Immigrant Children & The Mental Health Emergency We Continue to Ignore

Written by: Founding Executive Director of the Latino Action Network Foundation, Dr. Jesselly De La Cruz, LCSW, DSW

During the first Trump administration, I spent countless hours sitting with families preparing for the possibility that a parent might not come home from work. In therapy sessions, we walked through emergency plans, memorized phone numbers, identified trusted adults, and talked about what children should do if a mother or father were suddenly detained. These were not hypothetical conversations. They were survival plans.

I remember one young African American client telling me, "Mr. Trump is going to send me back to Africa." He was in kindergarten. His classmates were talking about deportation, walls, and who belonged in this country. Even at that age, children understood the fear, racism, and exclusion embedded in the national conversation around immigration.

Long before the pandemic normalized telehealth, I was using WhatsApp in 2017 and 2018 to provide family therapy across borders. Parents who had been deported still wanted to tuck their children in emotionally, help with homework, and stay connected. Technology became a lifeline for families navigating yet another forced separation.

Today, nearly a decade later, I see the long-term consequences in my private practice. Many of my clients are now adults in their late twenties and early thirties who grew up under the constant threat of detention or deportation. They are processing anxiety, grief, hypervigilance, and complicated family dynamics that began years ago. The trauma did not end when the headlines faded.

The recent escalation of ICE enforcement, together with the expansion of privately operated detention centers like Delaney Hall, reflects increasingly draconian policies that violate fundamental human rights and inflict harms that reverberate across individuals, families, and generations. Children absorb these experiences. Families reorganize their lives around fear. Communities learn to expect disruption rather than safety.

Resilience exists in immigrant communities, but resilience should never be mistaken for immunity. When enforcement policies separate families and create chronic fear, the psychological costs are profound and lasting.

Much of today's conversation about children's mental health rightly focuses on the impact of technology and social media. Yet if we are willing to examine the effects of smartphones and screen time on young people, we must also be willing to confront the psychological consequences of immigration policies that produce fear, uncertainty, and family separation. Family-first approaches and concerns about children's mental health too often disappear when the children involved are Black and Brown.

For children of immigrants or immigrant children, anxiety is not always rooted in what they encounter online. Sometimes it stems from wondering whether their parents will come home, whether they themselves belong, or whether their family will survive another separation. And for many immigrant adolescents, dreams that should center around prom, graduation, college, and the promise of adulthood are overshadowed by fears of detention, deportation, and family disruption. No young person should have to wonder whether they will celebrate commencement with their classmates or face confinement in a detention center. These experiences shape development every bit as profoundly as social media exposure, yet they receive far less public attention.

If we truly care about children's mental health, then family unity and human dignity must be part of the conversation on immigration policy. Mental health professionals, educators, and families have known for years that immigration policy affects psychological well-being. The real question is why the mental health of Black and Brown children has been so easily excluded from our national understanding of what it means to put families first.

To help protect immigrant children and ensure they have access to safety, stability, and support, we encourage readers to stand with the New Jersey Consortium for Immigrant Children. Learn more about its work, support its efforts, and help advocate for a future in which every child is treated with dignity and care.