Paying the Price: The Impact of Immigration Raids on America’s Children
Schools and social service agencies in communities with a lot of immigrants should establish plans for how to respond if federal immigration authorities conduct workplace raids, concludes a study by the Washington-based Urban Institute.
Researchers studied three communities that experienced work-site immigration raids in the last year to see what impact the raids had on children. They found that many parents who were arrested were afraid to divulge that they had children because they thought their children would be detained as well. Thus churches, social-service agencies, schools, and other organizations were left to ensure that some children were cared for.
The researchers note that 5 million children in the United States have at least one parent who is undocumented, and many of those children are U.S. citizens.
