Colleges Try to Ease Immigrant Students’ Stress as Government Steps Up Deportations

Lucy Nicholson, Reuters

The Trump administration’s recent moves to increase deportations of undocumented immigrants have colleges searching for ways to help immigrant students who fear authorities will target them or their families.

On Tuesday, the Department of Homeland issued new guidelines meant to increase arrests and speed deportations of undocumented immigrants. Those documents don’t affect the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, a policy of the Obama administration that allows young undocumented immigrants who were brought to the country as children to remain in the United States to study or work. But President Trump’s new policies and threats to revoke DACA have caused widespread anxiety among “DACAmented” students — those who successfully applied for DACA benefits — as well as other undocumented students on campuses.

In response, counseling centers, already stretched thin by rising demand for mental-health services, are adding new programs for these students; campus legal clinics are offering advice to them and their families; and many departments are creating spaces and forums where students can share their feelings of frustration and fear, or simply vent.

Expanded Counseling

At colleges across the country, faculty and administrators say they’ve seen an uptick in the number of students seeking counseling for depression and anxiety.

At Pomona College, which has led an effort by colleges to prevent any changes to DACA, the number of students who were transported off campus for psychological evaluations due to severe depression or suicidal thoughts had already reached the prior academic year’s numbers by December. To keep pace with the demand, the college is forging ties with more off-campus counselors, including those with experience working with the undocumented.

“There is deep anxiety and stress among our students,” said Miriam Feldblum, vice president for student affairs. “The fear and fear-mongering brought on by this administration cannot be overstated.”

Mr. Trump has offered vague assurances that he won’t deport “Dreamers” — potential beneficiaries of failed legislation known as the Dream Act, which sought to provide a path to citizenship for undocumented college students. But the recent detentions of two DACA recipients — one in Washington State, and one in Texas, just Tuesday — have raised new alarms among undocumented students.

Other students, including some who are citizens themselves, fear for their families more than for themselves. They worry their parents will be picked up for a minor driving infraction, or swept up in an immigration raid.

For such students, there’s often “a sense of guilt, because they are protected and their family members are not,” says Rafael Topete, director of the Dreamers Success Center at California State University at Long Beach.

Since the presidential election in November, Mr. Topete’s center has hosted two “safe space” discussions, offering a forum for students to explore their feelings of anger, guilt, and fear. Two weeks ago, the center held a “day in the life of undocumented students” panel, where students shared their stories; next month, it will host a “coming out of the shadows” event, where undocumented students who have kept quiet about their immigration status can go public with their peers.

The goal of the events, Mr. Topete says, is twofold: to give the college’s more than 1,000 undocumented students “an understanding that they are not alone,” and to raise awareness on campus, “so the rest of students can see that the student sitting next to them, who they never thought was undocumented, is.”

Five hours north, at the University of California at Merced, administrators have set aside space in an academic building where undocumented students can gather, said Charles Nies, vice chancellor for student affairs. The students had said they “just wanted a place where they can go and cry, if they needed to,” he said.

Earlier this month, the university’s provost sent a letter to faculty members urging them to be “compassionate and empathetic” when students’ “personal concerns and challenges” interfered with their class work. The letter noted that many students “are feeling particularly vulnerable right now.”

“We need to be cognizant of the many academic, social and personal pressures of those who are most impacted by this uncertain period,” the letter read. “We need your help to reinforce and amplify a sense of assurance.”

In Chicago, DePaul University and four other area colleges have created a Mental Health Coalition for Undocumented Immigrants that is sharing information about trainings and protests, and working to build a list of “first responders” — mental-health providers who can provide crisis counseling to undocumented students and students from mixed-status families. The group, which held its first meeting two days after the election, started out with 10 to 15 members, and has grown to more than 100, said Maria J. Ferrera, an assistant professor of social work at DePaul University.

And at the University of Buffalo, staff in the counseling center are offering a weekly program called “Let’s Talk,” where students, including international students and the undocumented, can vent about “how they’re feeling or being affected by the current political environment,” said Sharon Mitchell, the university’s director of counseling services and the president-elect of the Association for University and College Counseling Center Directors. The college has also created a handout for students on “managing election stress,” with strategies such as “limit political debate and argument” and “focus on tasks or events that are in your control.”

Legal aid

That strategy — focusing on what you can control — has helped Isabel Martinez, an assistant professor in the department of Latin American and Latina/o studies at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, cope with her own negative feelings.

“I’m a big pessimist,” she says. “I read the executive orders as them being determined to deport as many people as possible, even if they’re a straight-A DACA kid.”

Last week, after the stepped-up immigration enforcement began, several students stopped by Ms. Martinez’s office to cry, saying their moms were scared about going to work, or that they’d heard rumors that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were in their neighborhood, and they didn’t want to go home. One said she and her mom and worked out a plan to do all the shopping when she got home from school, so her mom wouldn’t have to risk driving without a license.

“You’re seeing families reorganize their lives in response to this,” Ms. Martinez said. “Students are having to consider changes to their [course] schedules.”

But instead of despairing, she’s “doing everything we can to educate them in case they’re detained, and making sure they know their rights.” Right after the election, her department held a pizza lunch where undocumented students could vent, and then “start strategizing around what they needed, and what we could do.” A couple weeks later, an alum who now works for an immigration advocacy group began screening students without DACA benefits to see if they might qualify for another form of immigration relief. The college is also training students to conduct “Know Your Rights” seminars for immigrants.

“I’m focusing on what we have control over,” Ms. Martinez said.

Pomona College, meanwhile, is busy creating a pro-bono legal network of alumni from across the country who are willing to help students and their families with immigration issues. Already, the college has raised more than $40,000 from faculty, parents, and alumni, to support the network and cover up to $1,000 in students’ legal fees.

At the University of Baltimore School of Law, Elizabeth Keyes, director of the Immigrant Rights Clinic, said she’s seeing “incredible confusion and anxiety” from the immigrant community, as well as “a real appetite among students to be of service.”

To channel that enthusiasm, the college is sending students who don’t work in the clinic to community-based immigration events and training them to act as legal observers at protests and airports.

“Any chance you get in law school to captivate students you have to take, and this is one of those moments,” she said. “So it’s been overwhelming, but it’s also been an amazing opportunity.”

Ms. Keyes said she never feels helpless, despite knowing she can’t fix clients immigration problems, but only advise them on how to respond.

“I feel almost excessively able to help, and that’s the challenge,” she said. “There is so much good I feel I can do that the pressure is more how do I not burn myself out.”

The question, she said, is “How do you take care of yourself in the face of this much anxiety and activism?”

Kelly Field is a senior reporter covering federal higher-education policy. Contact her at kelly.field@chronicle.com. Or follow her on Twitter @kfieldCHE.