White House immigration actions have increased stress, compelled action among students at the University of Minnesota.
Eva Peña usually leads a busy life as a full-time student who works a job and as an officer in a student group. Now Peña has the added stress of worrying about her immigrant father being deported.
Peña and her father have had conversations about what he will do if he is deported. Her father, who is from Mexico, received his citizenship last year, but they both worry about people profiling him.
Students with immigrant parents at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities campus report they are stressed and, in many cases, making plans or taking action because of the White House’s executive orders on immigration policy.
An AccessU survey of students at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities showed that 26% of respondents indicated the White House’s executive orders on immigration increased their stress. Another 49% of respondents reported thoughts of taking action and 23% said they were taking concrete actions.
The survey was sent to 5,000 randomized degree-seeking undergraduate student emails and had a 5.36% response rate that is considered within range of providing generalized insights about student attitudes.
Follow-up interviews from the survey reveal the nature of such stresses. Students say they fear that their families will be torn apart or wonder if they will ever see relatives again. Some are concerned about their ability to speak out, their safety and the safety of friends and family, and their sense of belonging on campus. Some students struggle with sleep and relaxation.
Peña, who is a member of Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social (MACLS) at the university, has had a front-seat view of the changes to immigration policy.
“I do a lot with immigration, so that has been taking a toll. I’m very involved in it,” Peña said. “I feel like that has resulted in stress and then managing my time.”
Alejandro Nuñez, the outreach coordinator at MALCS, has family in Mexico and America. After the Trump administration’s immigration policies, he wonders if he will see some of them again.
“I think about my younger siblings. I have two older sisters who were also born in the United States, and I also have three younger siblings who were born in Mexico and live in Mexico. So I worry about them, and I worry about them not being able to visit me sometimes and be accepted into the communities that I was born and raised in,” Nuñez said.
Michele Waslin, the assistant director of the Immigration History Research Center, said the future for immigrants and those related to immigrants remains uncertain, while news headlines offer more unsettling news about what the Trump administration is doing to immigration policy.
“It could affect their performance in class,” Waslin said. “It could affect your grades or just your ability to concentrate. If your future is so uncertain, then that’s also going to impact how you’re looking at the future.”
Some concerns for students born to immigrants are worrying about who will be the guardian to their minor siblings if their parents are deported or detained, being able to stay in college if their parents are gone, obtaining a job after college or relatives who are undocumented and pregnant whose unborn children may not gain birthright citizenship, Waslin said.
“It doesn’t really matter if you’re here with authorization or without authorization,” Waslin said. “There are people who have legal protection here in this country, and the administration is taking away that protection so that they can deport people, right? So there’s just a lot of fear.”
The first action a child of immigrants should take is to talk to their parents about making a plan for the worst-case scenario, Waslin said. Additionally, she said to find and keep the number of a trusted immigration lawyer and to know their rights.
Yet many students, prepared as they may be, face the stress of imagining their worst-case scenario.
Anika Tripathi
Anika Tripathi, a student at the university born to immigrant parents, said she does not necessarily have a fear of expressing her thoughts or opinions. But she knows her parents do.
“Being a child of immigrants, it’s always been a certain level of fear of expressing my opinions and my views,” Tripathi said. “There’s always a certain level of keeping your head kind of low. You don’t mess with anyone. Just keep doing your thing.”
Tripathi said that while she is very grateful to be a citizen, it is still terrifying to think students are being detained, especially because her parents were once students.
“The privilege that I have is genuinely amazing,” Tripathi said. “My parents didn’t have that same privilege when they were here on a student visa and then later, a green card. I guess back in the day, the green card was seen as pretty stable, but who knows?”
Tripathi said she recently lost her job with the university because the program she worked at was cut under diversity, equity and inclusion losses.
Ali
Ali, who only wishes to be identified by his first name, is a fourth-year student whose parents immigrated from Jordan. Although he is not an international student, as an active protester on campus with Students for Justice in Palestine, he still worries about himself and his friends because of his activities.
He masks at protests to conceal his identity and is very careful about his posts on social media. Above all, he worries about his family.
“The stress is more internal than anything,” Ali said. “It’s the trouble of falling asleep at night, constantly worrying about my family’s safety. It’s the inability to fully relax at any time. It’s constantly looking over your shoulder to make sure no one is there. It’s very mentally draining.”
