Federal Immigration Enforcement Under Trump Creates Mental Health Crisis for Children in California, Report Finds

Over 200,000 children — 145,000 of them U.S. citizens — have had at least one parent detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement since President Donald Trump returned to office, according to a Brookings Institution analysis. A third are under age 6.

The enforcement push, funded by over $200 billion in federal appropriations including the GOP’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act and a $70 billion package Trump signed this month, is driving what parents, therapists, and community organizations describe as a mental health crisis among children in immigrant families across California.

Saúl Zermeño, a 45-year-old single father, went to a routine ICE check-in appointment on Oct. 3 — a requirement he’d complied with for years under deferred-action status. Officers deported him to Mexico that day without asking about his son or checking on the boy’s well-being, according to Zermeño and his attorney.

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His son Damian, 15, a U.S. citizen born in Los Angeles, stopped eating, stopped going to school, and spent days in his room after his father’s removal. The teenager has ADHD, autism, epilepsy, and a genetic condition that causes tumors on nerve tissue — conditions his father had managed as Damian’s sole caregiver since infancy.

“I thought it wasn’t true,” Damian said. “I just went to my room. I didn’t want to leave. I didn’t even want to eat.”

Jacob, a 9-year-old asylum seeker from Colombia, watched ICE officers detain his mother during a January check-in appointment while he and his father sat in the waiting room. The mother had a pending asylum application and no criminal record, according to the father. Jacob stopped eating, cried in class, and blamed his father for the detention. The boy had already fled paramilitary death threats in Colombia and witnessed violence during the family’s journey north.

“He was terrified,” the father said. “He was crying with rage.”

A third family, asylum seekers from Guatemala, watched ICE agents smash their car window and remove the father while he waited in the parking lot during the mother’s check-in appointment. Officers initially tried to separate the mother from the couple’s three children — ages 9, 7, and 1 — but stopped after the children started screaming, according to the mother, Noemi.

Since that December detention, Noemi’s 7-year-old daughter stopped eating, saw her grades plummet, and forgot letters and numbers in both English and Spanish. The youngest, who had learned to walk before her father’s detention, went back to crawling for three months.

Sofia Mendoza, a therapist at a community clinic in Los Angeles County, said separated children exhibit depression, anxiety, panic attacks, nightmares, regression to earlier behaviors like bed-wetting, and increased risk of suicide and substance use. Parents and community organizers report preschoolers with speech delays, elementary students talking about suicide, and teenagers too anxious to leave home.

The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that ICE does not separate families, and that parents are asked whether they want to be removed with their children or designate a safe person for them to stay with in the U.S.

A report by the Women’s Refugee Commission and Physicians for Human Rights found that many parents aren’t given that choice, and that ICE often doesn’t ask detainees if they have children or ensure children left behind are safe. Zermeño said officers never asked about his son.

More than 4.6 million U.S. citizen children live with a parent at risk of deportation, according to the Brookings report.

The Breakdown

• Over $200 billion in federal funding is driving expanded ICE enforcement, including appropriations from the GOP’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act and a $70 billion package signed by Trump.
• The Brookings Institution estimates over 200,000 children have had at least one parent detained since Trump returned to office — 145,000 are U.S. citizens, about a third under age 6.
• Children separated from detained or deported parents exhibit documented mental and physical health consequences: depression, anxiety, PTSD, developmental delays, speech regression, panic attacks, and increased long-term risk of heart disease, diabetes, and cancer.
• Most people detained have no criminal conviction — being in the U.S. without authorization is typically a civil offense.
• ICE states it does not separate families and offers parents a choice to be removed with their children or designate a caregiver; a report by the Women’s Refugee Commission and Physicians for Human Rights found many parents aren’t given that choice and ICE often doesn’t confirm children are safe.

What This Means for You

The Trump administration’s deportation policies are producing these detentions and deportations. Fresno voters who cast ballots in the 2024 presidential election and will vote in 2028 are watching the consequences play out in California communities, including for more than 4.6 million U.S. citizen children nationally living with a parent at deportation risk.

The $200 billion appropriation funding this enforcement includes the GOP’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act. California’s congressional delegation voted on that funding — Fresno voters elect those representatives and will again in 2026 and 2028.

What to Watch

The core policy question here is straightforward: is this enforcement operation — separating U.S. citizen children from parents with no criminal conviction, creating documented trauma in preschoolers and teenagers — the immigration policy Fresno voters want their tax dollars funding? Over $200 billion is a real number, not an abstraction. That’s federal money going toward operations that, according to the material’s own accounts, put 9-year-olds in therapy and left a medically fragile 15-year-old without the parent managing his epilepsy and tumor growth.

The administration frames this as border security and enforcement of immigration law. The families and health professionals quoted frame it as state-sanctioned family separation with lifelong health consequences for children who are, in most cases, U.S. citizens. Both descriptions are grounded in the same set of facts — the question is which one a voter believes justifies spending $200 billion and leaving that many children without a parent.

Watch whether your congressional representative voted for that $200 billion appropriation, and whether they’re defending or criticizing the outcomes it’s funding. That’s the accountability mechanism a voter has: the next ballot.