The Impact of Immigration Enforcement Threat on Latino Children and Communities

The University-Based Child and Family Policy Consortium, in collaboration with the Society for Research in Child Development, hosted a webinar on December 6, 2018 on immigration enforcement threat. Feeling safe is fundamental for healthy child development. Yet rapid and far‐reaching transformations in immigration policy and anti-immigrant rhetoric in the United States are fueling a sense of fear and uncertainty in many households across the nation.

On this webinar, Drs. R. Gabriela Barajas-Gonzalez (NYU Langone School of Medicine) and Cecilia Ayón (University of California, Riverside) presented an overview of their Social Policy Report, “Applying a Community Violence Framework to Understand the Impact of Immigration Enforcement Threat on Latino Children” to better understand how uncertainty and threat regarding familial safety adversely impacts the lives of Latino children in immigrant households. Drs. Ayón and Barajas-Gonzalez also discussed implications for working with immigrant communities, informed by their own experiences conducting qualitative and quantitative research in California and New York City.