The impacts of enforcement on children

Estimates of the number of children of immigrants, 90% of whom are U.S. citizens, who have been affected by the turn to hard tactics are difficult to determine. One report suggests that more than 500,000 U.S. citizen children experienced the apprehension, detention, and deportation of at least one parent between 2011 and 2013 (Reference Capps, Koball, Campetella and PerreiraCapps et al., 2015). Substantively, research identifies three ways enforcement actions change children's lives: separations related to deportation, instability resulting from raids, and the climate of fear associated with possible enforcement.

Deportations increase the probability that children will live without a parent in the immediate household (Reference Amuedo-Dorantes and Arenas-ArroyoAmuedo-Dorantes & Arenas-Arroyo, 2019; Reference HeidbrinkHeidbrink, 2019). This can expose children to poverty, as families face major economic challenges in the fallout of a deportation, especially when living with what scholars describe as “suddenly single mothers” (Reference DrebyDreby, 2015, p. 31; see also Reference CaldwellCaldwell, 2019; Reference LopezLopez, 2019). Older children in families may become what Reference Golash-BozaGolash-Boza (2019, p. 11) describes as “abruptly adults” after a removal, particularly because their deported parents face significant barriers to finding employment, furthering children's likelihood of experiencing poverty post-deportation (Reference Brotherton and BarriosBrotherton & Barrios, 2011; Reference CaldwellCaldwell, 2019; Reference Golash-BozaGolash-Boza, 2015). Additionally, separation from parents impacts children's mental health. Children of immigrants targeted by enforcement may develop symptoms of depression, anxiety, and trauma (Reference Allen, Cisneros and TellezAllen et al., 2015; Reference Brabeck and QingwenBrabeck & Qingwen, 2010; Reference Gulbas, Zayas, Yoon, Szlyk, Aguilar-Gaxiola and NateraGulbas et al., 2016). Children of deportees exhibit internalizing and externalizing behavior at a higher rate than those living with their immigrant parents, even those with undocumented parents at risk of deportation (Reference Rojas-Flores, Mari Clements, Koo and LondonRojas-Flores et al., 2017; Reference Zayas, Aguilar-Gaxiola, Yoon and ReyZayas et al., 2015).

Large and small-scale raids, which may or may not result in a final order of deportation or long-term separations, also affect child wellbeing. Following workplace raids, schools may intervene to avoid children being left alone, without caregivers; families struggle economically to recover (Reference Capps, Castaneda, Chaudry and SantosCapps et al., 2007). Children and their family members exhibit emotional difficulties that do not dissipate quickly, in some cases evident more than a year after the event (Reference Chaudry, Capps, Pedroza, Castaneda, Santos and ScottChaudry et al., 2010). Children absorb community-level stress, experiencing hypervigilance, regressive behaviors, and school absenteeism (Reference LopezLopez, 2019).

More broadly speaking, a culture of fear related to the possibility of an immigration raid or other type of enforcement action has amplified in immigrant communities over the past decade (Reference AsadAsad, 2020; Reference HingHing, 2018). Although grounded in immigrants' relative sense of disposability, fears may extend beyond the individual directly at risk and manifest as an aspect of everyday life for those living in mixed-status families, shaping parent–child relationships and parenting practices (Reference DrebyDreby, 2015; Reference EnriquezEnriquez, 2015). Many parents experience anxiety while driving, or in interactions with police officers, due to the racialized nature of immigration enforcement (Reference PrietoPrieto, 2018; Reference SchmalzbauerSchmalzbauer, 2014; Reference Sun and YuningSun & Yuning, 2018). Parents fear children may be left alone in the country, or worse, that they will go into foster care (Reference HingHing, 2018); such fears can be transmitted intergenerationally (Reference Berger Cardoso, Faulkner and LaneBerger Cardoso et al., 2018; Reference Lopez, Horner, Doering-White, Delva, Sanders and MartinezLopez et al., 2018). Fears also affect children with insecure legal statuses, like recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), who straddle inclusion and exclusion even when having spent most of their lives in the United States and when having family members who are U.S. citizens (Reference AbregoAbrego, 2011; Reference GonzalesGonzales, 2016; Reference Menjívar and AbregoMenjívar & Abrego, 2012).

