Detention Center Trauma and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Symptoms Among Immigrant Children and Children of Immigrants
One of the hardest decisions to make as a parent is sacrificing all you have for yourself and for your children in order to better their lives so that they do not have to struggle growing up. Making the decision to drop everything one has and migrate to the United States for a better opportunity and achieve the “American Dream” is not easy. Neither is gaining citizenship status in a place where the language is foreign, the environment is hostile and competitive, and the requirements for legalization are very difficult to obtain. This is why so many immigrants risk their lives everyday to make a living for themselves and work hard to make money to take care of their children, have a place to live, and be able to afford food to live. There is also the risk of arrest, detention, and/or deportation, where law enforcement efforts take place in the form of worksite and home raids (Flores et al., 2016). These raids can leave some children, especially U.S. born ones, coming home to empty homes only to find out that their parents have been taken to detention centers or sent back to their country of origin.
Children of immigrants represent 25 percent of the millions of children in the United States and over 88 percent of immigrant-origin children are U.S. born with a foreign-born parent (Flores et al., 2016). Because of this fact, these children are more at risk of psychological distress and mental health issues due to trauma and fear for their parents. In a study that looked at 91 Latino U.S. born children (ages 6 to 12), Flores and her colleagues find that PTSD symptoms and psychological distress is more common and puts these children at higher risks of serious mental health problems than children who do not suffer from any risks of immigration in their family (2016). The study also emphasizes that “children of detained or deported parents were rated by parents and clinicians as higher in internalizing problems and in negative moods and emotions”, where depressive and anxious problems were seen to be more prevalent among these children (Flores et al., 2016). ICE raids can be very traumatizing for children, especially when aggression and force is involved. Children are very vulnerable individuals and can become traumatized by very sensitive situations, so seeing this kind of interaction and watching their family being taken away can leave a lasting impact on their lives and their psychological well-being. As discussed by Rousseau (2025) and Bartol and Bartol (2017), there learning and situational risk factors, environmental risk factors, and biological risk factors can affect a person’s lives, especially in the case of children who now have to grow up with the trauma of their parents being deported and possibly being forced into adoption centers or with family member with legal status (possibly family members who they have never met or might not trust).
There is also the trauma of immigrant children who must experience being in a detention center and live through traumatic treatment at these facilities. Maclean and colleagues (2019) found that among the 425 children they studied, 32 percent demonstrated elevated scores for emotional problems, 14 percent peer problems, and children between 4 and 8 years of age demonstrated difficulties associated with conduct, hyperactivity, and total difficulties compared to older children. The data also showed that of the 150 children who participated in the PTSD testing, 17 percent of them had a probable diagnosis of PTSD (Maclean et al., 2019). This demonstrates that children being held in immigration detention experience high levels of mental health distress and that the psychological impacts of being children of immigrants or children of immigrant status can scar an adolescent and traumatize their lives, possibly creating more problems for them later on in their lives.
References:
Flores, L. R., Clements, M. L., Koo, J. H., & London, J. (2016). Trauma and Psychological Distress in Latino Citizen Children Following Parental Detention and Deportation. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy. American Psychological Association.
MacLean, S. A., Aggyeman, P. O., Walther, J., Singer, E. K., Baranowski, K. A., & Katz, C. L. (2019). Mental health of children held at a United States immigration detention center. Social Science and Medicine.
Rousseau, D. (2025) Module One Lecture Notes. Boston University, Blackboard. BU.edu.