The American Family Makes This Country Great, and It’s in Danger

Reading this made me very sad.  It shouldn't be a privilege to raise a healthy family in America.  To think that inhumane, anti-immigrant, and anti-family federal policy is preying on this generation of families and youth whose lives are already precarious is wrongful and perverse.

We not only need a new government but a new culture that repudiates institutionalized trauma to immigrant children and families as acceptable policy.

-Angela Valenzuela

The American Family Makes This Country Great, and It’s in Danger

   By Janet Murguía, president of UnidosUS | May 2, 2019

George Zaldivar embrace his son Francysco, 8, before walking into the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility.CreditCreditDaniel Brenner for The New York Times

President Trump’s stance on legal and undocumented immigrants could have devastating results.

Few of the Trump administration’s policies were as universally reviled by Americans across the country as the family separation policy at the border. Yet many Americans would be surprised to learn that the heartbreaking images of children being torn from their parents’ arms are playing out, often invisibly, in communities in this country, posing a severe threat to millions of American children and their families.

In the months leading up to the election, Donald Trump vowed to deport the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States. In 2017, the Trump administration unveiled an aggressive immigration agenda that made all immigrants a priority, regardless of whether they had a criminal conviction. As a result, apprehensions of immigrants with no criminal convictions skyrocketed during the first 14 months of his term.

A new report by UnidosUS found that for the nearly six million American children under the age of 18 who live in a household with undocumented residents, mostly parents, the risk of being separated from one or both parents has risen exponentially under the Trump administration. The consequences for the children who remain could be devastating: causing permanent, irreparable harm that will play out for years to come.

The deportation, and even the arrest or detention, of a parent or other household family member can leave a lasting financial impact on those left behind. By some estimates, removing a breadwinner from a household reduces the family’s income by 47 percent and can result in frequent relocations or the loss of the home. Families are often further financially constrained by the inevitable legal fees associated with deportation proceedings.

The damage inflicted upon these children who are United States citizens is not just the collateral damage of immigration policies. In some instances, the administration is choosing to target mixed-immigration-status families — those that include American citizens, legal immigrants and undocumented members. The recent announcement that the Department of Housing and Urban Development will restrict subsidized housing for all families with undocumented members could push 25,000 families and their American children into homelessness.

Common sense tells us, and research confirms, that stable households and environments are critical factors in ensuring educational achievement. According to 68 percent of the educators who were surveyed in a 2018 University of California at Los Angeles study, aggressive immigration enforcement has led to increased absenteeism among Latino students, many fearing that a parent will be taken away while they are at school. Because absenteeism is directly correlated with high school dropout rates, this behavior not only affects academic grades but also hurts the student’s future employment opportunities and leads to lower wages in adulthood.

Educators are also sounding the alarm bell, noting that children under threat of family separation are showing signs of trauma, or what medical professionals call “toxic stress.” If prolonged, toxic stress can impede brain development, harm vital organs and result in a variety of mental and physical disorders.

And things could get worse. The administration’s attempt to terminate the Temporary Protected Status, or T.P.S., and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, programs would change the status of a million people from “documented” to “undocumented.” In economic terms this could result in nearly $400 billion in lost GDP income over 10 years.

Even though the effort has been blocked by a court, the half-million American children of DACA and T.P.S. recipients are already going to bed and waking up wondering whether the next letter in the mail, the next phone call or the next knock on the door is the one that breaks their family apart. They, along with the millions of other children who fear that a parent will be taken away during a work-site raid or what used to be routine check-ins with the Department of Homeland Security, are bearing the brunt of President Trump’s immigration policies.

As you tuck your own children into bed at night or pack their lunch in the morning, think about the effect these policies will have not just on the children of undocumented parents but on the country as a whole. The trauma we’re inflicting is chipping away at the core of what makes this country great: the American family.

The president and his supporters often rally around the slogan “America First.” But these short sighted policies could disrupt an entire generation of American children.

Janet Murguía is president of UnidosUS, formerly the National Council of La Raza, a Latino civil rights and advocacy organization.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.