Children of immigrants may express enforcement fears even if they themselves—or their family members—are not directly at-risk because they are citizens or legal migrants (Reference DrebyDreby, 2015). Children may face “de facto undocumented status” as policies intended to target their parents extend to their lives (Reference EnriquezEnriquez, 2015, p. 4). Those in mixed-status families experience legal uncertainty as a point for solidarity and togetherness, but also as a possible source of tension (Reference AbregoAbrego, 2016; Reference CastañedaCastañeda, 2019). Additionally, children's fears of separations spill over into daily activities, particularly in schools (Reference LopezLopez, 2019). They may have poor educational achievement, attendance rates, and graduation rates due to the stress of parents' legal vulnerability (Reference Ee and GándaraEe & Gándara, 2020; Reference Yoshikawa, Suárez-Orozco and GonzalesYoshikawa et al., 2017). Children may feel overwhelmed in school due to this underlying stress (Reference Gulbas, Zayas, Yoon, Szlyk, Aguilar-Gaxiola and NateraGulbas et al., 2016).

Current literature that catalogs the stressors related to family separations, raids and enforcement fears typically posit harms as unfolding and compounding over time. That is, heavy enforcement measures are assumed to have rippling effects on child well-being and on families and communities. But which children are most affected by a raid in their community and why? Similarly, a deportation strains households (Reference Brotherton and BarriosBrotherton & Barrios, 2011); yet we know less about nuances in the ways tensions unfold from a distance (for an exception see Reference Andrews and Khayar-CámaraAndrews & Khayar-Cámara, 2020). How might members of families actively surmount stressors related to enforcement? Scholarship shows legal uncertainty and separations to be consequential. In this article we explore—from children's perspectives—what about enforcement, and the complexities it entails, cause enduring hardships and how children may manage these stressors differently.

Notably, new research shows such contextual variability geographically, in the extent to which immigration status may influence how individuals navigate their daily lives across different communities. Some law enforcement agencies have signed 287 g agreements to deputize officers as immigration agents; other local governments have declared themselves as “sanctuary cities” to limit cooperation with federal immigration officials. That is, locality matters in determining how people manage legal status, the choices they make about where to live and where to attend school, and their interactions with law enforcement (Reference CastañedaCastañeda, 2019; Reference ConleyConley, 2019; Reference GarcíaGarcía, 2019). For instance, in some communities, immigrants who drive without licenses create routes and networks to avoid police stops that could involve ICE, while in other locations this is not possible (Reference PrietoPrieto, 2018; Reference SchmalzbauerSchmalzbauer, 2014). Immigrants also may use identity expression differently across space, a strategy of “legal passing” (Reference GarcíaGarcía, 2019).

In this paper, we use retrospective interview accounts with children raised during the era of enforcement to understand the temporal variability in how enforcement experiences during childhood may—or may not—come to shape the lives of the children of immigrants into adulthood. Similar to research on geographic variability related to enforcement, we show that certain characteristics of childhood experiences with enforcement, particularly episodes that involve parents and that build on each other over time, likely have longstanding consequences. We also identify which family-level processes, and events outside of families, amplify or ameliorate impacts on children.

Deportations post-incarceration

Deportations following a conviction that involved jail-time targets foreign-born individuals regardless of status, unless they naturalize, and destabilizes families who often previously felt integrated into U.S. communities. Additionally, they are gendered, disproportionately targeting men, resulting in single-parent, female-headed households (Reference DrebyDreby, 2015; Reference Golash-Boza and Hondagneu-SoteloGolash-Boza & Hondagneu-Sotelo, 2013). Finally, these deportations result in permanent household changes because current laws bar deportees from re-entry even after having served time for their crimes. Participants experiencing these types of enforcement episodes described lengthy separations from parents that permanently altered the composition of their family network within and beyond the immediate household. Our analysis suggests that the nature of children's relationships with fathers, and the ways their relationships with mothers unfolded after the episode, most often accounts for variations in the extent to which these episodes significantly altered their lives.

Those who did not feel a deportation following incarceration had affected their well-being described estranged relationships with fathers and strong relationships with mothers. For example, Olivia began by explaining, “I know immigration is a big issue, but personally, I didn't ask questions about it. So I just know what I hear on the TV, or social media, stuff like that.” She decided to participate in this study at the urging of a roommate, “she asked if I could help, and I was like ‘I can try. I don't know how much I can do.’” Olivia revealed that she harbored much ambivalence about her Ecuadorian father's deportation. Her parents divorced when she was younger; she now thinks that her mother separated from him to protect her from her father's involvement in illicit activities. Olivia remembered visiting her father on weekends, eating out together and renting movies with him, but those visits stopped when she was in fifth grade, “Yeah. And it wasn't until college that I had found that he got deported. But I didn't really know anything about it, I didn't really ask either.”

