Yave Begnet
Immigration Raids Have Long-lasting Effects on Children of Migrants
Let me introduce myself. I’m an immigration attorney and I blog as yave begnet at Citizen Orange. I’ve been given the opportunity to guest post here on the subject of immigration law and policy. Via Man Eegee, I read today an article by Anna Gorman at the LA Times about the consequences of immigration raids on children of immigrants.
Yesenia Rangel, 12, looked out her window on a Friday morning in February and saw several officers with the letters "ICE" on their sleeves. Yesenia immediately called her neighbors to warn them that immigration officers were outside their Compton apartment building. Then she watched in tears as officers handcuffed her father and took him away. During the three weeks he was detained, Yesenia said, her schoolwork suffered and she could barely sleep. "I thought, 'I'm never going to see my dad again,' " said Yesenia, a U.S. citizen by birth. As federal authorities expand immigration enforcement in California and throughout the nation, teachers, mental health professionals and immigrant rights advocates are raising concerns about the effect on children like Yesenia who are U.S. citizens.A comprehensive report (pdf) from the Urban Institute and NCLR released last year detailed some of the effects mentioned in the article.
After the arrest or disappearance of their parents, children experienced feelings of abandonment and showed symptoms of emotional trauma, psychological duress, and mental health problems. Many lacked stability in child care and supervision. Families continued hiding and feared arrest if they ventured outside, increasing social isolation over time. Immigrant communities faced the fear of future raids, backlash from nonimmigrants, and the stigma of being labeled “illegal.” The combination of fear, isolation, and economic hardship induced mental health problems such as depression, separation anxiety disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, and suicidal thoughts. However, due to cultural reasons, fear of possible consequences in asking for assistance, and barriers to accessing services, few affected immigrants sought mental health care for themselves or their children.You know your world is twisted when you can read a sentence like this next one without batting an eye (from the LA Times article):
[ICE] also issued a memo directing agents not to take children into custody if they are U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents and instead try to coordinate care with child welfare authorities.Which implies that until recently, it was official government policy to lock up U.S. citizen children in certain circumstances, if only temporarily. I hope I’m not the only one who sees something wrong with this. The fact that we’re locking up children at all strains belief. Once you label a child born in the U.S. an “anchor baby” and question the child’s right to constitutional protections that emerged from the Civil War and have common law roots going back centuries, it’s easy enough to justify incarcerating U.S. citizen children who’ve committed no crime. Contra Malkin, let’s not go back to the era of concentration camps for citizens of disfavored ethnicities. (I sometimes wonder what restrictionists envision when they talk about anchor babies. Maybe something like this.) From the LA Times again:
Marlies Amarca, a clinical psychologist in the San Fernando Valley who has testified as an expert witness in Immigration Court, said she frequently sees children whose parents have been arrested by immigration authorities. The children often have nightmares and separation anxiety and frequently fall behind in school, she said. "It's a very scary situation," she said. "It has an effect on their school performance. It has an effect on their psyche."Roberto Lovato has argued persuasively that the trauma inflicted on children by immigration raids are just one part of a system of control and exploitation that he terms “Juan Crow.”
[T]he younger children of the mostly immigrant Latinos in Georgia are learning and internalizing that they are different from white–and black–children not just because they have the wrong skin color but also because many of their parents lack the right papers. They are growing up in a racial and political climate in which Latinos’ subordinate status in Georgia and in the Deep South bears more than a passing resemblance to that of African-Americans who were living under Jim Crow. Call it Juan Crow: the matrix of laws, social customs, economic institutions and symbolic systems enabling the physical and psychic isolation needed to control and exploit undocumented immigrants. Listening to the effects of Juan Crow on immigrants and citizens like Mancha (”I can’t sleep sometimes because of nightmares,” she says. “My arms still twitch. I see ICE agents and men in uniform, and it still scares me”) reminds me of the trauma I heard among the men, women and children controlled and exploited by state violence in wartime El Salvador. Juan Crow has roots in the US South, but it stirs traumas bred in the hemispheric South.Read the whole thing. Meanwhile, I’ll work on producing shorter posts!
