“If I Talk About It, I Start Crying”: Children’s Responses to Parental Immigration Detention in the US

Publication Date

1-1-2024

Document Type

Article

Publication Title

Immigration Detention and Social Harm: the Collateral Impacts of Migrant Incarceration

DOI

10.4324/9781003370727-3

First Page

15

Last Page

32

Abstract

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) imprisons hundreds of thousands of immigrants each year, often indefinitely and with no systematic mechanism for release, leading legal experts to describe it as a system of “imprisonment without trial” (Arulanantham, 2022). Many detained immigrants are parents of dependent children (Patler and Golash-Boza, 2017). While a substantial body of literature documents the experiences of children with parents incarcerated in the US criminal legal system, fewer studies have analysed the experiences of children with parents imprisoned by immigration authorities. This chapter contributes an in-depth, subject-centred approach to understanding parental immigration imprisonment (PII) through interviews with 26 children of detained immigrants. Specifically, we describe some of the socio-emotional consequences of PII. Nearly all of the children in our study described symptoms suggestive of significant psychological distress. Moreover, some children’s behaviours extended for years following the initial parental detention, with potentially serious long-term consequences for their development and well-being. While some study participants demonstrated resilience and coping, even in the face of extensive disadvantage, our results indicate extensive collateral harms to children from the US immigration system. These findings should prompt immediate concern and action by US lawmakers – who have full power to immediately legislate an end to the use of incarceration in immigration legal proceedings.

Department

Justice Studies

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