A parent's reflection on protecting all children in our communities
Yesterday morning, I was helping my child get ready for school... that familiar routine of backpack checks, shoe-tying, and last-min reassurances. But as I watched him walk confidently toward his classroom, I couldn't stop thinking about 8yr old Maria, who won't be walking to school anymore. Not because her family moved or changed districts, but because at 6 AM on what should have been an ordinary Tuesday, agents in tactical gear pounded on her door and changed her world forever.
Picture this: Your child or maybe the same age as yours, is getting ready for school. Backpack by the door, cereal bowl on the table, that sleepy morning routine every parent knows. Then everything your child understood about safety, about home, about you being able to protect them... gone in seconds.
Maria watches her father get handcuffed in the living room where they watched cartoons together yesterday. Her mother is crying in a language the agents don't understand or care to understand. By noon, Maria is a statistic. Another child caught in the machinery of immigration enforcement. Another kid who will spend years in therapy trying to make sense of the morning everything fell apart.
The Parent's Nightmare:
What if your child watched you get dragged away in handcuffs?
What if they didn't know if you were coming home?
What if they blamed themselves?
This isn't hypothetical. It's happening right now, to children just like yours, in communities that could be yours, at a scale that should terrify anyone who tucks a child into bed at night.
America in Crisis: When We Target Children
Let me be clear about what's happening in our country right now. ICE operations are targeting 3,000 people daily, a more than fourfold increase from previous levels. Congress just approved $170 billion for immigration detention and enforcement—the largest investment in detention and deportation in U.S. history. We're literally building the infrastructure to traumatize more children.
Here's what should shake every parent to their core: Only about 7% of detainees have violent crime convictions. That means 93% are non-violent people. Many of them parents, being swept up in mass raids while their children watch.
We're not talking about criminals hiding in the shadows. We're talking about people who were doing everything right, following the law, attending their check-ins, applying for citizenship, seeking asylum from violence. People caught in citizenship processes. Asylum seekers fleeing death. Even U.S. citizens aren't safe: a 2yr old American citizen was deported to Honduras with her mother, and two American children (ages 7 and 4, one with stage 4 cancer) were banished to Honduras.
The Cruelest Irony: Punishing People for Following the Law
Here's the part that should make your soul ache: A woman who sought asylum after fleeing domestic violence from a police officer in Ecuador was deported back just hours before a judge could block her removal. Her lawyers fear she might be killed by the partner who "called her anti-indigenous slurs while raping her, beating her, and holding his gun to her head."
Russian asylum seekers fleeing Putin's dictatorship are being mass deported back to Russia where they face immediate arrest and persecution. Almost 300 asylum seekers fleeing civil wars and persecution from countries like Iran, China, Afghanistan, Somalia, and Cameroon were deported to Panama without proper asylum hearings.
Think about that: We're sending people back to face the very violence they fled. We're literally participating in their persecution. Why would America do this? Because the system isn't designed to protect children or families. It's designed to terrorize them into compliance through cruelty.
How the System Traumatizes Children by Design
The Trump administration has systematically eliminated every protection that once shielded children from immigration enforcement. Schools are no longer safe, policies that once protected "sensitive locations" including schools and places of worship were revoked in January 2025. Hospitals aren't safe. Even "welfare checks" aren't safe.
The result? Experts are calling this "a child welfare and human rights crisis." An 11yr old girl in Gainesville, Texas named Jocelyn Carranza committed suicide after students at her school started a rumor that ICE would deport her family.
This is America in 2025. A child killed herself because she was more afraid of her government than of death itself. And we're sending people back to countries where they face torture and death.
What Trauma Actually Looks Like in a Child's Brain
When a child watches their parent get arrested, their developing brain floods with stress hormones. It's not like adult stress that you can rationalize away. It's primal, overwhelming terror that rewires neural pathways permanently. Think about what that means: A 6yo watching ICE agents take their parent develops the same trauma symptoms as combat veterans. Your 6 YEAR-OLD. Any 6 YEAR-OLD. Because trauma doesn't check citizenship status before it rewires a child's brain.
The immediate fallout reads like every parent's nightmare:
- Kids stop sleeping, or wake up screaming from nightmares (imagine your child afraid to close their eyes)
- Straight-A students can't concentrate enough to read a sentence (picture your honor roll student staring blankly at homework)
- Children regress—teenagers start wetting the bed, elementary kids stop talking (think of your chatty child going silent)
- They withdraw from friends, teachers, anyone who might also disappear (your social butterfly becoming isolated and afraid)
The Ripple Effect: How Fear Poisons Entire Communities
This isn't just about kids who get directly separated. The terror spreads like wildfire through entire communities. Eighty-four percent of educators say students from immigrant families express concerns about enforcement while at school. Imagine your child sitting in math class, not thinking about multiplication tables but wondering if mommy or daddy will be there when they get home.
Families avoid medical appointments and mental health services due to fears, leading to untreated conditions and delayed care. Picture postponing your child's asthma treatment or skipping their therapy appointments because you're terrified that seeking help might lead to your family being torn apart.
The message is crystal clear to every child watching: Your family doesn't matter. Your childhood doesn't matter. The adults who promised to keep you safe can't protect you. You are expendable. If you are a parent, that message being sent to any child should shake you to your core.