Yave Begnet: Author Bio | Other Posts
Posted at 6:52 AM, Jun 10, 2008 in Immigration
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Comments
Those illegal aliens are despicable creatures for putting their children in such conditions. Family values indeed.
Finish the fence.
Posted by: rogerg | June 10, 2008 12:09 PM
Despicable creatures, indeed, are those who create such laws, the ones who take families apart, the ones who believe that building a wall will solve the problems that are rooted way deeper. THEY are the despicable creatures who ashamed our country.
Posted by: isa | June 10, 2008 01:41 PM
Tell me why I am supposed to care? Take it up with the parents of these children who illegally entered America and continue operating here illegally. I'll reserve my compassion for the children of American citizens who have been murdered by illegal aliens or killed my illegal alien drunk drivers.
Posted by: Esteban | June 10, 2008 01:50 PM
Our country, America, suffers a crime every time an illegal alien takes their first step onto our soil. That is intolerable to me and the vast majority of the American people. The only legal, moral and viable solution to illegal immigration is 'attrition through enforcement'. That's accomplished by simply enforcing the law. It's currently illegal to employ illegal aliens. It's also against the law to provide some state and local services to illegal aliens.
Imagine that, by enforcing the law, illegal aliens will be without jobs and their gravy train of benefits they are so adept at accessing. It would be exceedingly hard (impossible, really) to remain here without a viable source of income. They found their way here; they can find it back home. Its called self-deportation. And it works...just look at the droves of illegal aliens leaving Oklahoma, Georgia, Arizona, and northern Virginai (and soon to depart from Missouri, Mississippi and South Carolina.)
Those that don't self deport are ID'ed if they commit crimes and deported. No rocket science is needed to solve the illegal immigration problem. The issue is not complex nor impossible or extremely costly to deal with, as the illegal aliens, their huggers and advocates would like for you to believe. Simple commitment to enforcing laws we already have on the books will work.
The more we become a nation of illegal immigrants, the deeper we fall into anarchy.
Posted by: Esteban | June 10, 2008 01:57 PM
It's disheartening to see 3 of the 4 comments so far coming from the "deport them all" angle. I encourage anyone who disagrees with them to weigh in.
The "rule of law" mantra is one repeated often by restrictionists, and at first glance, it's persuasive. But consider this: the great majority of the laws in place now simply weren't there during the Ellis Island years of American immigration that is so celebrated in our culture. Had those laws been in place then, they would have screened out the great majority of intending migrants. The process of migrating to the U.S. lawfully has simply been legislated out of reach for most low-income migrants of the kind who packed the ships from Italy, Ireland, and elsewhere 100 years ago. But Congress isn't able to legislate away business needs or economic problems in other countries, so the engine of migration keeps turning while our legal framework gets further and further out of date.
The circular "it's illegal because it's illegal" claim is also flawed when you consider that states and municipalities around the country are constantly making things illegal that weren't yesterday, last week, or last month. Furthermore, the complex network of laws and interpretations that has been crafted mostly for political gain often makes it difficult to determine who exactly has a legal claim to stay in this country. Does the parent of a green-card holder have the right to stay here with her adult child if the parent overstayed a visitor visa? Not right now, but she probably will next year if her daughter naturalizes. Should she be deported in the meantime? If she is, then she likely won't be permitted back to the U.S. for an additional 10 years. Does that make any sense? Does that provide any incentive for the parent to leave now and try to process the papers in strict observance with the law? No and no.
These scenarios are familiar to migrants and their attorneys and cast doubt on the good faith of arguments that claim it's all about maintaining a predictable, fair, consistent body of law. Immigration law in the current political climate is none of those things.
Posted by: yave begnet | June 10, 2008 05:41 PM
And this "gravy train of benefits" is a myth. Undocumented immigrants are not eligible for most forms of public assistance. Furthermore, receipt of certain forms of public assistance can make immigrants ineligible for a green card. In my experience, most of my clients are aware of this before I mention it to them. So there are various checks against receipt of things like food stamps, SSI, WIC, social security, or non-emergency Medicaid. Furthermore, many immigrants, through payroll taxes, are paying into a Social Security system they may never be able to draw out of.
