Just one month into President Donald Trump’s second term, we’re seeing a flurry of immigration policy changes—most notably, a national crackdown on undocumented immigrants, with raids in multiple cities and states. The president was hellbent on keeping his campaign promise of mass deportations on Day One.
Thousands have been arrested or detained in cities including Miami, Chicago, New York, San Diego, and El Paso, Texas. While targeting those who have committed crimes, including misdemeanors, thanks to the recent Laken Riley Act, law enforcement officials have been deporting hundreds of undocumented immigrants to countries such as Mexico, Guatemala, Colombia, and Venezuela.
What will become of the children being left behind by deported men and women? We’re not yet sure, but we know that millions of them live in fear of having one or both parents suddenly disappear — perhaps returning home from school to find their families gone.
Losing a parent to deportation or to any other circumstance is a traumatic event in the life of any child. My own childhood experience triggered an uneasy response to the Trump 2.0 crackdown on so-called “illegal aliens,” and particularly to his family separation policy in his first term: When I was five, my mother migrated to England and left me and my baby sister behind in Jamaica. Though she promised to come back for us, she never did; I didn’t see her again for 23 years.
It wasn’t until I was in my 30s and 40s, bolstered by therapy and healing work, that I began to grasp how this separation trauma had rippled through my adult life.
But some children will be deported along with their families. Trump has said he wouldn’t separate children from their parents, as he he’d done in his first term, but would deport entire families—even “mixed status” families with American-born children and other legal residents.
On Jan. 20, he signed an executive order aimed at ending birthright citizenship, guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution. If this order were to be implemented, children born in the U.S. to undocumented migrants could be deported as noncitizens. So far, three judges have blocked his plan; a president does not have the power to change a constitutional amendment.
Trump has also said he will invoke the Alien Enemies Act, an 18th-century law last used to intern the Japanese during World War II. Furthermore, he envisions detaining at Guantanamo Bay up to 30,000 deportees identified as criminals. The 10 executive orders related to immigration that Trump signed hours after he was sworn in could shatter the lives of millions of people, including children.
In 2017, when I first learned that Trump was using extremely haphazard, reckless and cruel means to take children from immigrant parents suspected of crossing the U.S.-Mexico border illegally, I was stunned. He was harming children to punish parents. By summer 2018, roughly 5,500 children, including toddlers and babies, were separated from their parents.
It was only after Americans saw the chaos and confusion on TV — traumatized kids in cages, wrapped in foil blankets, crying for their mothers — that organized protests began. An American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit eventually forced a stop to Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy and ordered reunification of the children with their parents. To this day, over 1,300 children are still in limbo because officials can’t find their parents or extended family.
Children separated from their parents experience severe damage to their mental health. Scientific studies, research data, and groundbreaking books such as “The Body Keeps the Score,” by Bessel Van Der Kolk, M.D., help us understand the trauma of losing a parent.
Separation from my mother didn’t, at first, seem that traumatic because I numbed my emotions. I was left with my maternal grandmother and later raised by a responsible family friend; my father never played a role in my upbringing. Building a mother- daughter bond after a 23-year rift was complicated—I met my mother only nine times in my adult life. I’m still triggered by abandonment and rejection and must constantly remind myself that I’m worthy.
What will become of the children of deportees amid Trump’s national immigration crackdown? Some may end up without a mother or father, and some may be deported to an unsafe country they’re seeing for the first time. Whatever happens, lifetime trauma — even generational trauma — will be difficult to avoid.
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Carol J. Kelly is an award-winning journalist with extensive experience
at top newspapers, including The Wall Street Journal and The Boston Globe. She is completing a memoir, “VINNETTE & ME: The Nine Times I Met My Mother.” Carol lives in Brooklyn, New York.