In another example, Krystal, raised in the Bronx, started by talking about her Albanian father who had been deported when she was only a year old. At 27, Krystal felt she had a story to share, but revealed she knew nothing of her biological father, never having met him or any of his family. Not until after a 30-minute discussion of her interest in her father's heritage did Krystal share that she did not know about her biological father until she was 15. At that time, her stepfather—from Trinidad—who she assumed was her father, left her mother, and told her “the truth” to explain why he would not remain in contact after the divorce. Both Krystal and Olivia's accounts suggest they felt a sense of loss of a potential relationship with a biological father, but no other socio-emotional difficulties arising from the episode. Notably, they both spoke of strong mothers, who were, in Krystal's words, “both a mother and father to me.”

In contrast, Natalie at age 19 had pieced together the details about her father's deportation because her mother never explained anything about the case. She felt deeply affected by an unjust episode that targeted a father to whom she was emotionally close to as a child.

Born in the Dominican Republic, Natalie's father came to New York City when he was just 15 and had completed high school in Washington Heights where he met Natalie's mother, also born in the Dominican Republic. His deportation—which her family explained as arising from a case of “mistaken identity” when Natalie was 6—spiraled the former permanent resident into depression, alcoholism and other mental health issues. At first, Natalie remained in contact during his jail sentence: her mom told her they were visiting him in “police school.” After his deportation, when Natalie was 8, she visited every summer until her parents divorced when she was 11. She continued to speak regularly with her father until his death, from a heart attack, a year prior to our interview. Natalie harbored many emotions about her relationships with family members and her perception that they failed to support her father after the episode. “I feel like I'm the only one from my siblings who had like a real relationship with him.” She felt devastated by the way the deportation ruined her father's life, and the fallout of the episode shaped her own well-being as a child; she described herself as deeply introverted and emotionally withdrawn because of the episode.

Penny too felt affected by the episode targeting her father, but not because she felt close to him, but rather because it dramatically changed her family situation. “My dad… Uhm… He went to jail, I don't know, he really just messed up.” She was 9 at the time. The arrest could have been a relief as she recalled severe physical violence towards her mother, but instead it weakened her family relationships. “Because it was just my mom, who was also an immigrant, so it was just her and her income.” Economic pressures meant they moved often, Penny's daily life increasingly unstable. And, her brothers bullied her. “I feel like my [older] brother carried that anger [about the father] … towards me, and my younger brothers actually looked up to my older brother so they would follow him and taunt me.” Penny ended up in conflict with her mother too, and moved in with an uncle for a time after getting expelled from middle school. For Penny, the episode destabilized relationships with her mother, who became economically vulnerable and emotionally unbalanced after the deportation, and with her brothers, who expressed their emotional reaction to separation in behavior that targeted Penny. Penny took out the stress at home by acting out at school.

For these young women, the details of the crime—about which they provided vague or uncertain details—seemed relatively unimportant. Olivia and Krystal introduced themselves as not affected by their father's deportation because their mothers raised them. Penny also felt estranged from her father, but deeply affected due to the period of severe instability in her life which ended when she moved in with her uncle. Natalie felt close to her father; she described a stable, yet sterile, home environment with her mother after the episode, to whom she felt resentful and estranged due to the rupture of the relationship with her father.

Together, these experiences attest that it is the nature of children's relationships with fathers and mothers, and mother's relationships with fathers, which shape the aftermath of this type of enforcement episode. When children's single-parent households are stable environments, they may not feel a deportation post-incarceration affects their well-being. However, when deportations post-incarceration strain mothers and fathers' relationships with each other, and children's relationships with either or both parents, longstanding impacts are more likely. Notably, young adults whose fathers persisted in retaining contact after a deportation in hopes of develping a legal pathway to return to the United States felt this to be an ongoing stressor. Olivia distrusted her father's attempts to re-establish contact for his immigration case. Although Natalie felt close to her father, his insistence on her finding him an immigration lawyer became a source of conflict. Permanent bars to readmission set up an untenable situation for young adults who worry about retaining relationships with fathers who hold onto a false hope for reunification (see also Reference Dreby, Silveira and LeeDreby et al, 2022).

