Abstract
While policy makers and researchers generally focus on the effects of deportation on crime rates and deportees, the effects of parental deportation and detention on children are often overlooked. This chapter seeks to fill this gap, finding that parental arrest often leads to loss of earnings, dependence on public assistance and charity, and increased family hardship. In addition, the resulting separation results in significant trauma and stress for both children and parents. Using in-depth interviews conducted over 2 years, the authors were able to track children and parents during the immediate and longer-term aftermath of a workplace raid or other parental arrest. They found that detained migrant parents reported increased stress, anxiety, and mental health challenges, as well as increased physical health challenges. Parents also reported that a majority of children in the study exhibited important behavioral changes. It is clear that current US immigration policies have substantial consequences for families with children, which will require large-scale policy changes in order to ameliorate these effects on immigrant children, many of who are US citizens.
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- 1.
These crimes include state and local misdemeanors such as traffic violations and drug possession, as well as immigration crimes such as illegal reentry into the USA.
- 2.
In June 2011 the Obama administration issued guidelines that ICE officers conducting arrests, detentions, and removals should focus on the most serious criminals and that ICE prosecutors should exercise discretion by granting relief from removal to people who are not serious criminals and have factors that prompt “care and consideration.” These factors include being pregnant or a mother nursing a baby but do not otherwise include being a parent. See John Morton, “Exercising Prosecutorial Discretion Consistent with the Civil Immigration Enforcement Priorities of the Agency for the Apprehension, Detention, and Removal of Aliens,” Policy Number 10075.1 (DHS, ICE: Memorandum for All Field Officers, All Special Agents in Charge, All Chief Counsel, June 17, 2011), http://www.ice.gov/doclib/secure-communities/pdf/prosecutorial-discretion-memo.pdf. In 2014, as part of the Immigrant Accountability Executive Actions, the administration further narrowed the priorities for arrests, detentions, and removals to threats to national security, felons, individuals with significant or multiple misdemeanor convictions, and individuals entering the United States illegally or committing other civil immigration violations since January 2014. See Jeh Charles Johnson, “Policies for the Apprehension, Detention and Removal of Undocumented Immigrants” (DHS: Memorandum for Thomas S. Winkowski, Acting Director, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement; R. Gil Kerlikowske, Commissioner, U.S. Customs and Border Protection; Leon Rodriguez, Director, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services; Alan D. Bersin, Acting Assistance Secretary for Policy, November 20, 2014),http://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/14_1120_memo_prosecutorial_discretion_0.pdf.
- 3.
The six sites were Grand Island, Nebraska (worksite raid in 2006); New Bedford, Massachusetts (worksite raid in 2007); Van Nuys, California (worksite raid in 2008); Postville, Iowa (worksite raid in 2008); Miami, Florida (arrests by federal agents in homes and at immigration appointments, between 2006 and 2008); and Rogers-Springdale, Arkansas (arrests by the local police over a 6-month period in 2007 and 2008).
- 4.
About half the sample of parents were detained and separated for their parents for more than a day. Eighteen parents, or about 20 % of the sample, were detained for a month or more. Twenty families and 49 children had a parent deported by the time of our last interview.
- 5.
For instance in the 2010 National Survey of Latinos, the Pew Hispanic Center found that 52 % of all Latinos (and 68 % of foreign-born Latinos) worried that they, a family member, or a close friend could be deported. One-third (32 %) knew someone detained or deported by the US government within the past year. See Mark Hugo Lopez, Rich Morin, and Paul Taylor, Illegal Immigration Backlash Worries, Divides Latinos (Washington, DC: Pew Hispanic Center, 2010), http://pewhispanic.org/files/reports/128.pdf.
- 6.
Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) of 1996, Public Law 104–208.
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Capps, R., Chaudry, A., Pedroza, J.M., Castañeda, R.M., Santos, R., Scott, M.M. (2016). US Children with Parents in Deportation Proceedings. In: Leal, D., Rodríguez, N. (eds) Migration in an Era of Restriction and Recession. Immigrants and Minorities, Politics and Policy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24445-7_5
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