February 13, 2025

By Courtney Wise

Greetings, MindSite News Readers. In today’s parenting newsletter, Californians report that the Trump administration’s ICE assault is terrorizing Latino citizens, green-card holders and their families. US military veterans who are Latino have also been stopped by ICE, and even immigrants who arrived in the US as toddlers are being seized and taken away in front of their children.

Also in this edition: A free resource to help parents and caregivers in LA County talk with young children about the region’s recent wildfires, a new book by a neuroscientist about managing your emotions, and a program in San Diego that aims to support children in military families with their mental health. Plus, expert advice on navigating your love life just in time for Valentine’s Day.

Trump’s ICE crackdown is traumatizing law-abiding and taxpaying Latino workers and their children

In Southwest Detroit, a predominantly immigrant community, businesses are struggling to stay open as immigration anxieties keep many people home. Their fears are only reinforced by what ICE is doing in Southern California. There, despite claims from an ICE spokesperson that the department does not indiscriminately target noncitizens for deportation, parents are being arrested while dropping their children off to school, or while getting in the car after a family dinner. 

Trump has revoked longtime protective guidelines restricting ICE from operating at “sensitive locations” such as schools, churches or hospitals. Very few swept up in raids are the criminals that Trump vowed to target, according to people interviewed by CalMatters. Most, in fact, are law-abiding, tax-paying residents deeply embedded in their communities. 

Even immigrants who arrived in the U.S. as toddlers decades ago are now being arrested and handcuffed by ICE in front of their children.

“I haven’t talked to him in almost two days,” Loreal Duran told CalMatters. Her husband, Giovanni, 42, was arrested at their home on January 23, after fastening their two children into seatbelts for school. Arriving in the US from El Salvador with his parents at age 2, Giovanni knows no other home. The Durans’ 7-year-old is now in counseling to work through seeing his father be taken away. “He was telling his classmates, ‘Oh, daddy got arrested for not wearing his seatbelt,’” Loreal said. Later on, he asked bluntly, “Did daddy get arrested because he’s Brown?’ I replied back to him, I go: ‘Yea, he kinda did.’”

Estefany Peña, 30, thought ICE would be targeting criminals, as Trump promised. Her husband, Joel Jacuinde, 40, had entered the country legally in 1999 and holds a green card. That didn’t matter to ICE officials, who have detained him ever since he visited a San Francisco immigration office for a check-in in late January. Jacuinde’s absence has left their family reeling, as the family depends on his income, healthcare, and transportation, not to mention his love. “Everything just came crumbling down,” Peña said. “My kids are very close to their dad, so it’s taken a terrible toll on them.”

Helping young children process the LA wildfires

It will take years for families to recover from the wildfires that struck LA last month. Some of what burned is irreplaceable. How can they guide their children, especially very young ones, through understanding what happened? Thankfully, a team of early childhood professionals have created a free resource to support families unsure where to begin.

“While the LA County fires are finally contained, the pain, grief, and trauma from the wildfires may not yet be contained,” said Desiree Yoro Yoo, a licensed clinical social worker who worked with three others – Adriana Cuestas, PsyD, Mary San Jose Molnar, M.A, Ed., and Paulo Yanez, PsyD – to create the free downloadable book, Let’s Talk About Fires.  Presented as a story, it features conversation guides and suggested activities to help parents lead discussion. “Very young children might be struggling with the aftermath of this experience and grown-ups may not know how to support them as they process what has happened.”

In San Diego, a school offers social-emotional learning to kids from military families

Nearly every student at San Diego’s Miller Elementary School – 98% to be specific – is from a military family. That’s created a unique need for social-emotional education in the building, and SAY San Diego has been happy to deliver. Its program called Lighthouse debuted at the school last month, and it’s designed to help children with their mental health. So far, it’s been great, Miller Principal Denise Goulart told the San Diego Union-Tribune. 

Military kids sometimes struggle with sadness, separation anxiety and depression, which can cause them to act out at school. “We used to have a revolving door of discipline issues that has pretty much ceased,” said Goulart. “There’s a safe place for students somewhere here on this campus where, when there are concerns that come up, they can be seen.”

The program involves collaborative games, crafts and other activities for the children, and also connects parents with social and emotional resources. Youth in the program said that the teamwork games they’ve played have taught them how to listen and work well with others. Zachary, 11, said it’s helped him begin to express his feelings so that he doesn’t ‘blow up’ on others. “I try to tell most people, like, ‘This happened in my life, this happened’ — so I don’t get too mad and explode on one person,” he said.

In other news…

Maintaining a healthy romantic relationship takes work. So as Valentine’s Day approaches, the team at NPR’s Life Kit are offering up a menu of expert advice on intimacy, conflict resolution, navigating infidelity, knowing when to break up, and more. Each item links to a podcast episode featuring more discussion. 

A homeless mother of four lost two of her children to hypothermia in Detroit this week as they slept in the family’s van. (Hypothermia was formerly called “freezing to death,” but technically it means the body’s core temperature has dropped somewhere below 95 degrees F.) The city is working to determine how its services could have allowed this to happen; the children’s deaths come three months after the mother’s most recent call to the city’s homeless response team for help, the Detroit Free Press reports. In the course of that November conversation, “there was no resolution reached on where they would go,” Mayor Mike Duggan said in a press conference. “For whatever reason, this wasn’t deemed an emergency.”

The city never followed up with the family, Duggan said, further underscoring the tragedy, since family beds were available at a shelter not far from where the children died. Duggan confirmed that the mother had called the city for help two other times, once in the summer and once in the year before.

Neuroscientist and psychologist Ethan Kross spoke with NPR’s Life Kit about his latest book, Shift: Managing Your Emotions — So They Don’t Manage You, and why it’s okay to not always confront big feelings right away. “Emotions are valuable in helping us navigate the world; they become less useful when they’re experienced too intensely or not intensely enough,” Kross said. “If you find you’re trying to work through the problem and not making much progress — you’re turning it over again and again and it’s not making you feel the way you want to feel — that can be a cue for you to take some time away and come back later.”

If you or someone you know is in crisis or experiencing suicidal thoughts, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline and connect in English or Spanish. If you’re a veteran press 1. If you’re deaf or hard of hearing dial 711, then 988. Services are free and available 24/7.

Recent MindSite News Stories