Deportation debate takes center stage at UnidosUS conference

Aug. 4--SAN DIEGO -- Hard-line immigration policies create a climate of fear that reverberates through Hispanic communities, impacting not only undocumented families but also U.S.-born Latinos and legal immigrants, especially children.

That was the message at a workshop that looked at immigration issues held Sunday at the UnidosUS conference at the San Diego Convention Center.

"We know this as a community. It is playing out at the border most visibly in the news, but it also is playing out in the interior of our country and impacting many, many of our children," said Carlos Guevara, senior policy adviser for Unidos who worked on immigration policy for the Obama administration.

Unidos, formerly the National Council of La Raza, is the nation's largest Latino advocacy organization. Its annual conference is expected to draw 3,000 attendees to San Diego through Tuesday.

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Given the focus of the conference, Sunday's workshop didn't attempt to present both sides of the immigration policy debate. Instead, panelists pointed to their concerns over the under-the-radar consequences of the Trump administration's tough immigration enforcement stance.

"Children of deported parents are at higher risk of depression, anxiety, attention disorders and low school performance," said Guevara. "The current immigration environment is contributing to high levels of absenteeism.

"There was a report from UCLA and others that measured this particular issue and found there were impacts not only for children of the immigrant parent but also to fellow students who are concerned about what their peers are experiencing."

Alana LeBron, assistant professor of Chicano/Latino studies and public health at University of California Irvine, cited a 2015 national survey in which one-third of Latinos said they knew someone who was deported.

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"For Latino communities, deportation is not an abstraction," she said. "Folks may have concerns for themselves, their family, co-workers and other students who are community members."

Federal and state immigration policies may constrict job opportunities, as well as access to affordable/stable housing, government-issued IDs and health care, she said.

Another research survey found that immigration enforcement rhetoric was linked to reluctance of Latinos to engage with health care providers, said LeBron.

"For one example, my colleagues and I found that Latinos living in counties with high levels of immigration policing reported lower levels of trust in government as a source of health information compared with Latinos who lived in counties with lower levels of immigration policing," she said.

Karina Spilker, a director at the San Diego non-profit MAAC, which provides education and other services to local Hispanic families, said her organization saw a noticeable decline in food distributions during a period of heightened immigration enforcement.

"The fear factor has an effect on the community," she said. "Our food bank, we serve 5,000 families per month. Our numbers dropped when the raids were going on. People don't come out."

Guevara, the Unidos policy advisor, said there are 18 million Latino children in the U.S. He said 95 percent are U.S. citizens.

Nearly 6 million of them are at risk of separation from a parent, said Guevara. That includes roughly 700,000 DACA recipients who are in legal limbo and 400,000 children living in the U.S. under a Temporary Protected Status designation.

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"These are our future workers, health care providers and taxpayers," he said. "Why are we making this case? We would argue that we know that (enforcement) has significant downstream impacts."

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