Immigrant families are navigating profound challenges to their economic stability, children’s education, and overall health and well-being as the fear of immigration enforcement continues. Their experiences have been shaped by the current administration’s heightened immigration enforcement policies that have reverberated across the country.

Why This Matters

Faced with heightened enforcement threats in their communities, mothers are working strenuously to keep their families together and help their children feel safe while navigating their responsibilities as caregivers and contributors to their households’ economic stability and well-being. The experiences of mothers serve as an important early indication of the broader consequences that enforcement-related stress and instability can have for families.

Key Takeaways

In interviews, mothers in mixed-status families described the challenges they have faced since heightened immigration enforcement policies began. Fear of an ICE encounter and being separated from their children has negatively impacted their and their families’ economic and emotional well-being. Many months after local enforcement operations subsided in their cities, mothers and families were still living in a state of fear and vigilance as the threat of enforcement persisted in their everyday lives. Their minimizing of activities outside the home has meant that mothers stopped working or worked less, neglected their own health, and were unable to address important legal needs related to their immigration status. At the same time, mothers experienced increased stress and mental health struggles in managing their households and attending to their children’s basic needs.

The study’s key findings are as follows:

• Nearly half of mothers reported a decline in their own employment, and over half in their partners’ employment.
• Most parents reported enforcement-related economic hardships that led to them falling behind on rent and utility bills and searching for food donations; many reported receiving assistance with such expenses from community-based organizations.
• Nearly all parents described how they and their family members, including children, had stopped participating in nonessential activities outside the home for fear of being approached by ICE, and they were still isolating at the time of the interviews.
• Nearly all parents reported that their children were experiencing mental health challenges because of immigration enforcement fears. Many reported that their children were receiving therapy or counseling as a result.
• Nearly half of mothers reported missing scheduled doctor’s appointments because they feared encountering ICE.
• Nearly all mothers reported that their mental health had been negatively impacted by heightened immigration enforcement. The dominant fear was being detained and separated from their children.
• Most parents reported that they had talked about a family emergency plan with their partner and children but had not taken action to create the plan.
• Over half of parents reported not having access to legal assistance.

How We Did It

The Urban research team conducted 34 interviews with parents in Latino mixed-status families in Chicago and Charlotte in mid-2026, months after high-visibility enforcement operations in those cities subsided but as enforcement threats persisted. Parents were recruited with the assistance of community-based organizations.

All parents were living in households that included family members who were US citizens and one or more family members who were undocumented, most commonly the parent or their partner. The parents represented the experiences of 92 children, 82 of whom were US citizens. Nearly all parents had minor children under age 18 living with them. Most parents and their partners had lived in the US for decades.