The mental health impact of ICE enforcement operations on immigrants and citizens.

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On May 20, hundreds of immigrants and allies gathered in Washington for a peaceful march aimed at protesting against additional funding to immigration enforcement agencies.

The budget reconciliation bill proposed $71 billion in funding: $5 billion of which was assigned to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), while $38.2 billion was allocated to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency, in order to expand and sustain enforcement operations.

Since the beginning of the second Trump administration, ICE has increasingly detained and deported not only individuals it claims are in the country unlawfully, but also people holding green cards, visas, humanitarian parole, and other lawful statuses. As a result, many communities have experienced fear and other negative effects on mental health. This kind of psychological damage worsens the physical, economic, and social challenges that many immigrants already face in their daily lives.

Abusive immigration detention is extremely harmful to mental health. Under the current administration, journalists have reported well-documented cases of medical neglect and inhumane treatment at detention centers. For instance, human rights groups urged ICE to end immigration detention at Camp East Montana, where detainees reported horrific conditions, such as: beatings and sexual abuse by officers against detained immigrants; beatings and coercive threats to compel deportation to third countries; medical neglect and hunger. Furthermore, according to the Journal of the American Medical Association, the

mortality rate in ICE detention in 2026 is about to be the highest in 20 years: 18 people have already died in ICE detention this year.

Even outside of detention, people are experiencing extreme mental agony. Healthcare workers in immigrant communities and researchers have outlined a severe mental health crisis, with a rise in anxiety, depression, and suicidal thoughts among patients. Sophia Pages, therapist and executive director of behavioral health at Zocalo Health, argues that “Immigration enforcement is functioning as a public health stressor” and that their screening data showed a clear rise in distress during periods of intensified enforcement.

Pages says that patients feel extremely helpless because no matter how careful they are, whether by changing their routines or staying home more, they feel like they cannot protect themselves or their families.

Children are enduring the most damaging consequences: they are living with the fear that their parents or loved ones will be subjected to immigration enforcement practices. They are afraid to leave their homes or to come home and find that their caregivers have been taken away from them.

Ariana Hoet, pediatric psychologist at Nationwide Children's Hospital, in Ohio, explained that typically, Latino children already face higher rates of depression and anxiety, caused by the struggle to adapt to a new culture, language, and environment while also often facing discrimination. Now, another chronic stressor has been added to the factors that were already putting these communities at risk: the fear of children getting separated from their parents.

Policymakers should consider the potential mental health harms affecting immigrants and citizens when designing policies that target migrant communities, and they should prevent human rights violations in detention centers to avoid a further increase in the death toll.

written by Sonia Iovine