‘Can I just be a kid?’ Raids take toll on students

Immigration agents' actions are straining school communities across California.

- BY ANA B. IBARRA

Photographs by JULIANA YAMADA

Los Angeles Times EDUCATORS Claudia Rojas, center, and Lizette Becerra at an August rally for a Reseda Charter High senior detained by federal agents.

A new school year brings an array of feelings: excitement, anticipation, nervousness, homesickness. Maria Caballero Magaña, a K-8 school counselor in Oxnard, knows these feelings well — familiar companions as students return to campus.

This year, however, she and other counselors detected acute emotional reactions: anxiety, sorrow and fear after a summer of intensified immigration raids.

Families in this majority Latino, agriculturally centered part of Ventura County are still coming to terms with the mental health consequences of immigration enforcement. Children and their parents express worry that they may be ripped apart at any moment. Some already have been.

“People were emotional, angry, fearful, and it affected everyone,” Caballero Magaña said from her office at Juan Lagunas Soria Elementary School. “Because if it wasn’t happening to you personally, it was happening to your neighbor, it was happening to your best friend's family.”

“I have never experienced anything like that,” she said.

The Oxnard School District isn’t alone. Immigration raids are straining mental health among children and school communities across California, a state where about 1 million children have a parent who is undocumented and about 300,000 students are undocumented themselves.

Experts say these raids and their aftermath may also have long-term consequences. Constant vigilance and worry put children at greater risk of developing chronic anxiety and depression. Those who are separated from a parent face a host of social and emotional challenges.