Set against all of this, keep in mind that many undocumented immigrants are working longer hours for less pay under worse conditions with fewer benefits than most citizens. And all under constant threat of imprisonment and deportation and the harassment that comes with sublegal status. So why would they put themselves through all of that? Why would anyone do that?
It's a question I wish restrictionists would think about a little more carefully.
Posted by: yave begnet | June 10, 2008 05:54 PM
This mess is of our own making. The feds are now starting to finally take action on a 20 year old promise but we need to acknowledge that 20 years of unenforcement isn't the illegals fault. It's time we take responsibility for our inaction and in many instances condonement of this behavior. A pathway to legalization should be required in combination with continued enforcement through border security, employment verification, a trackable visa entry/exit system, altering the 14th amendment to remove birthright citizenship, implementing a yearly evaluation of federal immigration policy to account for current job market conditions, etc...
Posted by: JohnOliver | June 10, 2008 08:59 PM
Great post yave.
Estaban stated
This is all the compassion you have? I guess I shouldn't be surprised that you vilify undocumented migrants.
You also stated
How is 'attrition through enforcement' moral? Your cute phrase basically states, as I believe yave has said in other posts, that we should turn the U.S. to a land of fear where people are not welcome. We should forget human rights and make these people so scared that anyplace is better than here. That's just sick and certainly not in line with any sense of morality I'm aware of.
Posted by: symsess | June 10, 2008 09:43 PM
For evidence that the immigration debate brings out the online crazies, see the above comments where people advocate changing the 14th amendment, a policy of "attrition through enforcement" whereby worse than third world conditions are recreated in the U.S. in an effort to make migrants so miserable that they leave on their own, and people that don't bat an eye at the fact that U.S. citizen children are being incarcerated.
DMI should be ashamed of itself for even publishing comments like these. This should be a pro-migrant space where anti-migrant comments are not allowed. Doing so would not be anti-democratic, it would simply keep out the minions of FAIR and NumbersUSA engaging this mass online propaganda campaign which serves to makes people believe the nativist sentiments above actually reflect popular opinion.
Posted by: kyledeb | June 11, 2008 12:01 AM
'Those illegal aliens are despicable creatures'.
rogerg, isa and the rest of your ilk...
No, they're not aliens; they're not creatures; and they're not despicable.
They are human beings - just like you and I - the difference is they are desperate human beings in a quest to better their lives; against the odds, against the system, against your ignorance and the ignorance of people like you.
There but for the grace of God go you.
Pick up your bible or get a therapist - you need help - it's people like you that lead to the death of 6 million Jewish people in Germany.
You can be angry about immigration but to forget that they are people - flesh and blood, fathers, mothers, sons and daughters - is shameful, despicable and not what any decent human being, God fearing, or not should ever do.
Now, take off your brown shirts and go and do something kind and decent that makes the rest of the world wish you were born.
Posted by: uk visa | June 11, 2008 06:26 AM
Those of you who support and celebrate the mental and emotional damages that are experienced by the children of immigrants or immigrants cannot call themselves Americans. Supporting and promoting such inhumane consequences of a broken immigration system is not aligned with the vision and values of this country.
Posted by: Cristina | June 11, 2008 12:31 PM
Immigration Raids on children is one of the major problem. In U.S., children are not take into the custody or legal permanent residents and instead try to coordinate care with child welfare authorities. If the parents arrested, children is feeling abandonment and showing to his symptoms of trauma and mental health problems etc.
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jeliament
South Carolina Drug Treatment
Posted by: jeliament | August 21, 2008 01:35 AM
After reading this article it is a illegal aliens and this mess is of our own making.
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suszen
Mississippi Drug Addiction
Posted by: suszen | August 23, 2008 08:24 AM
It is better to avoid arresting parents in front of their children.See how badly it affected Yesenia Rangel.
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South Carolina Drug Addiction
Posted by: maniot | August 25, 2008 07:41 AM
It is better to avoid arresting parents in front of their children.See how badly it affected Yesenia Rangel
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South Carolina Drug Addiction
Posted by: maniot | August 25, 2008 07:47 AM