In the past two years, the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency has arrested people leaving a church hypothermia shelter, a father who had just dropped his daughter off at school, and a mother of young children who was paying a traffic fine. These stories, as well as those of the more than 2,600 children taken from their parents under the Trump administration’s family separation policy, are heartbreaking.
As these stories circulate, ICE’s increasingly callous actions and the Trump administration’s immigration policies more broadly have come under criticism and scrutiny. In the final weeks of the 2018 election, however, President Donald Trump continued to hammer anti-immigrant rhetoric in speeches across the country and propose fear-based immigration policies. The administration has made multiple attempts—at least one of which has been placed on hold by a federal court—to close the southern border to people from Central American countries seeking asylum in the United States. And just this past weekend, U.S. Border Patrol agents fired tear gasat a group of asylum seekers—including mothers and small children—near the San Ysidro port of entry.
This column outlines research showing that Trump’s rhetoric and policy actions on immigration for the past two years have had measurable negative effects for children and families across the country.