Removals

We categorize other types of removals separately, which could include a voluntary departure, a court order for a removal or other scenarios, because many young adults knew vague details about them and used imprecise and at times contradictory legal terminology to describe them. Reports of removal episodes shared the characteristic of not always resulting in long-term separations and more often targeting male and female family members. Clearly, legal nuances related to removals can be consequential, yet from children's standpoints what was most tangible was the concrete experience of having a family member removed from the country without having “done anything wrong.” Accordingly, young adults' accounts of long-term impacts most often varied by how much they knew about or remembered episodes, and whether episodes had been, or continued to be, a source of significant uncertainty in their families.

At one extreme Stephen spoke about his Peruvian father's removal years before he was born and before his parents had met. Because the episode occurred before the 1996 bars to admission, Stephen's father naturalized while Stephen was in middle school, causing him to feel few consequences from the episode except, and notably, being aware of ongoing tensions with his older stepsiblings arising from his father's pathway to legalization. Noemi, at age 18, in contrast, continued to feel stress from her Mexican mother's removal, which occurred after a workplace raid in 1996, but before she was born. Noemi also knew little of the episode and had always lived with her mother; she only learned of it when her father naturalized and the lawyer advised her mother not to join his application, as she would be at risk of a deportation order and permanent bar to readmission. Throughout high school and into college, Noemi constantly worried about her mother's immigration status because the case was unresolved. Neither Stephen or Noemi knew much about the original episode, but Noemi's mother's inability to legalize carried over, affecting her into young adulthood, whereas for Stephen it had not.

Resolution, however, is not everything. Some young adults spoke about removal episodes as powerfully affecting them even if resolved because they had caused significant uncertainty in their lives at an earlier point of time and children knew the details, having experienced episodes alongside their parents. Nancy's story exemplifies. Nancy's father owned a pizzeria in a relatively immigrant-friendly small city upstate—which had not signed 287 g program and was declared a Sanctuary City in 2017—where she was born and raised. He had two DUIs, one in 1994 before she was born and one in 2001 when she was 6. The DUIs triggered an early morning raid in 2013, when Nancy was 17. Nancy helped fight the deportation order, garnering support from local politicians, successfully at first; her father was released from detention. But after a 2-year legal battle, and under the duress of health issues and a second detention, Nancy helped arrange for her father's voluntary departure to Mexico as this way he would not be subject to the bars of readmission. In a heartbreaking turn, Nancy's father died due to health complications and so the case was not ongoing. When Nancy shared her story at age 25, she described the episode as deeply difficult, but also empowering. She felt gratified at mobilizing support for her father, and her work to defend him improved their relationship while he was alive.

Lisette also felt that her mother's removal to Mexico shaped her entire life because she lived all aspects of the episode, both before and after the actual removal order, alongside her mother. Lisette's parents split up when she was four; she lived with her mother and sibling just outside of the five boroughs.

According to Lisette, during one of her parents' earlier fights, her father filed charges. Although he later dropped them, Lisette believes this flagged her mother to ICE, identifying her as someone out of status and a priority for removal. “[Eventually] they did catch up to her in the house where we were living … and like when we left to Mexico she had like an escort all the way until we got on the plane. A little woman with two little kids crying and then [the] escort, like right next to us.” Lisette was in the 8th grade when they moved to Mexico City.

Lisette liked her life in Mexico, finding some of the social aspects liberating. Quickly, however, the family's economic situation deteriorated. Even after Lisette started working full time hours at age 16, she could not help her mother enough to make ends meet. She cried in recalling the day she resolved it was best to return to New York.

Lisette moved back to New York at age 16 with her sibling and, remarkably, into their own apartment, although she counted on rent support from their father, with whom she still had a relationship, and on her maternal aunts representing her in school until the courts declared her emancipated. At the time of our interview, Lisette felt hopeful about reunifying with her mother as she was petitioning for her mother's legal immigration now that she had turned 21. As for the impact on her life, Lisette commented, “I'm a very like distrustful person and I think my life made it that way and home made me more distrustful.” She pointed out various ways she felt emotionally withdrawn because of the instability cased by the removal.

