New Mexico Kids! |
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March-April 2008 |
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Paying the Price: How Immigration Raids Affect Children
by Bill Jordan, Policy Director
New Mexico Voices for Children
Imagine how your child would feel if she came home from school only to find that you were gone; taken away by forces she is too young to understand. All this child knows is that mom and dad are not coming home, and she didn’t even get to say goodbye.
Such a scenario sounds a bit farfetched in America, as working parents scramble daily to schedule after-school care for their kids. But it happens, and millions of children are in danger of having it happen to them.
These are the children of undocumented immigrants, who are punished for the “sins” of their parents by a system that makes little, if any, provision for their welfare. The “sins” of the parents are something we all want – a better life for their children. The system, of course, has been fueled of late by highly emotional rhetoric. With such a divisive public debate surrounding the issue of immigration, the government can hardly ignore the issue – particularly in an election year.
And so, many communities have seen a rise in the number of raids conducted by federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials. Agents most often conduct raids at business that are suspected of employing large numbers of undocumented workers – meatpacking plants, construction companies, and farms, to name a few. On average, for every two undocumented adults picked up by ICE, one child is left behind. Fully two-thirds of those children are either U.S. citizens or legal residents.
To find out how ICE raids affect children, their families, and the communities in which they live, the National Council of La Raza (NCLR), an Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization, contracted with the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan research organization, to conduct a study. The resulting report, “Paying the Price: The Impact of Immigration Raids on America’s Children,” released last fall, was the first comprehensive assessment of the social, economic, and psychological effects of immigration raids on children.
The report profiles three communities that experienced large-scale worksite raids within the past three years: Greeley, Colorado; Grand Island, Nebraska; and New Bedford, Massachusetts. Researchers interviewed affected families, community institutions like schools and churches, and the children themselves. The picture that emerged is one that few American could point to with pride.
Parents who were taken into custody in the workplace often had neither the time nor the resources to arrange for childcare. Detained parents had limited access to phones and some were quickly moved to out-of-state facilities. Some parents even confessed that they were afraid to arrange for care for their kids, fearing that ICE officers would then take their children into custody as well.
To their credit, all of the school districts in the communities where the raids were conducted tried to make sure that no child was dropped off at an empty home or left overnight at the school. One district even contacted every parent who worked at the meatpacking plant that was raided. Still, some children walked home to find empty houses. In the immediate aftermath, some children simply stayed in the care of babysitters while others were left in the charge of older children. Not surprisingly, the children reported experiencing depression, separation anxiety disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, and even thoughts of suicide.
Many parents whose spouse was detained but were not taken into custody themselves took their children into hiding for fear of further raids. This caused the children further distress as they missed school, were labeled by their peers as “illegal,” and faced other forms of social isolation. In the longer term, families experienced severe economic hardships, especially if the detained parent was the main breadwinner.
In all three of the study sites, informal networks of community leaders, religious institutions, and other social service groups formed to assist the immigrant families. Two of the employers also offered support via donations to local advocacy and assistance groups. Even state and municipal entities devoted staff and other resources to the relief efforts.
Whatever form our national immigration policy eventually takes, it must address the issue of children – many of them American citizens – whose familial foundations are undermined by actions aimed at their parents. After all, some five million American children have at least one parent who is an undocumented immigrant. We cannot leave them all behind. To download a pdf of the report, go to http://www.nnvoices.org.
Bill Jordan is the father of two (grown) children and is Policy Director at New Mexico Voices for Children. Contact him at bjordan@nmvoices.org.
© New Mexico Kids! Magazine
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