In the wake of Congress's failure to pass comprehensive immigration reform, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement administration (ICE) has stepped up operations in recent months with military-style raids at worksites around the country. These enforcement-only measures may work Lou Dobbs and his followers into a frothy lather, but for the children of those rounded up, the raids have real consequences and can cause long-term damage.
It comes as no surprise that the forced separation from parents can be a traumatic experience for any child. But a new report, released yesterday by the National Council of La Raza and The Urban Institute, reveals the depth of impact recent raids have had on the psychological, educational, economic, and social well-being of children caught in the middle of a broken immigration system. It also outlines the heavy burden that workplace raids place on communities, school systems, social service providers, and religious institutions, which have acted as first responders for families in these incidents.
The report, Paying the Price: The Impact of Immigration Raids on America's Children, issued a number of recommendations to improve upon immigration enforcement and community response to immigration raids. Among them:
- Congress should provide oversight of immigration enforcement activities to ensure that children are protected during worksite enforcement operations.
- ICE should assume that there will always be children – generally very young children– affected whenever adults are arrested in worksite enforcement operations, and should develop a consistent policy for parents’ release that ensures children do not experience disruptions in care.
- ICE should provide detainees access to counsel and advise them of their right to confer with their country’s consular office. Detainees should be allowed access to telephones, and the confidentiality of their telephone conversations should be ensured.
- Schools should develop systems to help ensure that children have a safe place to go in the event of a raid.
- Social service and other public agencies should prepare plans to respond to
immigration raids and develop outreach strategies to assure parents and other caregivers that it is safe to seek emergency assistance and benefits for children. - A clearinghouse of information about responses to raids should be developed nationally to provide a conduit for sharing information, and a setting for developing best practices in service delivery.
Read complete report here.
The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union produced a video on the immigration raids.
