The Distress of Citizen-Children with Detained and Deported Parents

Abstract

In immigration enforcement, many undocumented immigrants with children are often detained and deported. But it is their US-born citizen-children that have been overlooked in immigration debates and enforcement policies and practices. Citizen-children are at risk for negative psychological outcomes when families are fractured and destabilized by arrest, detention, and deportation. The children risk being torn from their parents and, often, their undocumented siblings. To add to the small but growing empirical base on the effects of living under the threat of deportation and actual deportation of parents, we compared the psychological status of three groups of citizen-children: (1) a group living in Mexico with their deported parents; (2) a group in the US with parents affected by detention or deportation; and (3) a comparison group of citizen-children whose undocumented parents were not affected by detention or deportation. We compared children on self-report and parent-report measures of behavioral adjustment, depression, anxiety, and self-concept. Across the three groups we found elevated levels of distress, and differences between children who had experienced a parent's detention or deportation and those who had not. We discuss findings in the context of children's clinical needs, future research, and implications for immigration enforcement policy and practices.

Applying a Community Violence Framework to Understand the Impact of Immigration Enforcement Threat on Latino Children

“…An estimated 4.5 million U.S. citizen children live in families in which one or both parents are undocumented (Pew Hispanic Research Center, ). A growing body of literature has begun to document the link between parental detention and deportation and Latino children's trauma and psychological distress (Allen, Cisneros, & Tellez, ; Brabeck, Lykes, & Hunter, ; Rojas‐Flores et al., ; Zayas, Aguilar‐Gaxiola, Yoon, & Rey, ). This review paper adds to the literature by proposing that the persistent threat of parental deportation and chronic uncertainty regarding familial safety is also harmful to Latino children and youth, especially those living in mixed‐status households, and is experienced by many children as a form of psychological violence.…”

Growing up Without Status: The Integration of Children in Mixed‐Status Families

“…The health implications of these circumstances are revealed in a small but growing body of research documenting differences in the health and well-being of children in varying legal statuses and with different experiences of immigration enforcement. The most severe of these is arguably experiencing a parent's deportation, and indeed, studies find that the deportation of a parent has profound and long-lasting psychological consequences for spouses and children left behind (Allen, Cisneros, & Tellez, 2015;Chaudry et al, 2010;Dreby, 2012;Hagan et al, 2009;Zayas, Aguilar-Gaxiola, Yoon, & Rey, 2015). One study, for example, found that children whose parents had been deported were significantly more likely to present externalizing and internalizing behavior problems than similar children with unauthorized parents not facing deportation (Allen et al, 2015).…”

Denying Citizenship: Immigration Enforcement and Citizenship Rights in the United States

“…For example, growing evidence documents the negative health consequences of parental detention or deportation (and threats of such enforcement action) on citizen children (Brabeck & Xu, 2010;Rojas-Flores et al, 2017;Zayas & Gulbas, 2017;Ybarra & Peña, 2017). And a burgeoning literature on citizen children who leave the United States to be raised in their parents' countries of origin shows that these children struggle to overcome a host of linguistic, social, and educational challenges (Dreby, 2012;Medina & Menjívar, 2015;Zayas et al 2015;Hernández-León & Zúñiga, 2016). Beyond challenges faced by citizen children in their initial transition to life in their parents' countries of origin, much less is known about their long-term outcomes and experiences.…”