With the complicity of the Supreme Court, the Republican-controlled House and Senate, and members of his cabinet, President Donald Trump is waging a racist and xenophobic war against immigrants. He has budgeted billions to enable his army of ICE agents to use lawless tactics to meet their daily quotas of detainees. According to the organization, Children’s Rights, 10,000 immigrant children and teens are in custody in the U.S. Masked agents who make their living tearing families apart have no regard for the immigrant children who are their victims. The trauma these children are experiencing will haunt them and their descendants for generations.
We see the headlines: “12-year-old boy left alone on sidewalk after ICE raid in Massachusetts,” “Daughters of Worcester woman detained by ICE reported missing,” “Chelsea student arrested by police, detained by ICE after school altercation.” Dehumanized children are seen as nothing more than bait to catch and detain their parents. Trump has rescinded a decades-long practice of barring ICE from schools. Today parents fear sending their children to school, worried they won’t return.
The emotional and economic consequences of children whose parent(s) have been disappeared by ICE are enormous. Families who were already living on the economic edge are left with few resources when their breadwinner is taken. Undocumented immigrants have been ineligible for SNAP, Medicaid, Medicare, Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) and subsidized supplemental health insurance through the Affordable Care Act. However, The One Big BRUTAL (my word) Bill Act has prevented all but a few groups of immigrants who are in the U.S. lawfully, of the right to access these life-saving health and nutrition programs. New eligibility rules would potentially ban thousands of children from Head Start. Imagine being the parent left behind trying to raise their children under such conditions.
What if that parent is pregnant? Like many pregnant and undocumented immigrants, would she be afraid to seek prenatal care, given that Trump permits ICE to enter hospitals and medical clinics? How would she get to a clinic without transportation? Would she be able to access WIC, which Trump wants to slash by nearly $300 million in 2026? Approximately 250,0000 women without permanent legal status give birth each year. Higher uninsured rates and lower rates of prenatal care can negatively affect a woman’s chances of giving birth to a healthy baby.
Estela Ramos Baten and her daughter, Sontay Ramos, a rising high school senior, showed up in a Los Angeles immigration court for what they thought was a routine check-in. Five days later, without due process, mother and daughter were deported to Guatemala, the country they fled to escape gang violence. Estela suffered from severe health issues, but authorities deprived her of medical treatment. She died nine weeks later, leaving her grieving daughter in a country she barely remembered. In a short time, Sontay had lost her mother, her home, her sister, still in the U.S., her high school friends and activities, and the future she envisioned. Sontay’s piled on trauma can impact every aspect of her life, and, untreated, can lead to severe mental health consequences. According to education reporter Nadra Nittle, “a defect of the U.S. immigration system is that children get deported as appendages of their parents without considering whether they have legitimate reasons to remain in the United States.”
For a parent slated by ICE for deportation, whose partner and children are American citizens, deciding whether to leave one’s child behind is excruciating, potentially traumatizing the entire family. Self-deportation is increasingly the only option to avoid being disappeared and hidden from family, without access to legal representation. Imagine the mother who must decide whether to self-deport with or without her children. Imagine explaining such decisions to a young child!
The Office of Refugee Resettlement is tasked with providing care and shelter to unaccompanied children under 18, who come to the United States without a parent or legal guardian, and without lawful status. Such children are vulnerable to trafficking, exploitation, and deportation back to their dangerous home countries. Seventy-five percent of unaccompanied children are human trafficking victims (childrensrights.org) yet, they are not entitled to a court-appointed immigration lawyer. Trump launched another weapon in his arsenal by ending federal legal services programs for unaccompanied youth in March 2025, a decision that impacts thousands of children. He also violated child protection laws that prevent ICE from detaining unaccompanied children in adult detention centers when they turn 18. His decision to lock up these vulnerable children in the inhumane and dangerous concentration camps, built by Trump donors like CoreCivic and Geo Group, were ended by an emergency court order reestablishing the prohibition against transferring unaccompanied children to adult detention when they turn 18. The family separations of Trump 1.0 are being revived to support Trump’s obsession with ridding the country of Spanish-speaking people. His newest weapon will be a 24-hour a day call center to help track down unaccompanied migrant children, along with a plan to offer these vulnerable children a $2,500 “resettlement support stipend” if they self-deport.
“To be a good citizen of a bad state,” says M. Gessen, “one has to do scary things … (weighing) moral obligation against fear, flying under the radar against taking a risk — and opting for the risk.”
What is our moral obligation to the immigrant children and their parents targeted by an immoral regime? What would you want readers to do if it was your child? Are you willing to do anything for someone else’s child?
Sara Weinberger lives in Easthampton.