Recent immigration raids in Mississippi are likely to be followed by more. The raids, which targeted almost 700 Latino immigrants (and by extension, the Latino community) were followed by television images of traumatized children crying out for their parents.
Despite news coverage of the families’ grief, the White House has ordered US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents to identify more workplace targets across the country, according to a report by CNN.
Yet dozens of studies have demonstrated the effects of sudden, forced separation from a parent. There is “overwhelming scientific evidence”, according to the Society For Research in Child Development, that these effects are negative.
Studies have looked at children separated during the second world war, those placed in Romanian orphanages, as well as children who have incarcerated parents.
More recently, research has documented the increased mental health risks that are faced by both parents and children when they are separated in the immigration process. Even after reunification, studies have found that children continue to have a hard time with self-esteem and emotional attachment to their parents.
One study, published in the Journal of Adolescent Research in 2011, followed the lives of 282 adolescents who had recently migrated from China, Central America, the Dominican Republic, Haiti and Mexico. They found that children who had been separated from their parents were more likely to report symptoms of anxiety and depression than children who were not separated from their parents.