Noemi Rosas
University of Minnesota and first-generation student with immigrant parents, Noemi Rosas, said they have become very concerned after international graduate students were detained at Minnesota State University, Mankato.
“It makes me feel a lot more concerned. I am a first-generation student, and I do have birthright citizenship, and that is something that’s being threatened right now,” Rosas said. “I feel a lot of fear because there are a lot of systems that are being jumped by our government right now, and I feel like those are there to protect people like us. But then there are loops now, and there are ways to get through that. And those barriers aren’t there like they used to be.”
Amelie Koven
University second-year student Amelie Koven said while she does not have immigrant parents, she is worried about her friends who are on student visas or are immigrants.
“If my friends got taken in by ICE tomorrow, what do I do?” Koven said. “There have been cases of ICE admitting that they had the wrong person or they got something wrong, and then still not releasing them. It seems a lot larger than life. Sometimes it was like they don’t know how to prepare, and then I wouldn’t know how to respond if the worst did happen.”
Koven said she has noticed posters around campus that explain what to do if you witness someone get detained by ICE. She said this is scary to think about.
“I think they just want to make America more passive with people getting kidnapped because that’s kind of what this is,” Koven said. “This isn’t like these are people who are deserving of being arrested. These are just people.”
The risk of detainment is not limited to those born outside of the U.S.. Even U.S. citizens are at risk, including Native Americans, Koven said. She said this lack of concern for citizens also frightens her.
“They don’t really care,” Koven said. “They’re just shoving people into prisons. And how many people are going to get arrested, and how far is that going to span?”
Luzia Stern
Third-year student Stern, whose grandparents are immigrants, said they became extremely concerned for their friends after learning about students being detained in Minnesota.
“Now it’s real and tangible, and it gives me this pit in my stomach because so many of my friends are international students, and they’re really worried because they’re not sure of their status,” Stern said.
According to Stern, who is in the Young Democratic Socialists of America, their friends have requested that the organization take their faces off YDSA social media and have stopped showing up to meetings because they worry about their citizenship status.
“For me, it’s so clearly bullshit, because the idea of a citizen anyway is just a word, and I believe that across borders, we should all stand in solidarity and not have the risk of people being able to speak their mind, let alone being able to stay in the country,” Stern said.
Sharai
Second-year student Sharai, who only wanted to use their first name, is a first-generation American with immigrant parents. They said they heard speculation when ICE was on campus, detaining one of the international students.
“That made me feel stressed,” Sharai said. “The growing sense of worry that it’s going to be closer and closer and closer to the people around here until it might become me. I think that worry growing does come with a lot of stress that I experience.”
Sharai is worried that their brother, who attends Minnesota State University, Mankato, cannot be protected from potential ICE detainment.
“It just feels really uneasy as that factor of it matters less about the actual documentation. It’s just anybody and everybody out,” Sharai said. “With other people being detained by authorities who have their documentation, they have the right to be here.”
Sharai said they are also concerned about the increasing impact on those who do have significant documentation. They added that seeing documentation slowly matter less and less over time is extremely concerning.
Amy Nguyen
Nguyen, a senior journalism student, grew up as a translator for her Vietnamese immigrant parents, who came to the U.S. in the early 2000s. She recalled being 10 years old when her mom asked her to translate a phone call with their insurance company.
Since the White House executive orders, Nguyen has felt the pressure and stress of staying under the radar.
“It does stress me out that it’s like, even though I was born here since my parents immigrated, that puts me at a certain level of risk, and that obviously puts them at a higher level of risk,” Nguyen said. “Whatever decisions I make in my life, there’s an increase in how likely it would impact my sister and my parents.”
Her family is hesitant about international travel since the recent administrative changes. Nguyen’s uncle recently traveled to Vietnam, and her family is now stressed about whether he will be stopped when he returns.
Nguyen said that despite having concerns about her and her family’s safety, she still wants to be involved with protesting after she graduates.
Nguyen said she is baffled by the university’s compliance with ICE, as a large portion of the student body is immigrant, international and first-generation students. She feels she, as well as the other students with international ties, is unwanted by the university.
“I just feel like right now, I really just want to finish school and not have that be put at risk,” Nguyen said.
Byline: This story was written by Maya Bell (Writer), Kinsey Gade (Data Editor), Claudia Staut (Multimedia Editor), Isabella Caswell (Writer) and Amelia Roessler (Editor-In-Chief)