For both Lisette and Nancy, living the episode alongside parents made the removal feel impactful even though from a legal perspective it had resolved. Those who described especially severe aftereffects from removals lived unresolved episodes alongside parents. As examples, neither Fatima nor Nadia knew the specific details of their fathers' departures, one to Mexico and one to Guatemala, after incidents in which someone in the family called the police for domestic violence. Both said their mothers did not press charges and that their fathers' departures were not the result of a criminal prosecution. In these cases, one might consider the removal episode to provide the family some relief. Indeed, one young man lamented, “I wish my dad had been deported,” when talking about the violence he witnessed at home. Yet both fathers returned within a few years, the removals ultimately escalating levels of family violence and increasing long-term impacts on children. In middle school, after her father's return to the United States, Nadia attempted suicide and described regular and problematic drug use—which she attributed to stress at home—until school social workers intervened and “saved my life.” Similarly, Fatima found some respite only at college where she saw a therapist who prescribed medication for her anxiety. Family violence heightened the aftermath of removal episodes; removals may, in turn, cause children to experience higher levels of anxiety or depression when they further weaken family relationships already under stress (see also Reference Dreby, Silveira and LeeDreby et al., 2022).

These removal stories also illustrate that children can find support outside their families, like the school social workers who helped Nadia and the network Nancy activated for her father. In other cases, children accessed family support to help surmount disruption caused by removals, like Penny moving in with an uncle. Of course, family support has limits. For Fatima, the family tensions that sparked the enforcement episode were further aggravated by her father's removal, exposing her to greater family conflict alongside increased fears once he returned due to his greater risk given the previous removal. Ambiguity surrounding episode resolution paired with little social support can heighten the salience of removal episodes over time.

Arrests and/or detentions

Sometimes an arrest escalates to a detention, or incarceration, and an eventual deportation, or a voluntary departure under the duress of deportation. Oftentimes, however, episodes did not crescendo with such intensity. Arrests or detentions can be short-lived and resolve quickly. In cases in which arrests or detentions do not end in removal, children's involvement in the cases shaped the extent to which young adults felt enduring impacts. At age 23 Nina, for example, did not feel her father's situation was that important saying, “It didn't affect me until now when we're trying to fix his legal status, along with my mom.” When Nina was still in preschool, ICE arrested her Mexican-born father on an Amtrak train and detained him in the Batavia detention center for a few days. She did not remember the episode, but knew he had to travel more than 5 h from the city where they lived to the Buffalo immigration court on more than one occasion. Ultimately, Nina's father received a deportation order, a detail Nina did not know until she was an adult and her mother naturalized, but her father could not because of this earlier episode. Nina did not describe any insecurity about her father's status as a child; her parents protected her from knowing the details of his case, and he had only ever been separated from the family for a few days. Only more recently in trying to regularize his status did Nina start to feel that enforcement represented a barrier, but it was not a source of relationship tensions or emotional trauma.

Briana also recounted that immigration policies had not shaped her well-being. Ironically, the episode targeting her mother did change her life. When Briana was 9, she spent a summer with her grandmother in Venezuela. During this time, her mother visited Niagara Falls with her Puerto Rican husband, whom she had just married, although she had not yet legalized her status. Not thinking, the couple crossed into Canada. Coming back to the U.S. side of the falls, Briana's mother was arrested.

Briana's stepfather arranged for her mother's release, and then her legalization, and Briana actually did not learn the story of her sister's conception or her mother's detention until years later when she came across some of her mother's paperwork and her mother told the story, making “jokes about Julissa [younger sibling] being an accidental child.” For Briana, a lack of any involvement in the episode or its resolution contributed to her feeling no consequence, despite the episode leading to the birth of her sister.

In contrast, those who spoke of being highly involved in helping family members after an arrest or detention talked about the ways these episodes shaped family relationship dynamics, and at times became a source of deep anxiety. They described what others define as brokering, work in their families related to these episodes (Reference DelgadoDelgado, 2020; Reference KatzKatz, 2014; Reference OrellanaOrellana, 2009). Mariana, for example, spoke of on-going difficulties throughout her childhood from her parents' immigration issues. Most notably, she recalled a traumatizing car ride to an upstate immigration facility at age 7. Although the initial episode resulted in the release of Mariana's Mexican-born parents, throughout her childhood and even as a young adult, Mariana worked with her parents' lawyers on their cases and described multiple ways she connected the uncertainty of the immigration situation to the anxiety and depression she experienced, often acting out as a teenager. For example, she explained, “I remember my dad had a court date one day, and like I was rebelling a lot because–so when all of this happened, like I … chose to do a bunch of stupid things.”

