Arrests of Immigrant Parents Create Mental Health Crisis for Children

Immigration Arrests Are Fuelling a Mental Health Crisis for Hundreds of Thousands of US Citizen Children

A wave of immigration arrests under the Trump administration has torn an estimated 145,000 US citizen children away from a parent, and the paediatricians, therapists and teachers who treat them say the psychological damage is already plain to see. Researchers at the Brookings Institution estimate that around 205,000 children, most of them American citizens, have lost a parent to detention since January 2025. The children left behind are regressi…

Arrests of immigrant parents create mental health crisis for children

An estimated hundreds of thousands of children, many of them U.S. citizens, have been separated from a parent in the Trump administration's immigration crackdown.