What Happens To A Child After A Parent Is Deported?

National Journal

By Emily DeRuy

September 21, 2015

What Happens To A Child After A Parent Is Deported? 

When a man gets de­por­ted, the fo­cus is of­ten on what he might have done wrong and not on who he leaves be­hind.

But a new Mi­gra­tion Policy In­sti­tute re­port fo­cuses on how the de­port­a­tion of a par­ent af­fects the well-be­ing of a child.

The re­port, done in con­junc­tion with the Urb­an In­sti­tute, es­tim­ates that between 2009 and 2013, a half-mil­lion par­ents of roughly the same num­ber of chil­dren who are cit­izens may have been de­por­ted. The vast ma­jor­ity were fath­ers, and most of their chil­dren stayed in the coun­try, even when they ended up in the care of dis­tant re­l­at­ives and friends.

Be­ha­vi­or­al prob­lems can arise at school as a res­ult of de­pres­sion and an­ger. Liv­ing situ­ations and eco­nom­ic se­cur­ity can be­come tenu­ous. Ac­cess to be­ne­fits such as food stamps and health­care can be jeop­ard­ized. But too of­ten, ad­voc­ates say, these con­sequences of par­ent­al de­port­a­tion on a child’s well-be­ing are over­looked.

“That’s the col­lat­er­al dam­age that gets lost in this [im­mig­ra­tion] dis­cus­sion,” said Heath­er Koball, a seni­or fel­low at the Urb­an In­sti­tute and one of the lead in­vest­ig­at­ors on the re­port.

While Im­mig­ra­tion and Cus­toms En­force­ment has re­fined its en­force­ment pri­or­it­ies in re­cent years to tar­get un­au­thor­ized im­mig­rants who are seen as na­tion­al se­cur­ity risks, or who have been con­victed of felon­ies or sig­ni­fic­ant mis­de­mean­ors, as Marc Rosen­blum, deputy dir­ect­or of MPI’s U.S. Im­mig­ra­tion Policy Pro­gram, said, there is no good way to de­port par­ents “without severely dam­aging im­mig­rant com­munit­ies.”

“ Things are so uncertain for families in terms of the future of immigration policy … The political climate and rhetoric aren’t exactly getting any friendlier. ”

The fath­ers who are de­por­ted are of­ten primary bread­win­ners, leav­ing moth­ers and chil­dren without fin­an­cial sup­port be­hind. The men­tal toll and isol­a­tion on both par­ents and chil­dren who re­main in the U.S. can be dev­ast­at­ing, which is of­ten com­poun­ded by a re­luct­ance or in­ab­il­ity to ac­cess men­tal-health care that might bring some re­lief.

“A lot of the fam­il­ies are em­bar­rassed to come for­ward,” Koball said.

While schools, com­munity or­gan­iz­a­tions and churches can of­fer some as­sist­ance, it’s of­ten tem­por­ary and if chil­dren are taken in by someone who is un­doc­u­mented, fear of de­port­a­tion can pre­vent that per­son from seek­ing as­sist­ance. In areas where im­mig­rant com­munit­ies are less es­tab­lished, ser­vices may not be cul­tur­ally or lin­guist­ic­ally com­pat­ible.

The re­port sug­gests more edu­ca­tion and out­reach to com­munit­ies by adding bi­lin­gual work­ers and co­ordin­at­ing with trus­ted com­munity groups. And the gov­ern­ment has taken steps in re­cent years to crack down on not­ari­os who of­fer bogus im­mig­ra­tion ser­vices and to ex­tend de­port­a­tion re­lief to people who may be vic­tims of do­mest­ic vi­ol­ence.

But the Obama ad­min­is­tra­tion’s ex­ec­ut­ive ac­tions aimed at keep­ing fam­il­ies to­geth­er re­main tied up in court, and ad­voc­ates say more needs to be done to keep chil­dren with their par­ents. They worry the polit­ic­al cli­mate is be­com­ing more, not less, hos­tile in the run-up to the 2016 elec­tion.

“Things are so un­cer­tain for fam­il­ies in terms of the fu­ture of im­mig­ra­tion policy,” said Wendy Cer­vantes, dir­ect­or of the Cen­ter for the Chil­dren of Im­mig­rants. “The polit­ic­al cli­mate and rhet­or­ic aren’t ex­actly get­ting any friend­li­er.”

She wor­ries that pres­id­en­tial can­did­ates like Don­ald Trump are mak­ing neg­at­ive pub­lic com­ments that could neg­at­ively im­pact the treat­ment of chil­dren who re­main in the U.S. “The rhet­or­ic we’ve been hear­ing has been very dis­heart­en­ing and dan­ger­ous,” she said. “It can really im­pact out­comes for chil­dren.”

While Eliza­beth Thornton, who is de­tailed to ICE as an ad­visor, touted the agency’s ef­forts in re­cent years to min­im­ize fam­ily dis­rup­tion, she said the of­fice is “very open to hear­ing about how we could do things bet­ter.”

Ad­voc­ates like Cer­vantes will surely have plenty of sug­ges­tions.

For more information, go to:  www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com