right type of documentation to enter, and how to handle the situation. “As advocates, one of the things we’re trying to do is make sure that schools and childcare programs and hospitals and other health care settings, domestic violence shelters, places of worship, that they have the resources they need to be able to keep their places safe, to keep ICE officers out of their facilities and off of their grounds,” she said.

Social Workers on the Front Lines

This is a challenging time to be a social worker in the United States. Federal and state governments, as well as some citizens, are not only targeting immigrants but also members of every other marginalized community. Social workers need to be especially vigilant in protecting immigrants in their care and in their community—a task made all the more difficult with the rescission of the sensitive places policy.

Francis said there may be spaces where social workers have to ask themselves whether they’re willing to take a stand. “Do I have to consider if this is important enough to me personally to say, ‘I’m not going to turn over data. I’m going to resist and this may put my license or my freedom at risk, but I’m willing to take that chance knowing that there will be court support behind me,’” Francis said.

He emphasized there is strength in numbers, and that’s where NASW and coalitions come in. Social workers in school districts and other places need to be talking to each other and looking at policies that support each other.

Davidson, of Global Refuge, agrees. “Be an emotional support for families and other social workers who may be working on the front lines with children and families. It’s very difficult to be exposed to the challenges that these families will face day in and day out,” she said.

There are many ways social workers can assist immigrant families, including being prepared with the ACLU’s Know Your Rights and other pertinent up-to-date information, and having it available in multiple languages; finding a local legal aid office or attorneys in the community who offer pro bono or low bono services to immigrants; and helping families create a family preparedness plan—regardless of their immigration status. This is a detailed plan that outlines who should care for children if a parent or guardian is detained, where to find trusted immigration services in the community, and how to prepare to assert one’s constitutional rights in the presence of an immigration officer.

Davidson says one of the most important things is to signal to the immigrant community that you support them, that you want to help them, and that they can trust you. She suggests going to community centers and other places where immigrant families may be accessing services.

“If you are a social worker who is bilingual or multilingual, that is invaluable, to be able to provide guidance to families in their language of origin,” she said.

If ICE takes a family member into custody, the first step is to go to ICE’s online detainee locator system. Hopefully, both parents aren’t apprehended, but Cervantes said under current policy, family members are allowed to make phone calls if a child is left behind without either parent. “And in most of these scenarios, they do try to leave at least one parent at home for the short term to make sure that the child is not left alone or unnecessarily handed over to Child Protective Services.”

Cervantes adds it’s crucial for social workers to ensure that parents’ wishes regarding their child(ren) are upheld if both or a single parent is deported—whether the children stay in the U.S. or go with the parent(s) to the country they’re being deported to.

“(Social workers) should also try to identify legal aid for the family and to support the detained family member and, if needed, the other caregiver of the child,” Cervantes said. Also, figure out what other support the family might need if they’ve lost a primary breadwinner. “Do they need to get some temporary assistance to pay for rent and utilities or food and other supplies? We know that this has a tremendous impact on the mental health of those left behind, in particular the children. So trying to identify mental health resources for that family is going to be really critical, too.”

Above all, Davidson says to speak up, be an advocate, and look for opportunities to join others in uplifting the needs of refugees and immigrants.

“Refugees and immigrants are an incredibly resilient community, but they need our support,” Davidson said. “There is such an opportunity for social workers and other caring individuals to step up to support and amplify the needs and the voices of these folks that make America, America.”

Jaimie Seaton is a New England-based journalist with 30 years of experience. Her work appears in multiple publications, including Scientific American and Smithsonian Magazine.