Much of Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign hinged on a promise to crack down on immigration—sweeping deportations, stringent asylum policies, a wall. Since getting elected, Trump hasn’t followed through with all those ideas, but he’s tried, and the debate over who can stay in this county has intensified to the point that a group of researchers says it’s impacting the health of some children of immigrants in California.
UC Berkeley researchers published a study on June 24 that acknowledges an issue some local children’s health professionals say they’ve been dealing with for years. Fears related to changing U.S. immigration policy are associated with higher levels of anxiety, worse sleep, and blood pressure changes among children of immigrant families. The study also suggests that reports of anxiety increased after the 2016 presidential election.
That’s a trend that therapist Natasha Quintero, who works in Santa Barbara County’s Department of Behavioral Wellness, said is playing out locally.
“People who were once more reserved about how they felt about immigrants are now more confident to express how they really feel while being less mindful of others,” Quintero told the Sun.
The Berkeley study uses data collected by the Center for the Health Assessment of Mothers and Children of Salinas (CHAMACOS), a separate, long-term study of Mexican farmworker families in the Salinas Valley. Berkeley used a sample of nearly 400 U.S.-born, primarily Mexican-American teens with at least one immigrant parent who went through health assessments as a part of CHAMACOS both before and after the 2016 presidential election.
Researchers found that nearly half of participants “worried at least sometimes” about U.S. immigration policy, family separation because of deportation, and being reported to an immigration office. Those with more intense concerns about immigration had higher rates of anxiety and experienced worse sleep. Those participants also reported increased levels of anxiety after Trump’s election.
The study uses a small pool in a single location, but therapist Quintero said she sees similar impacts locally every day.
The conversation around immigration tends to be contentious, and is being carried out constantly in the news, on social media, and in everyday life. Concerns over deportation and legal status affected the well-being of some Santa Barbara County families before Trump was elected president, Quintero said. Former President Barack Obama’s deportation policies landed him with the nickname, “deporter in chief.”
But Quintero, who works in the county’s Santa Maria-based children’s mental health office, said she’s seen an uptick in immigration concerns since the Trump administration took over.
Adverse experiences
In September 2017, the Trump administration took steps to rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, an Obama-era policy that protects undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children. In April 2018, the Trump administration began separating migrant parents from their children at the southern border, and at the beginning of this year, Trump leveraged the longest government shutdown in American history in an effort to get funding for a border wall. Now Trump is threatening increases in ICE enforcement operations.
“It just instills fear,” Quintero said.
Quintero’s clinic in Santa Maria treats individuals ages 6 to 25 for various mental health issues using family therapy, individual therapy, crisis support, rehabilitation services, and medication. The clinic is currently working with roughly 300 clients, and Quintero estimated that about 20 to 35 percent struggle with separation anxiety or depression related to family removal or attachment trauma.
Being separated from a parent, family member, or caregiver in any way can be traumatic for a child, Quintero said, whether it’s due to a death, imprisonment, deportation or anything else. That trauma can lead to a plethora of issues, including anxiety, mistrust of adults and authority figures, sleep issues, loss of appetite, lesser performance in school, reluctance to create lasting relationships with peers and adults, behavioral issues, anger issues, lack of impulse control, etc.
In Santa Maria, Quintero said she’s treated kids who’ve witnessed family members and neighbors being arrested and taken away by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers, whose parents were deported while they were at school or work, or who’ve been separated from their parents or family members for years.
One child Quintero works with was separated from his parents for years because they moved to the U.S. from Mexico and then struggled to get him into the country. Now he’s having behavioral and mental health issues, and his parents worry getting treatment will show up on his record and make them look like a “burden on the system.” A lot of people worry about that, she said.
Kids struggling with these issues often don’t want to go to school or leave their parents because they fear their parents will be deported while they’re gone, Quintero said. Even parents fear that sometimes, she said. Undocumented kids tend to feel like there’s no point in school because they won’t be able to attend college or work, and Quintero said those feelings of hopelessness and uncertainty can be difficult to counter because no one is sure of what will happen in today’s political climate.
“Having to instill hope when we don’t know what her future looks like—it’s hard,” she said.
Sandra Fuhring, the development manager at North County CALM, a nonprofit that works with families to treat and prevent childhood trauma, said that while she’s not sure there’s been an increase in concerns over immigration, it’s a prevalent stressor among CALM’s clientele.
Many of CALM’s families are afraid to leave their homes, go to public places, and make police reports, due to fear of deportation, Fuhring said. While some children may not be old enough to fully understand the gravity of how immigration policies could affect their lives, Fuhring said a parent’s anxiety can greatly and negatively influence his or her children’s mental health.
Alana Walczak, CALM’s CEO, said it’s important for community members and lawmakers to know that family separation of any kind, even if its temporary, can be traumatic, and can lead to lasting mental health issues.
Walczak outlined some of those impacts in an op-ed she wrote for Noozhawk in June 2018, when the Trump administration was still separating immigrant families at the Mexico-U.S. border as part of its “zero tolerance policy.” Seperation from a parent is an adverse childhood experience, Walczak wrote in the piece, and children who go through experiences like those are more likely to suffer behavioral and learning problems as children, and lasting health issues as adults.
Walczak brought that op-ed out again recently when she heard about the poor conditions in detention facilities at the border where immigrant children are being held. She can’t believe we’re talking about the same thing we were at this time last year.
“[These] are chronic issues facing many of the families in our communities,” she said. m
Staff Writer Kasey Bubnash can be reached at kbubnash@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Jul 4-11, 2019.