The State of Immigration Enforcement on Families

Over the past year and a half, children and families have suffered strife in the face of aggressive, cruel, and often fatal immigration policy. It is estimated that there are over 65,000 people presently in ICE detention and 460,000 people have been held in detention since the beginning of this presidential term. Disturbingly, more than 6,300 children, toddlers, and infants have been detained, some as young and fragile as two month olds, since the current president has taken office. Fifty-five people have lost their life while in ICE custody in detention since 2025. And while distraught wives and children grieved the loss of their husbands and fathers, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo and Joan Sebastian Duran Guerrero, spurring over 330 U.S. vigils and protests to demand justice, family circles in my own community suffered as well this month.  

Two weeks ago, I took my children to one of my county’s beautiful parks to crawl a creek, catch minnows and crawfish, and enjoy some summertime fun. On the same day, parents in a nearby community went to drop their children off at summer camp at Bohrer Park in Gaithersburg, MD. In the parking lot, in front of families, summer campers, and summer camp staff, ICE transferred community members from one car to another. One of the said community members? A mom, who was stopped by ICE after dropping her three year old with a babysitter before work!  

What is a Mom, who feels for the pain of her fellow Moms, imagining the heartbroken hurt of children, to do?  How can I, the same Mom who has to also fold laundry and make lunches to eat after swim practice, make a difference?  I can write a letter to my city, county, and state officials, but how do I encourage others to take action? How can I gather and connect stakeholders, so we can learn from each other and map out achievable actions to list in letters?

Families Protect Families: Breaking Down the Situation 

Rather than let dread overtake me, I can let action absorb anxiety!  I drew on the lessons learned as a MomsRising RISER and Moms Next Door active listener and power-mapped the problem.

• What is the problem? My government prioritized awarding paramilitary level funding to cruelty rather than care infrastructure and social safety nets. Increased governmental ICE and BP spending in these areas coupled with quotas to arrest anywhere from 2,000 to 3,000 immigrants a day creates unsafe and scary community conditions. The family circles left behind reel with trauma and are often without their breadwinner or any income to live their life.  Scared, families retreat to their homes, decreasing their outings to protect themselves and the family circle which remains, which limits work, education, and opportunities for joy. When you are scared to leave your home, how do you make wages, go grocery shopping, get diapers or baby formula for your baby? How do you give your kids happy, child-like experiences? What mutual aid organizations and structures are available in my area and how can I raise awareness?  How can I draw my local legislators’ attention to this issue and encourage them to fight for families?
• Who can fix it? We need leaders at every level of government—Congress, state legislatures, and the courts—who will stand up for our families, defend our communities, and ensure that everyone is treated with dignity, humanity, and fairness under the law. Our families deserve leaders who will face these challenges head-on, fight for what’s right, and take action to protect our friends, neighbors, and loved ones. At the federal level, we need legislators to protect TPS holders and DREAMERs from losing their legal status and facing deportation, protect the right of asylum seekers to seek safety and due process, close immigration detention centers, demand accountability and transparency from immigration enforcement agents, and stand up for the dignity, safety, and rights of immigrant families. We need leaders who will fight for an immigration system that keeps families together, protects our communities, and treats every person with humanity and fairness. At the state level, we need to stop ICE from building warehouses and pass laws that ban law enforcement from wearing face masks, protect sensitive locations like hospitals, schools, and courts, and prohibit police and ICE from working together.  At the community level, we need city and county level policies and protocols in place when masked, armed individuals appear outside public facilities. We need signage in City and County owned lots which prohibits immigration enforcement actions, especially in sensitive locations (like summer camps!).  We need to connect with those impacted.  We need to train how to observe and report ICE abductions in a way that keeps the impacted person safe and gathers information so they are identified, the family informed, and the impacted person’s location traced.  We need to strengthen the bonds of mutual aid in our respective communities so we can take care of one another when a loved one is abducted. And we need to help kids be kids, breathe fresh air, go to school, move their bodies, and experience joy!
• What actions can I take? What skill sets do I have that lend themselves to protecting friends, family, and neighbors? While I am a stay at home mom presently, I am an early interventionist by trade and a strong proponent of learning through play. So while I cannot arbitrate human rights violations, I can…
  • Plan a playdate.
  • Read children’s books exploring a tough topic.  
  • Create a craft tying into that topic (craftivism!),  
  • Sing songs that help build vocabulary, social skills, and communication skills.
  • Connect community members to knowledgeable stakeholders.
  • Gather information about a topic in an attractive display.
  • And coach families through an activity (or family activism action!) together. 