Raquel also described deep involvement in her mother's immigration case and her overall discouragement with the system. Born in a rural community upstate, Raquel lived in Guatemala for 5 years with her mother, from the age of 7 to 13. They moved to her mother's hometown when a neighbor in New York threatened to call ICE, and Raquel's mother feared she might lose custody of her children. She decided it would be better to leave before any complaint could be reported. Yet gang violence increased in the town where Raquel lived in Guatemala; after the gang murdered one of Raquel's uncles, they fled. Raquel returned via plane in 2013 to be reunited with her father who had stayed to work and support the family from his job in New York. Her mother, lacking a legal status, crossed the U.S.–Mexican border where she was detained for a week. Her mother sought asylum; the initial screening found that her claim involved a credible fear of persecution, so she was released. But when Raquel told her story during our interview in 2019, her mother's application for asylum was still pending, involving Raquel throughout high school. She described the last time she attended court saying,

Raquel—in talking about the fallout of the detention episode—spoke of the deep emotional toll of her participation in the immigration case.

As these examples show, bearing witness to either an arrest or the aftermath of an arrest or detention, in the form of involvement in court cases, helps to account for how deeply some young people felt affected by parental arrests or detentions (see also Reference Dreby, Silveira and LeeDreby et al., 2022). In one telling counterexample, Nilda, at age 18, spoke of her mother's traffic stop in a rural area of upstate New York. Community organizers intervened, convincing the local police to release her as she was a single mother and her arrest would lead Nilda, 13 at the time, with no guardian and as a ward of the state. Six years later when Nilda told her story, she explained that her mother had an on-going case which she knew about, but she had not had to advocate for her mother. Instead, a member of the community organization helped. “Karen got in contact with people that she knows, cause she works a lot with like lawyers… I didn't [know the lawyer]. But like, Karen actually knew him as well, so like… She got him to my mom … but he's actually been like a huge help to my mom.” Because the lawyer speaks Spanish, Nilda did not need to translate. Nilda did not feel the episode to be impactful because she was not separated from her mother and did not get involved in the case.

Direct threats

Specific moments of threat can in some cases have lasting impacts even when no arrest, detention or removal occurs due to the timing of these threats, especially when they introduced a sense of insecurity and instability tied to a specific incident that increased with time. Leilani in the opening vignette recalled three specific incidents when the police came to her apartment for domestic violence, but emphasized that she lived the aftermath of the direct threats “over the course of 12 years,” the first when she was 6 years old and the latest at age 18. For Leilani, the direct threat of enforcement was an on-going characteristic of her childhood, rooted in specific moments of police interaction.

David at age 18 also described the power of a direct threat to create a climate of on-ongoing insecurity so that incidents after the fact also are interpreted through the lens of a threat.

David grew up in an agricultural community in Western New York. As the child of farmworkers, he initially struggled, as he felt different from other kids in his community, “we didn't know many people in my school.” He went on to describe himself as exhibiting classic signs of internalizing behavior. “I didn't really talk to anyone when I was younger so I wasn't really close to anyone else other than the few people that I had. But then as I grew older I would feel very introverted since I didn't really put myself out there as much.”

David told the story of an episode that occurred when he was in 6th grade. He was the first one up that morning, getting ready for school, when he heard the knocking and saw “the immigration cars.” He ran to his room and alerted his parents and uncle who were still sleeping.

The incident resolved with no further contact from ICE. However, David spoke about police following his parents' vehicles throughout middle and high school—until he had a license and could drive them—and memories of always pulling into a church parking lot until they passed, ever fearful of being targeted in the rural community where they lived. In fact, David did not think to mention that his father had been deported when he was a baby until the last 10 min of the interview. In almost an aside comment, David mentioned the deportation happened when he was so little he forgot about it. It seems likely that David's original description of the way his parents sheltered him may have stemmed from this prior deportation, yet from his perspective, the direct threat that occurred at a time in early adolescence was more salient because it left the imprint of fear on David that resurfaced in any interaction with law enforcement for the rest of his childhood.

Young adults who did not feel threatened by such close-call incidents often did not recall the details sufficiently enough to share them. Danielle—at age 29—was an exception; she spoke of police interactions being a regular part of her childhood in Queens. Her parents—born in Colombia—had been undocumented for most of her life, and she had an uncle who was deported. At the time of our interview, Danielle worked with youth in New York City, many of whom had problematic interactions with the police and with ICE. Well-aware of the ways immigration could get involved in families, Danielle explained that she did not grow up fearful.

