U.S. and foreign-born children are experiencing a mental health crisis and are at risk of “profound emotional harm” due to current immigration polices that include widespread detainments, workplace raids and large-scale deportations, according researchers at the the School of Medicine at the University of California, Riverside (UCR).
Newsweek reached out to the White House for comment via email on Friday.
Why It Matters
Cracking down on illegal immigration has been a staple of the Trump administration and a big reason why he was elected to his second term in November.
While the administration has touted its efforts as successful, including massive decreases in crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border since Trump came into office, many Americans remain ambivalent about policy end goals—including detaining non-violent, non-criminal immigrants and federal agents making arrests in schools and places of employment.
A CBS News/YouGov poll published in July found that Trump is losing support on his immigration platform, with 58 percent of respondents opposing the administration’s use of detention facilities. However, his conservative base remains strongly with him at roughly 85 percent support.
What To Know
Aggressive immigration policies put into effect by the Trump administration are causing a public health emergency for millions of children, according to UCR researchers in their report published July 25 in Psychiatric News.
The “ripple effects” of broad immigration policies that extend into everyday environments once considered safe, such as schools, health care facilities and community centers, minimize the stability of caregivers to provide necessary care to youth—which researchers cite as foundational to a child’s mental health.
Fear of one day having a family member detained or deported is linked with upticks in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and a chronic anxiety that leads children and adolescents to avoid school or withdraw from public life, the study said.
“Psychiatry, as both a clinical discipline and a social institution, cannot remain on the periphery,” the authors wrote. “The current moment calls for a reexamination of how structural and intergenerational trauma are diagnosed, understood, and treated.”
Lisa Fortuna, professor and chair of psychiatry and neuroscience at the UCR School of Medicine and the lead psychiatrist behind the report, told Newsweek via phone on Friday that the study delves into literature on the subject matter, as well as hers and others’ clinical experiences as child and adolescent psychiatrists and psychologists. It also examines what the researchers are seeing on the frontline as far as the impact of immigration raids and policies on child and adolescent mental health.
“Some of the glaring things that we have seen are that immigration rates and the threat of separation, which is a critical piece of this for children and families, has been identified with very significant mental health consequences—negative consequences for mental health for adults and those families as well,” Fortuna said.
“What we have found is that there’s an increased rate of depression, anxiety, even PTSD, among children who have even one parent who might be at risk of deportation even just at risk,” Fortuna added. “And obviously, when there’s a deportation, there can be even elevated reactions of depression and anxiety and even difficulty focusing in school. We’ve seen this in the past and with the escalation, like what we’re seeing in California and the patterns of uncertainty, and that it’s happening everywhere and that it’s so visible and present.”
The study, which takes into account data trends through mid-year 2025 and during a “highly volatile” policy landscape, notes that while average daily deportations so far this year have decreased by 10.9 percent compared with fiscal year 2024, the average daily number of individuals held in immigration detention facilities has risen significantly.
“This shift reflects a concerning trend: While deportations may be declining, more individuals are being subjected to prolonged and often indefinite detention,” the study said. “Further compounding the issue is the expanding legal ambiguity around who may be targeted for enforcement—including U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents, non-immigrant visa holders, and undocumented individuals.”
“Enforcement actions are often applied inconsistently, and the lack of transparency has intensified fear and uncertainty within immigrant communities,” the report said.
The effects on children in mixed-status families, both in pre- and post-migration family separations, negatively impact children’s emotional development and academic performance. It also negatively impacts immigrant caregivers, especially mothers, who often suffer from trauma and in turn are limited in their ability to emotionally support their children, according to the study.
“Even the threat of separation can generate profound emotional harm,” the report said. “Children in mixed-status families often live with chronic anticipatory anxiety that a loved one could be detained or deported.”
Prolonged separations during sensitive developmental periods can also undermine attachment security, researchers say, increasing children’s vulnerability to anxiety, depression and behavioral problems. Such risks increase when compounded by prior exposure to violence, poverty and family loss in countries of origin.
The impacts can be drastic. A 2020 national study of 547 U.S.-born adolescents ages 11 to 16 found that having a detained or deported family member was associated with elevated risk for suicidal ideation, externalizing behaviors and alcohol use.
Sleep and appetite disturbances, emotional dysregulation and developmental regression have been linked to young children experiencing abrupt caregiver loss.
Forcible separation from a caregiver is also recognized as an adverse childhood experience that contributes to toxic stress, ambiguous loss and long-term risk for psychiatric disorders.
Fortuna said that previous literature on the threat of deportation coupled with the recent immigration crackdown mean there will be increased mental health consequences for children.
“It’s a very developmentally vulnerable point in time in a person’s life, so for young children, for example, as we talked about in the article, it can create a real sort of anxiety around attachment,” she said. “Young children really rely on their caregivers for comfort and attachment and proximity.
“When there are separate actions it can have sort of long-term consequences of disrupted attachment and anxiety, but even with adolescents, it could create significant stressors around depression and anxiety emergence that can persist into their adulthood,” Fortuna added. “What we’re really seeing is trying to, as frontline providers, address this from a policy perspective, but also trying to help young people and their families cope in such a way that this doesn’t have long-term detrimental effects.”
What People Are Saying
Study co-author Kevin Gutierrez, an assistant clinical professor of health sciences in the UCR Department of Psychiatry and Neuroscience, said in a university publication: “Psychiatry must take an active role — not just in treatment, but in advocacy. The mental health of immigrant children is inseparable from the systems that shape their lives.”
What Happens Next
Researchers say the clinical consequences of immigration-related policies, ranging from PTSD and depression to somatic distress and suicidal ideation, demand “an approach that moves beyond symptom management to address the root causes of suffering.”
That involves recognition of the intergenerational impact of displacement, the toll of enforcement-driven immigration policy, and the daily stressors of life in a hostile sociopolitical environment, they say. Researchers also urged psychiatrists and mental health professionals to play a critical role for impacted immigrant children and reduce the effects of trauma to salvage a promising and productive future.
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