We are horrified and dismayed that a five-year-old child was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) while returning home from preschool in Minnesota. According to local officials, multiple students—all under the age of 18—in the Minneapolis suburb of Columbia Heights have been detained by federal immigration authorities in recent weeks. What we are witnessing is an unconscionable exercise of government power, and a gross violation of our government’s obligation to safeguard and protect the health and wellbeing of each and every child, family, and community in the United States, regardless of race, ethnicity, immigration status, politics, or zip code.
These incidents in Minnesota are not isolated. Immigration enforcement is upending daily life in communities across the country, bringing with it stress, fear, and trauma that is affecting children and families regardless of immigration status. School leaders report that students are staying home because families are afraid—afraid to send children to school, to let them ride the bus, to play outside. Health care providers are reporting increased stress, trauma, worry, anxiety, and depression among the children and families they see.
When enforcement activity targets families in this way, parents and caregivers are forced to reshape how they move through their days, and to make an impossible and false choice between protecting their children’s safety and wellbeing and meeting their families’ most basic needs. Under these conditions, children’s sense of safety is profoundly disrupted. For young children, whose sense of safety is still forming, fear, uncertainty, and instability can undermine their physical and emotional wellbeing and healthy development.
This is not what a healthy and thriving democracy looks like. This administration must immediately reverse course and cease its terrorizing of children, families, and communities.
Immigration policy should be grounded in dignity, humanity, and the best interests of families. We must stop enforcement practices that place children and families at risk, enforce protections for children and families in schools, hospitals, and other sensitive spaces, and ensure that immigration policy reflects what we know children and families need to thrive. Children and families should be able to feel safe, secure, and supported in their communities, and government’s role should be to support families and strengthen communities so everyone has the ability to pursue their goals and dreams—not to tear families and communities apart.
