In communities across Minneapolis and St. Paul, children are carrying fears that no child should have to bear. They are not afraid of monsters or the dark. They are afraid that their parents will not come home. They are afraid their families will be torn apart. They are afraid that they do not belong in the country they call home. These are not abstract anxieties, they are the lived experiences of immigrant and refugee children in Minnesota, and they are symptoms of a deepening public health crisis driven by the current anti-immigration climate.
As a Somali therapist working directly with immigrant and refugee families in the Twin Cities, I observe this crisis unfolding in real time. Children present in my practice with increased anxiety, sleep disturbances, irritability, and social withdrawal. Their parents arrive overwhelmed, managing their own fears while straining to protect their children from a reality that grows harder to conceal. What is happening in these families is not a private struggle. It is a community-wide emergency that demands a community-wide response.
One of the most significant and underappreciated dynamics of this crisis is how fear spreads even when families are not directly targeted by immigration enforcement. Children absorb what they hear in school hallways, see in the news, and encounter on social media. They are far more perceptive than adults often acknowledge, and they internalize the threats they cannot control or fully understand. The ambient fear generated by anti-immigration rhetoric is itself a source of chronic stress, one that does not require a direct encounter with enforcement to cause real psychological harm.
For many families, this fear does not exist in isolation. It is compounded by race, religion, language, and identity. Black immigrant families, including Somali families, face the intersecting weight of anti-Blackness, anti-Islam sentiment, and anti-immigrant hostility simultaneously. This layered experience creates a distinct and compounded psychological burden that mainstream conversations rarely address with the seriousness it deserves. To speak about immigrant mental health without naming these intersecting forces is to tell only part of the story.
The impact on parenting is equally significant and equally overlooked. Parents who are living under chronic fear and uncertainty operate in a state of prolonged survival response. This affects their capacity for emotional availability, consistency, and stability, not due to any failure of love or devotion, but because the psychological weight they carry is immense. When parenting is strained, the entire family system feels the effects. Children depend on caregivers for their sense of safety, and when caregivers are themselves destabilized, that sense of safety erodes.
For children, chronic stress of this nature is not a passing phase. Research consistently demonstrates that prolonged exposure to fear and instability during childhood shapes neurological development, affects academic performance, strains peer relationships, and increases long-term vulnerability to anxiety, depression, and trauma-related conditions. The psychological wounds inflicted by this climate will not simply disappear when the political moment shifts. They require active, sustained attention and care.
Yet access to that care remains deeply unequal. Mental health stigma persists across many immigrant communities. Language barriers, shortage of culturally responsive providers, and systemic mistrust further restrict access to services. Many families are left to navigate these experiences without adequate support. This is a failure not of individual families but of the systems meant to serve them.
Addressing this crisis requires us to reject the false separation between policy and human impact. Immigration rhetoric and enforcement do not exist in a vacuum, they shape the psychological environments in which children develop. When fear becomes a feature of daily life, it fundamentally alters a child’s relationship to safety, belonging, and possibility.
The resilience present in immigrant and refugee communities is real and profound. Families continue to support one another. Parents create stability under extraordinary pressure. Community members build networks of care and connection. Yet resilience alone is not a sufficient response to systemic harm. Genuine solutions require expanding access to culturally responsive mental health services, equipping schools to address the psychological needs of students, and investing meaningfully in community-based support systems.
Above all, we must affirm what is at stake. Children deserve to grow up in environments that nurture their development, not compromise it. They deserve safety, stability, and the freedom to simply be children. When we fail to protect that, when we allow the political climate to become a source of childhood trauma, we are not only harming individual children. We are shaping the future of our entire community.
Dr. Ashwak Hassan is a therapist, educator, and community advocate in the Twin Cities, providing culturally responsive mental health care to immigrant families.
