Protecting Children of Immigrant Families: Nonprofit Advocate Responses

Editor’s note: This article contains a specific reference to suicide. If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts or mental health matters, help is available. Call or text 988, the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.

One in four children in the United States has at least one immigrant parent. Even in the best of times, immigrant families face challenges in accessing healthcare, dealing with issues concerning language and cultural alignment, racism, and discrimination.

But with mass deportation threats proliferating, these are hardly the best of times. And among children in immigrant families—many of whom were born in the United States and are themselves citizens, but who may have one or both parents who are not—personal wellbeing is very much at risk.

An extreme example of the stress that children are under is illustrated by the case of Jocelynn Rojo Carranza, an 11-year-old girl from Gainesville, TX—a small agricultural town of 18,000 people located about 70 miles north of Dallas. In February, Carranza committed suicide after facing bullying at Gainesville Middle School, where she attended the sixth grade. Her mother, Marbella Carranza, told the press that she learned only after her daughter’s death through a government investigator that her daughter was being harassed by classmates who had threatened more than once to call federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to deport her family.

“For children in immigrant families, what they’re experiencing at this moment is a sense of uncertainty.”

What is being done to protect the children of immigrant families in today’s high-risk environment? To find out, NPQ interviewed a number of nonprofit leaders who are mobilizing to mitigate the impact of enforcement actions.

Toxic Stress

Adriana Cadena, director of the Protecting Immigrant Families Coalition, acknowledges the widespread nature of the stressors that children in immigrant families are facing.

“We know that for children in immigrant families, what they’re experiencing at this moment is a sense of uncertainty,” Cadena says, “because they don’t know when they get home from school if their parents are going to be home. What we really are seeing is a dramatic impact on their mental wellbeing.”

Sandy Santana, an immigrant from the Dominican Republic who is executive director of Children’s Rights, an organization that provides counsel to unaccompanied minors who enter the United States, concurs: “The threat of parents being deported is affecting children deeply. It’s causing a lot of fear and toxic stress for kids these days. And we’re already seeing that in anecdotal narratives about kids not going to school, for example, because they fear that they’ll be asked about their parents.”

Even when parents are not at risk of deportation, other family members may be. As one advocate reflects, “I have a one-year-old daughter, and I think about what would happen if she doesn’t see her grandma ever again.”

Complex Challenges Require Multifaceted Responses 

A critical facet of the challenges facing children in immigrant families is ensuring they have their own legal representation. In the Border Report, Melissa M. Lopez, executive director of Estrella del Paso, an immigrant legal services nonprofit based in El Paso, TX, indicates that her organization’s federal funding has been suspended and plans to sue the government for suspending payments. In 2024, her nonprofit reportedly represented 5,000 unaccompanied minors, including 2,000 who were involved in federal court proceedings.

According to current federal law, minors who enter the United States unaccompanied by an adult are taken into the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), part of the US Department of Health and Human Services.

“It’s important to make sure that immigrant families, immigrant communities know their rights.”

The federal government is not required to provide legal representation to individuals facing immigration prosecution, and immigrants who cannot find or do not have the resources to hire an attorney must rely on nonprofit legal services, such as those provided by Estrella del Paso. In fiscal year 2024, ORR received the cases of 98,356 minors.

The organizations NPQ consulted agree that it is necessary to have a multipronged strategy in response to current threats.

“One is a legal strategy. We were co-counsel on the Flores case, which enunciated the standards for the treatment and detention of minors,” details Santana.

The Flores settlement is a legal agreement that establishes standards for the care of immigrant children in US custody. The agreement was reached in 1997 after a class action lawsuit was filed in 1985. The agreement applies to both unaccompanied and accompanied minors.

The organizations reported that they are also producing enforcement preparedness guides to help families think through some of the things that they need to attend to, including custody for their children and ensuring that someone who loves their children can provide support for them in the worst-case scenario that a parent is deported.

“It’s important to make sure that immigrant families, immigrant communities know their rights, their constitutional rights when ICE is involved in investigations…because there are so many rumors that spread fear online, sometimes unnecessarily. That’s the grassroots advocacy strategy,” Santana says.

Maintaining Services amid Uncertainty

Despite the difficulties, children in immigrant families must continue to be able to get support—from food to education to medical care to housing. Parents are often concerned about custody, but that is not their only concern.

These concerns are not new. According to the Urban Institute’s latest Well-Being and Basic Needs Survey, 17 percent of people from immigrant families in 2022 avoided safety net programs that benefit family health and wellbeing and long-term child development to avoid being seen as a “public charge,” which could make getting permanent resident status more difficult.

“Hospitals are still obligated to provide emergency services to anyone who shows up, regardless of immigration status. So, we’re making sure families know that it’s legal for them to access emergency services without having to provide that information,” Santana explains.

Nonprofit organizations are also seeing their resources cut, and this presents a challenge to their work.

“I think a lot of organizations feel a lot of pressure to respond immediately and in many different ways. So, the biggest challenge we face is that we need more investment from funders, from private donors, to be able to do this work,” Cadena says.

Adding to financial pressure, Cadena notes that “nonprofits that provide a direct service, that receive funding from the federal government to do enrollment and benefits, are seeing those services cut.”

Trudy Taylor Smith, senior administrator of policy and advocacy for the Texas Children’s Defense Fund, points to additional challenges for nonprofits: “For child advocates across the country right now who are working with the immigrant community, this is creating a lot of uncertainty and confusion. We’ve seen funding freezes announced and then rescinded. So, yes, it makes it difficult to work and, in some cases, it can disrupt the services that nonprofits can provide.”

Deya Aldana, national campaigns director of United We Dream echoes the sentiment. “Right now, it is clear that the tactic of the [Trump] administration is to create chaos because in chaos it is difficult to organize,” says Aldana. “But it is not impossible. It is our job as advocacy organizations, organizers, to continue defending and organizing our people and our communities.”