As the Trump administration’s violent immigration crackdown continues, people across the country are dealing with more than just the Department of Homeland Security’s mass detention and deportation efforts — they’re also experiencing high levels of stress and trauma resulting from such efforts.

Like most traumatic events — such as occupation and state-sanctioned violence — the harm has disproportionately fallen on children.

“Children experience policy and the environment that we create for them through the lens of safety, essential for their development,” said Dr. Lisa Fortuna, a clinical psychologist who focuses on immigrant and refugee mental health.

“When children feel that their parents, homes, schools or communities are unsafe, their brains and their bodies respond with fear,” she continued. “And when that fear becomes chronic, it can shape emotional development, learning and health for many years to come. For a lifetime, potentially.”

Fortuna was one of several experts and community members who spoke before a group of senators on Tuesday about the impact that President Donald Trump’s federal immigration enforcement has had on children in the United States. From infants to 17-year-olds, youth are experiencing symptoms of severe stress as a result of being detained or watching their friends and family get taken away.

The Department of Homeland Security, which includes Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, did not respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.

Federal immigration agents arrested more than 3,800 children between January and October 2025, according to the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic at Columbia Law School. Of those children, 1,700 have been held at family detention centers like the one widely criticized in Dilley, Texas.

“Dilley is a hellhole. It’s a prison for babies, toddlers and children,” the clinic’s director Elora Mukherjee told lawmakers Tuesday. Mukherjee has represented 68 children and parents detained at Dilley, where she said families have found live worms and bugs in their meals, and have lacked sufficient drinking water.

According to the attorney, more than 900 children have been detained past the 20-day legal limit for how long a child accompanied by their parent can be in federal immigration custody. Her 18-month-old client, Amalia Arrieta-Valero, nearly died of respiratory distress during her 57-day detention period. DHS has denied her family’s claim that the facility did not provide the necessary medical treatment upon returning to Dilley from the hospital.

Mukherjee also represented a 9-year-old with severe autism who was detained for 85 days after agents took him and his mother on their way to pick up his medication. With the lights always on and patrolling guards making noise, the boy grew increasingly disoriented and began hitting himself and begging to return home to Louisiana, she said.

“They thought that on Thanksgiving, for this one holiday, they would also be able to enjoy a feast. And the staff covered each tray of food and told the children that the food was for the employees only.”

Detention does more than just cause stress for children. Mukherjee recalled her 5-year-old client Alexander — a twin and the child of Russian political dissidents — experiencing suicidality from being detained for over 120 days and repeatedly falling sick.

“One night their mother heard a strange sound coming from Alexander’s bed,” she said. “She went to check on him and found that he had managed to pull the drawstring out of his sweatpants, put it around his neck, and he was pulling it tightly – believing at the age of 5 that it would be better to die than remain in detention.”

Mukherjee managed to get the above families out of detention earlier this year after filing habeas petitions and parole requests, but stressed that detained families continue to face unnecessarily cruel treatment. She recalled being told that children got excited when presented with a table full of food on Thanksgiving Day.

“They thought that on Thanksgiving, for this one holiday, they would also be able to enjoy a feast,” she said. “And the staff covered each tray of food and told the children that the food was for the employees only. And the children were left in tears.”

Trauma from the federal immigration crackdown does not just occur in children detained at the overcrowded family facilities. Kids in cities that experienced major ICE operations, like Chicago and Minneapolis, are dealing with the stress from watching loved ones get violently taken while fearing for their own safety.

High school seniors Samia Mahmoud and Lia Lopez, from Minneapolis and Chicago, respectively, told senators on Tuesday that they both had begun carrying their passports when stepping outside.

“For months, people in our community were afraid to speak and afraid to leave their homes. The school hallways were left empty because kids didn’t want to risk the safety of their own families,” said Lia, who on Oct. 28 helped orchestrate a massive anti-ICE student walkout in the Hispanic neighborhoods that make up Chicago’s southwest side.

Other schools in Chicago also faced a drop in attendance due to the fear surrounding DHS’s Operation Midway Blitz. Despite schools and community members carrying whistles, creating group chats and informing residents of their rights, first-grade teacher Maria Heavener said immigration agents still put her students’ lives at risk by throwing tear gas out of their car near Funston Elementary School.

“First we heard helicopters, then horns and whistles and sirens,” Heavener recalled Tuesday of the Oct. 3 raid. “Students were brought in from recess, just narrowly saving them from inhaling the chemicals. Windows were closed, and we were in a soft lockdown.”

Neighbors quickly assembled to create a safe passage for students to get home, but Heavener said students and their families were still “left feeling shocked and violated.” She recalled her 6-year-old students asking what a tear gas canister does, while school counselors have since noted an increase in behavioral health referrals.

“One of my students had a panic attack in class. His little body froze. His eyes welled up in tears and he began to shake,” the teacher said. “He worried that his family members would be taken because they have dark skin, even though they are citizens from Puerto Rico.”

Since the administration’s immigration operations began, Americans have widely reported agents attacking, detaining and trying to deport U.S. citizens. The pattern has left children feeling more hypervigilant and fearful, regardless of citizenship status.

“Fear is spreading beyond immigrant families into entirely U.S. citizen families,” Fortuna said. “Children who are citizens and whose parents are citizens are expressing fear that they or their loved ones could be taken away simply because they are perceived as immigrants because of the color of their skin, and that they belong to communities that have become the focus of enforcement.”

The fear is then exacerbated by government officials publicly dehumanizing immigrants and non-white communities — behavior that can foment hate and xenophobia on the ground. Research has shown that children who experience racism like this will likely struggle to develop their own identity and sense of self, which can lead to major issues like psychiatric disorders and suicidality, Fortuna said.

“My own friend had to watch her cousin and uncle be thrown to the ground by ICE agents, with a knee pressed on her cousin’s neck while he yelled that he was a citizen,” said Lia, who is also a citizen.

“I should be preparing for prom, graduation and worrying about what college I want to attend, and studying for finals,” she continued. “Instead, I find myself worrying whether the color of my skin or the language that my parents speak would determine if I belong in this country.”

Senators who listened to Tuesday’s testimony acknowledged the trauma plaguing children exposed to the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown before asking if there is any way to curb the harm.

When asked whether there is any safeguard lawmakers can put into detention centers to help protect children, Mukherjee stressed that detention itself must never even be an option for children.

“Alternatives to detention programs are far more cost-effective and humane than detaining children,” she said. “Protecting children from needless cruelty is not an enormous ask, it is what our humanity demands of us.”

The White House has been repeatedly violating the 1997 Flores Settlement, a binding agreement with the federal government that is meant to protect children during immigration enforcement. The administration tried to throw away the agreement before a federal court temporarily stopped the effort.

Youth like Lia and Samia plan to continue organizing against federal immigration enforcement beyond high school, while Heavener said that teachers have stepped more into protector roles. She read out loud a letter addressed to the senators, written by a sixth-grader at her school.

“Babies and kids are too little to be going through this. Kids need liberty. I feel broken as my community is falling apart,” the student wrote. “In my opinion, I think they should give us our freedom. People came here to have a better life, and this is the life they got. It’s so unfair.”

If you or someone you know needs help, call or text 988 or chat 988lifeline.org for mental health support. Additionally, you can find local mental health and crisis resources at dontcallthepolice.com. Outside of the U.S., please visit the International Association for Suicide Prevention.

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