Central to President-elect Donald Trump’s victory on Nov. 5 was his harsh stance on immigration.
Now that Trump is due to regain the presidency in January, anti-immigrant sentiment has dominated much of the news. Trump has pledged to hire 10,000 more border patrol agents—and it looks like the president-elect will hold true to his promise, as he and his team moves forward on a plan to divest certain Americans of their citizenship, part of a so-called “denaturalization” project has been in the books since Trump’s last administration. Now, it’s promised by the Trump team to become “turbocharged” come 2025.
News of Trump’s denaturalization plans have stoked fear and unease among some Americans, especially those with immigrant parents and those who became citizens but were not born in the U.S.

An 11-year-old boy from Guatemala, whose family declined to have their name printed, said his parents are afraid of what will happen to them under a Trump presidency, even though they are in the U.S. legally. They hear Trump’s threats of mass deportation as a plan to send everyone back to their home countries.
Another child, an 8-year-old girl from Mexico said she suffers intense anxiety for fear that her parents will be deported. Although her parents have citizenship, the girl constantly hears from schoolmates that Trump hates all immigrants and is going to send all Mexicans back to Mexico. The family did not want their names printed, either.

A woman who came from China 55 years ago, said she now also worries about the threat of deportation. She said she lost track of her identification paperwork, and is afraid what would happen if she were forced to leave, despite being a naturalized citizen. She doesn’t have the money to hire a lawyer.

Another person the Sampan interviewed, an 18-year-old and from Ecuador who became a U.S. citizen when his parents were naturalized, said he is not worried about what will happen under Trump, and was not engaged in politics and did not follow the debates or election.

But amid rising hateful rhetoric against immigrants and talk of mass deportation and denaturalization, the mental health of immigrants and their families is at risk, according to one study. Before Trump’s reelection, a study published in May in the Journal of the American Medical Association showed that anti-immigrant rhetoric had led to exacerbated mental health issues for Latino adolescents. Latino communities found themselves more vulnerable than before — amid deportation fears, education and employment obstacles, and barriers to medical care. These stresses severely weakened familial relationships, such as a decline in parental support and an increase in parent-child conflict, causing mental health problems in Latino youth, found the report’s authors.

Consistent worry over a long period of time or repeated instances of overwhelming anxiety levels can increase the potential for depressive and anxiety disorders and other conditions.
And the anti-immigrant threats have been pervasive, during the campaign and after. On Oct. 13, in a rally held at Arizona, Trump claimed that the United States is “now known all throughout the world as an occupied country” and that, with his election to the White House, “the migrant invasion ends and the restoration of our country begins.” At the presidential debate in September against Vice Pres. Kamala Harris, Trump stated that in the Midwest, “The people that came in, they’re eating the cats … they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.” Throughout his campaign, Trump has used language such as “animals,” the “worst people,” and the “enemy from within” to refer to immigrant communities. Anti-immigrant rhetoric and often blatant misinformation has been used to paint the picture of a dire national emergency.

“The biggest problem is what the children of my adult students are going through,” said Joseph Porter, an English as a Second Language teacher working in Lynn. “Unfortunately, their school-aged children have been targeted and stigmatized. I’ve had Muslim students whose children have been targeted for what they wear, Haitian students whose children have been taunted and attacked with chicken bones disguised as dog or cat carcasses … The problem is about how we can protect our children from a hate that will only grow. How will my students protect their children?”