Reflecting on her lack of fear, Danielle said, “we were like unapologetically Colombian, my dad was like ‘yeah, I'm an immigrant and what,’ you know. He was very unapologetic.”

There are several differences in Danielle, Leilani and David's accounts worth noting. For one, as a pre-teen, first Danielle's father—and later her mother—naturalized whereas Leilani and David's parents remained undocumented for their entire childhoods. Those who described episodes of specific direct threats expressed ongoing impacts throughout their childhoods, and at times into adulthoods, when threats heightened a sense of insecurity over a longer period of their lives. If, however, a family member resolved their status during this time, the source of the direct threat disappeared, and fears subsided. Timing matters (see also Reference Dreby, Silveira and LeeDreby et al., 2022). Second, Danielle was 29 when we spoke; her childhood recollections of interactions with police in New York City occurred in the late 1990 s and early 2000 s, prior to the rapid rise in deportations across the country. David (age 18) and Leilani (age 25) on the other hand, lived enforcement experiences that coincided with the rise of enforcement activities in New York State. Danielle's counterexample suggests that aside from timing in a child's life, factors outside of families can instill fears, something apparent in narratives of those who had not lived specific threats, but rather felt them diffusely.

Diffuse fears

Twenty-one young adults had no direct experience with enforcement episodes but expressed fears related to the overall immigration enforcement climate. Analysis of these stories show that it is not within-family dynamics—such as relationship quality, instability, involvement in or timing of the episode—that activated fears. Rather, they spoke of more generalized anxieties correlated to events outside of their families. These could be enforcement episodes targeting people outside of their immediate spheres or the generalized political climate like the Trump election, or—for older participants—the attacks on New York on September 11th, 2001.

Devon, for example, said he had never really thought about enforcement as a possibility in his Haitian-American family, and community, until he saw the news report of a Haitian father in deportation proceedings on Long Island. Similarly, Rosalie—whose parents were from Jamaica—knew her older sister's visa had expired but had not felt afraid as a child until her sophomore year in high school.

For some, an incident in broader community brought about awareness and fear of enforcement.

Others talked about the rhetoric surrounding the Trump campaign and presidency as specifically heightening their fears. For Kevin—whose parents were born in Mexico—Trump's election when he was 14 initiated his worries. “My dad, cause he works in a restaurant, undocumented, like… at any moment right now, it's like… if immigration were to come through the restaurant, right, for a permit … they'd just take him right now.’

“Do you think about it a lot?” Joanna asked.

Raised in Manhattan, Kevin had not worried about his father until the year of the Trump election.

In another example, 20-year-old Jessica—who lived with her naturalized mother born in Haiti—described going to her high school in an upstate community the day after the Trump election saying, “I thought I was having a fever dream … I remember that day, there's these kids - a bunch of white boys - … they were wearing MAGA hats and were like, ‘oh, you know, all of the immigrants are gonna get kicked out of the country.’ They were saying horrible things.” Jessica described her significant anxiety in our October 2020 interview:

Six weeks later, Jessica wrote Joanna an email expressing her elation and relief that Trump had not been re-elected.

Those with undocumented family members were not the only ones to mention fears related to anti-immigrant rhetoric. One daughter of a Dominican naturalized citizen worried that police might arrest her father, a truck driver, and report him to ICE while on a trip to another state. Since the election, she had seen news stories of citizens stuck in detention centers near the U.S.–Mexican border. Similarly, Beto, whose mother had emigrated from Mexico and father from Colombia via Venezuela, also had two naturalized parents. As a child, he did not harbor fears, although he spoke of not feeling he could grow his hair long in middle school so as not to be labeled a terrorist right after 9/11. Yet at age 26, he feels concerned.

These accounts suggest the importance of the political climate to shaping diffuse fears.

Those describing direct threats talked about how these moments affected them throughout their childhoods, often cascading and building over time, and consequently becoming what they described as an acute source of anxiety. Fears arising from indirect threats expressed by participants differ because they tie them specifically to rhetoric—in Jessica and Kevin's case associated with the campaign of former President Trump—or news coverage—in Beto and Devon's cases—or knowledge of an episode in the community—for Rosalie. As such, participants experienced them more diffusely; the intensity of these fears heightened and receded in tandem with the political climate and enforcement practices in their local community rather than factors related to timing or experiences in their families.