Parental Deportation, Families, and Mental Health

Abstract

T here are an estimated 5.5 million children in the United States whose parents are unauthorized immigrants, and approximately three fourths of these children are American citizens. For these children, parental deportation is a real threat. From 1998 through 2007, more than 100,000 parents of U.S. citizen children were deported. Since then, immigration enforcement has intensified, with 1.5 million people deported during the first 4 years of the Obama presidency. In the first 6 months of 2011 alone, 46,000 mothers and fathers of U.S. citizen children were removed, and there are estimated to be at least 5,100 children in the United States currently living in foster care after the detention or deportation of their parents. Fear of deportation is widespread. Fifty-seven percent of Latino respondents from a large national survey reported worrying that they, a family member, or close friend might be deported. So what happens to children whose parents are deported or who live in fear of a parent’s deportation? This question is not foreign to our field’s history. Some of the foundational work in child development and psychopathology came from studying children separated from parents (Anna Freud and war orphans, Rene Spitz and hospitalized infants). Nevertheless, three fourths of a century later, understanding childhood psychiatric disorders and distress in the context of an obvious social stressor remains a challenge: stressors go hand in hand, vulnerabilities accrue. Deportation offers a case in point. It typically occurs in the context of living liminally in society, ‘‘illegally,’’ and in poverty. It is often associated with criminal activity, insofar as immigration violations frequently come to light from an encounter with law enforcement (although the infraction can be excruciatingly minor). It commonly takes place against a backdrop of exploitation, stigma, and discrimination. Moreover, social marginalization of undocumented immigrants, combined with their frequent wariness of professional and