Having a deported family member affects the mental health of Latino adolescents

Daily chores, the week’s anecdotes, and current events are recurring themes at all family gatherings. In those of Brittany’s family, which includes siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles, and nephews, however, there is an added issue that always reappears, filling all its members with worry: the fear that at their next meeting some of them will be missing because they have been expelled from the country.

“They always talk about the fear of being deported. They fear that one day they will be taken away without their children and that, when they get home after school, they will find that there is no one to take care of them. The fear of if it will happen, when it will happen, how it will happen...” says Brittany, who does not want to give her last name so as not to be recognized. Among her family members there are American citizens, legal residents, and undocumented immigrants. But the concern is widespread.

Brittany was born in Maryland 19 years ago and is the second of five siblings, all of whom were born in the United States. They are the first generation with American citizenship after their parents emigrated north from El Salvador, where political, economic, and social conditions made it impossible to lead a decent life. But, despite being an American citizen, family concerns and the anti-immigrant rhetoric of many politicians affect her and she even has doubts over her right to remain in what has always been her country, something common in the Latino community. The stress is greater among those who have experienced the effects of deportation firsthand.

The results of a study conducted by Jama Pediatrics have revealed that Latino adolescents whose family members have been deported or detained suffer more mental disorders than adolescents who have not been deported or detained. Stress in the family environment, caused by the fear of deportation, translates into aggression, depression, and even increased drug use. The risks of suffering from these symptoms or experiencing suicidal thoughts almost triple among adolescents six months after a family member has been deported or detained. In 2021, almost half (46%) of Latino high school students across the country reported persistently feeling extreme sadness or despair.

“Whether a family member has been deported or detained, or their mother’s behavior changes because of the anti-immigration climate, children’s mental health suffers,” said Kathleen Roche, a professor at the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University and co-author of the study.

To reach this conclusion, researchers began interviewing high school children and their Latina migrant mothers in a middle-class neighborhood on the outskirts of Atlanta (GA) in 2018. For five years, the study, which is still ongoing, was supported by interviews conducted every six months with the adolescents, who are now 18 or 19 years old.

One of the findings of the study is that mothers change their behavior when they feel threatened by avoiding going to the doctor when they need to, or going to the police, and advising their children to stay away from the authorities. “And the more mothers worry and change their behavior because of the climate created around immigration, the more children experience depression, anxiety, and other mental health problems,” says Roche.

The study also shows how mothers, affected by stress, offer their children less affection and support after a deportation or detention in the family. As a result, relationships between parents and children worsen and family conflicts increase.

Avoiding exposure to anti-immigrant rhetoric is almost impossible in a context like the current one, in which Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has announced that, if he returns to the White House, he will carry out the largest deportation in the history of the United States.

“My relatives hope that Trump doesn’t win because they are afraid that even if some of them have papers, they will be taken away because they weren’t born here,” Brittany admits. She shares the concern herself. “Even though I was born here, I still have the fear that they will take my papers away too because my parents weren’t born here. Or that they will take them away and I will be left alone. Who will I go with?”

Brittany says that she began to become aware of the risks when Trump took office and began his campaign against immigrants, separating children from their parents. “I started to worry when I began to understand all this, in 2016, when Trump was elected president and said that he wanted all immigrants out, that he was going to deport them all. My parents were afraid of being thrown out and we even moved out of the house because we didn’t know what was going to happen,” she recalls.

When Roche began her study in 2018, 25% of the adolescents interviewed had someone in their family who had been deported or detained. In the most recent interviews, that figure had risen to a third. Latino families are characterized by having more children and by including cousins and uncles and aunts in their inner circle, so it is more likely a family member has been affected.

After the 2016 presidential election nearly half of Latino teenagers, mostly of Mexican origin, acknowledged having concerns related to family separation, the result of the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant measures that left children without their parents.

The study has not yet taken into account the effects that the Republican campaign’s deportation promises may have on teenagers, but it is expected to increase stress among young people. “One of the things we’ve learned with many of our studies is that there is a spillover effect on young people when anti-immigrant rhetoric is directed at the population that is potentially detrimental to the next generation of leaders,” Roche says.

The conclusions of the study are all the more striking because the sample chosen comes from a middle-class area, not a low-income one, where it is assumed it would be easier to find people affected by deportations. In addition, 90% of the teenagers surveyed are American citizens. “Our results would be much worse if we had gone to an area where there are more undocumented people. The conclusion is relevant because it is a very important segment of the population if we think about the future workforce,” notes Roche.

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