Mental health issues rise among migrants in the US
Sindy Estrada has limited her outings to the bare minimum while her 16-year-old son has stopped seeing his friends outside of school: fear and stress are taking over the Colombian woman's family, who are contesting a deportation order in court.
Donald Trump's anti-immigration crackdown is causing mental health problems among the migrant community that have not been seen since the September 11, 2001 attacks, experts say.
Trump has promised the largest deportation in U.S. history of undocumented immigrants (an estimated 11 million), whom he calls “criminals” for entering the country without a visa or permission. He has also revoked hundreds of thousands of temporary residence permits.
The deportation order that forced Estrada and her family to leave the country on April 30 “caused an emotional rupture: they began to suffer from stress, depression, anxiety and panic,” the 36-year-old entrepreneur, who left Colombia with her family three years ago due to extortion at her husband’s company and insecurity, told AFP.
“I’m afraid to go back to Colombia (and) face (what) made me leave there,” she said from her home in New Jersey.
Her 16-year-old son is undergoing therapy. “He started biting his nails, losing sleep and his academic performance.” At school, they ask him “what’s going to happen, whether he’s going to stay or not,” she said.
Her husband has an electronic ankle bracelet so he can be monitored 24 hours a day and now “they want to monitor her,” she said.
Raids, arbitrary arrests, deportations without due process to a maximum security prison in El Salvador, deportation of US citizens with undocumented parents, elimination of birthright citizenship, threat of suspension of rights… Trump’s onslaught on immigration is unprecedented.
Last week, the Republican president offered $1,000 (R$5,600 at the current exchange rate) to those who signed up for the voluntary return program.
Although Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents say they prioritize the detention of migrants with criminal records, only a small portion of those deported fall into this category, according to American media.
The presence of ICE agents in neighborhoods or subway lines frequented by immigrants, particularly Latinos, triggers fear.
The “uncertainty, fear and anguish” that the migrant community is experiencing “is similar to what was experienced during the September 11 attacks” in 2011, in which about 3,000 people died, said Juan Carlos Dumas, a mental health consultant for the New York City Department of Health Services.
This has increased the consumption of alcohol, drugs, tobacco and intra-family conflicts. “You have to deposit your anguish somewhere,” says the 68-year-old psychotherapist of Argentinean origin.
Among young women, there has been an increase in the practice of self-harm “as an expression of anguish”, as also occurred after the September 11 attacks, he says.
And the youngest “deal with their distress in an aggressive way,” he said at the entrance to a school in Harlem where he works detecting aggression problems among students.
“Everyone tries to resolve (the fear) as best they can.” “We haven’t seen anything like this for many, many years,” he assures.
“What is built with years of effort (…) can be destroyed in one day,” he warns.
Those most affected are undocumented immigrants who have built their lives in the United States for many years.
For them, the prospect of leaving the country is “absolutely traumatic”, he says.
The expert recommends that no one “give up and give up” and asks that they continue with their work.
Dumas recalls that in New York, a sanctuary city for immigrants, there are “numerous mental health services” and “a good number of people involved: such as social workers, psychologists, therapists, to provide some consolation, some possible relaxation within what is being experienced”.
“It’s not that everyone has turned against immigrants,” he says.
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