Right Now, As You Read This
While you're reading this article, somewhere a child is hiding under their bed because they heard a car door slam. Somewhere a teenager is googling "what to do if ICE takes my parents" instead of doing homework. Somewhere a little kid is asking their older sibling if they're going to disappear too.
Beverly Juarez, 21, barely older than a teenager herself... suddenly became sole caretaker for her three younger siblings after both parents were detained. Try to imagine your 21yo suddenly responsible for feeding, clothing, and comforting your other children while processing their own terror and grief.
Six-year-old Gabriela Pineda is living with her mother's fiancé, whom she barely knows, after her mother was detained at an ICE office. Picture your 6yo-with their favorite stuffed animal, their bedtime rituals, their need for you to check under the bed for monsters, suddenly placed with a stranger while wondering if they'll ever see mommy again.
These aren't isolated cases. This is systematic. This is policy. This is what we're allowing to happen to children... children who laugh at the same cartoons your kids do, who are afraid of the dark like your kids are, who just want their parents to come home safe.
Every parent reading this knows that feeling when your child is hurt or scared and you'd move heaven and earth to make it better. Now imagine being powerless to help. Imagine being the source of their fear instead of their comfort. That's the reality for thousands of families right now.
The Financial Reality: We're Choosing This
Let's be clear about what America is choosing to spend its money on: $170 billion for immigration detention and enforcement—larger than the entire federal prison system budget. That's money that could go to schools, healthcare, infrastructure, or programs that actually help families.
Instead, we're building a machine designed to tear families apart. Meanwhile, an estimated 908,891 households with at least one U.S.-citizen child would fall below the poverty line if undocumented breadwinners in those families were deported. This isn't about immigration policy. It's about whether we're the kind of country that chooses to impoverish and traumatize our own citizen children to make a political point.
Your Anger is Valid—Now Let's Use It
If you're furious after reading this, congratulations. You still have a functioning conscience. That primal protective rage that transcends politics, transcends borders, transcends everything except the basic human understanding that children deserve safety, that's exactly what we need right now.
Here's how to transform that anger into action:
1. Direct Impact: Support Kids Right Now
• BrightLife Kids provides free online mental health support for children ages 0-12 and their families affected by immigration enforcement
• Find your local legal aid society and donate specifically to their family separation programs
• Support rapid response networks that provide immediate help during raids
2. Educational Warfare
Schools are supposed to be safe spaces. Make sure yours actually are:
• Demand your school district implement trauma-informed practices and ensure counselors are available
• Advocate for policies that explicitly state the district is a safe space for families
• Support schools that refuse to cooperate with ICE without judicial warrants
3. Political Pressure That Actually Works
• Call your representatives and demand restoration of sensitive location policies protecting schools and hospitals
• Demand they vote against the $170 billion mass deportation funding bill
• Support sanctuary policies in your city and state
• Join organizations like the ACLU that are fighting these policies in court
4. Community Defense
• Share Know Your Rights information in multiple languages,
the Immigrant Legal Resource Center has cards available in 15 languages
• Help families create emergency plans for childcare if parents are detained
• Connect with local rapid response networks
Beyond Individual Action: Systemic Change
Individual kindness matters, but systemic problems need systemic solutions. We need immediate restoration of sensitive location protections for schools, hospitals, and churches. We need defunding of the mass deportation machine. We need comprehensive immigration reform that keeps families together.
This isn't about politics. It's about whether we're the kind of society that traumatizes children to make a point.
The Choice We Face
Every day we allow this to continue, more children join the ranks of the walking wounded. More kids learn that adults can't be trusted, that home isn't safe, that love doesn't protect you from cruelty. As many as 1,360 children have never been reunited with their parents six years after the United States government forcibly separated them at the US border.
We can choose to be different. We can choose to see children as children, not political pawns. We can choose to protect the vulnerable instead of targeting them. But only if we act.
What Happens Next Is Up to You
Maria, the 8-year-old from our opening story, is real. So is Beverly, caring for three siblings while she should be figuring out her own life. So is Gabriela, sleeping in a strange bed and asking when mommy is coming home. So was Jocelyn Carranza, who killed herself at 11 because she was more afraid of her government than of death itself.
These children have the same hopes and fears as your children. They deserve the same protection, the same chance at a childhood free from terror, the same basic human dignity that you want for your own kids.
Your anger at their suffering proves you understand what childhood should be: safe, protected, filled with possibility instead of terror, surrounded by adults who will fight to keep them from harm. Now prove you're willing to fight for all children, not just your own.
Because this is the test of our humanity: how we treat the most vulnerable among us when the powerful profit from their pain. And the children are watching. They're always watching.
Take Action Today
• National Immigrant Justice Center: immigrantjustice.org
• Emergency Deportation Defense: call 1-855-435-7693 (ICIRR Family Support Hotline)
• Local Legal Aid: immigrantlegalaid.org
• Political Action: contactingcongress.org
The question isn't whether you care. The question is what you're going to do about it.
Protecting children is a responsibility for the whole community. If you're reading this and feeling moved to action, remember that every small act of support matters. Trust your protective instincts, be present for the children in your community, and remember that building a just society takes all of us working together.
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