Family Separation...A 5-yr-old's View

This article was just published anonymously in the Chatham County Line. Other than the actress Diana Guerrero’s account, we have few first-hand reports of family separation written by children who experience their parents’ deportation. Losing a parent in this way is always traumatizing. The separation may be temporary, but it may be permanent, as in the case of children funneled into the US foster care system and adopted into new families.

As these young people grow into their own, we can expect to hear more from them.

Reading the article in the Chatham County Line, I was struck by the freshness of the author’s memory some 15-years after the fact. I also couldn’t help but notice the effects of her father’s deportation on her schooling. One aspect of today’s anti-immigrant climate that goes unexplored is the extent to which our schools and school teachers are impacted by these policies. Concerns about the connections among schooling, youth, and the terror felt by children and youth at the prospect of deportation was a subject of this report on Siler City, NC. What do ICE round ups do to children’s learning and the test scores that affect school reputations and funding? How do ICE round ups affect teachers’ abilities to encourage students on to higher education?