Jacqueline Nguyen, associate Professor of Learning and Development in Educational Psychology, at UW-Milwaukee, spoke about the effects on children from having their parents deported. Nguyen has two young children of her own and couldn’t imagine not being there for them everyday.
She says the effects can be costly. “The uncertainty and unpredictability of a person’s future is such a developmental, cognitive burden, it affects social, academic outcomes,” she said.
“Being undocumented creates a lot of stressors, how does one have optimism for the future knowing there are so many restrictions.”
Nguyen also mentioned that she trained with a legal advocate in the past who had been to many detainer facilities and learned that immigrants seeking asylum are pushed through their cases and not giving the adequate time to plea for themselves.
“Individuals have a right to due process, whether due process is being granted remains to be questioned.”
She mentioned that some “members of sheriff’s departments will sit in the parking lot and run everyone’s license plate and will try to find any reason to pull you over.”
According to her they can’t just walk into a place of business and raid it without due cause. Asked what she sees as the solution to the immigration issues in this country, she responded: “Imagine places where people can move around freely.”
“This notion of rigidly maintaining boundaries that have been drawn through a long history of colonizing means. But that’s not going to be a solution. I think we can do some work on the humane side of immigration challenges and move past the inflamed rhetoric. Understand that children in detention centers are often asylum seekers or were separated from families for multiple reasons.”
She added, “we see people in detention centers, and we think they belong there. We’ve criminalized immigration. If we think of people as less than human, even young children, just on nature of fact, then we lose site they have right to due process and asylum seeking.”