Our families deserve leaders who will face these challenges head-on, fight for what’s right, and take action to protect our friends, neighbors, and loved ones.

Impactful Immigration-Themed Playdates

So I planned a playdate with a side of politics! I drew on the Children’s Defense Fund’s Free Families toolkit and imagery of paper dolls representing children and families held in detention. I found immigration-themed books which lent themselves to the topic of detention and using one’s voice to make a difference.  I researched and reached out to the amazing people advocating and standing up for immigrant rights (shout out to Montgomery County Immigrant Rights Collective!) so that others may learn about the trainings, resources, and mutual aid opportunities in our area. I invited their fearless leader, Ms. Luz Chavez Gonzales, to channel her inner Miss Rachel and she delivered, sharing her personal experience as a DREAMER and reading “Areli is a Dreamer,” a compelling story about a young girl’s experience immigrating to the United States.  

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Listening and learning from Luz was inspirational. Not only does she do great voice work while reading, but she has also advocated for immigrant rights for 17 years, collaborated to build the infrastructure that is the Immigrant Rights Collective, and acted as a mentor for student led organizers of F.A.I.R., Friend of Asylum and Immigration Reform, a virtual community for students advocating for change.

Together, we affirmed our values as a group, that families should live freely, safely in a place called home and that all children should be with their caring adults, so that they may learn, play, grow, feel joy, and thrive. We made paper dolls to represent our own families and those in detention. Families could choose to attach their doll to a letter to a leader, which thanked the leader for any protective work they had done for immigrant community members, urged them to continue the work, and contained a story from a family in our community which had been directly impacted by ICE. We created posters of pro-immigrant Congressional and State Legislative Wins we had experienced in Maryland, as well as space to brainstorm the outcomes to achieve, so families could consider content for their letter.  And we gave families contact information for their leaders and a QR code with a series of resources to share with friends.

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While children and families were constructing their paper dolls, immigrant rights advocates gave information about service and training opportunities they offered.  Like the picture book “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie,” if you give a group of Moms a sign-up genius, meal train, or worthy fund raising cause, we can do amazing things! As a part of the event RSVP, participants brought boxed snack goods to donate to families impacted by ICE. Between library event goers and community members who heard about the drive, we collected 70 boxed snacks for ICE impacted families!  And last, we ended our time together in joy, singing songs, watching our kids run under a parachute, and celebrating what community is all about—moments of delight, eyes lighting up, and human connection!

Did my playdate solve the problem that our government is tearing families apart, detaining our community members, and deporting people with far too little oversight, transparency, or accountability??  No, and it’s hard to imagine the former sentence is reality. But it celebrated the humanity of our fellow families, connected families who could help to families who need help, and most importantly, shared the human toll of ICE with leaders who could do something about it. We will have made a change for good if one mom safely and successively drops her child off to childcare before going to work; if one family and child gets the help with groceries they need or is connected with a walking group so they can get to school safely; if one city, county, or state protects sensitive locations by putting signage in parking lots prohibiting immigration enforcement actions; and if one family (or more!) encourages leaders to act definitively and decisively.

Now that’s worth singing some songs about!  

Take Action

Want to…

• Protect the dignity of TPS holders, Dreamers, and asylees? Sign our petition!
• Enact change in your community? Become a RISER!
• Connect with other Moms? Join Moms Next Door community!
• Learn how to protect immigrants? Find the Immigrant Rights Advocates who are doing the work in your state. Connect, uplift, and lend a hand!
• Strengthen mutual aid and use craftavism as a tool? Watch this! 

Frequently Asked Questions

How many families and children have already been impacted by increased presence of immigration enforcement and family detention centers?

Over 65,000 people presently in ICE detention and 460,000 have been held in detention since the beginning of Trump’s presidential term, with more than 6,300 children, toddlers, and infants have been detained.

What should be done at the federal, state, and community/local levels of government to address these problems?

We must advocate for the dignity, safety, and rights of our friends, families, and neighbors—and demand leaders at every level of government who will face these challenges head-on, hold the line for our communities, and take action to protect every family’s right to live with dignity, freedom, and fairness.  

What has Jean worked on with her community to take action in uplifting and protecting our immigrant communities?

Jean drew inspiration from Children’s Defense Fund’s Free Families toolkit and imagery of paper dolls representing children and families held in detention to hold playdates with community members reading immigration-themed books and bringing Montgomery County Immigrant Rights Collective's Luz Chavez Gonzales to create paper dolls, letters to elected leaders, and more while sharing stories and resources on opportunities for engaging immigration advocacy work.