Immigrant Justice Is Mental Health Justice
Written by: Allyson Inez Ford, MA, LPCC
Immigrant Scapegoating
If you’re paying attention, it is a frightening time in U.S. history. Many people, citizens and non-citizens alike, are scared, shocked and outraged by the current administration’s attacks and inhumane treatment of immigrants and the ongoing scapegoating of undocumented people.
Immigrant scapegoating is nothing new. It is a political tool that has been used for centuries in the United States and across the world (think Nazi Germany, for example). When those in power need control, distraction or loyalty, they often turn to dehumanizing a vulnerable group. Fear is intentionally constructed, blame is displaced and power is preserved.
And yet- every animal in the wild migrates. Humans have migrated for as long as we have existed. When humans migrate, they do so when fleeing war, political violence, economic instability or climate devastation. They often see no other choice. People don’t just yearn to leave their country of origins, it’s done out of survival. Sadly, in modern day U.S. we criminalize it, it gets framed as a moral wrong doing rather than a survival strategy. The hypocrisy here is wild- unless you are Native American, we are all technically immigrants. But- this land has been stolen and colonized- how can you be “illegal” on stolen land?
Misconceptions and Propaganda about Immigrants
There are countless misconceptions about immigrants, particularly undocumented immigrants. You’ll hear that immigrants are stealing our jobs, are causing crime rates to sky rocket and don’t pay taxes. These misconceptions are false and do not arise organically; they come from propaganda designed to convince the majority to accept dehumanization and an “us versus them” mentality. The more this narrative is normalized, the easier it becomes to justify increasingly inhumane detention practices, family separations and deportations carried out by immigration enforcement agents. Please check the resource I linked to fact check some of these narratives.
Sadly, dehumanization is the whole point of this and we should all be able to agree that dehumanizing anyone, under any circumstance is wrong.
Therapy is Political
You might be wondering what the heck this has to do with therapy. Old school therapy used a ‘blank slate’ approach to client work, but more modern models of therapy do not ignore the interconnections of human rights, politics and mental health. At Eating Disorder & OCD Therapy, we take this issue extremely seriously. Therapists have an ethical responsibility to actively refute discrimination and promote the social justice and welfare of all people. In other words, therapy is political, whether we acknowledge it or not.
As a BIPOC therapist from an immigrant family, this issue is also deeply personal. I would not be here doing this work if it were not for the sacrifices of my grandparents’ generation—people who came to this country with nothing, hoping for safety and freedom from the war-torn conditions they fled.
My maternal grandparents immigrated from Indonesia. My paternal grandmother immigrated from Mexico. Their burdens, resilience, and legacies live inside of me. Witnessing what is happening now activates a fire I cannot fully describe, a huge grief layered with rage, fear and responsibility. When something lives this deeply in the body, it demands action. Silence doesn’t even feel like an option.
Mental Health Distress and ICE Raids
Political violence does not only affect those directly targeted. It ripples outward, impacting entire communities and even those who are not immediately at risk.
Undocumented immigrants and mixed-status families live under constant threat, with nervous systems locked in survival mode. But immigrants who do have documentation are also deeply affected when they see people who look like them, who share similar migration stories, being violently torn from their families by masked agents, detained, deported and sometimes killed.
Seeing children used as bait during ICE raids impacts the mental health of anyone with a conscience, especially parents. There is something uniquely destabilizing about knowing that it could be any child, any family. With just a knock at the door.
People who hold marginalized identities across race, gender, sexuality, disability or class often feel this violence viscerally. When you know what it is like to be othered or scapegoated, your nervous system recognizes the pattern immediately. Rage, grief and terror are are all valid and understandable reactions to such blatant injustice.
There is also a less talked about link between immigrant prisons/detention centers and disordered eating. We have well documented research on the connection between being detained at an immigrant prison or experiencing racism and developing trauma or PTSD. We also have well documented research on the link between experiencing trauma/ PTSD and eating disorders. Food in migrant detention centers is often used as a tool of control and many migrants go on hunger strikes due to inhumane and unsanitary conditions. When anyone goes without proper, consistent food intake, disordered eating symptoms can emerge. This means that abolishing ICE is also eating disorder prevention. At ED and OCD therapy, given that we specialize in eating disorders, we refuse to stay silent on this issue, knowing that prevention of eating disorders is life saving. That being said, if you’re feeling activated by what you’re seeing in the news, or worse- if you are directly impacted by the current targeting of immigrant communities…
You Might Be Experiencing:
Hypervigilance and fear
Difficulty sleeping or staying asleep
Dissociation or emotional numbness
Crying spells or emotional overwhelm
Helplessness or despair
Intense anger or rage
Moral injury
Activation or worsening of existing mental health conditions
None of these responses mean you are weak or failing to cope. They mean your body understands that something is deeply wrong and that you aren’t turning away (this is a good thing despite it also being a painful thing).
This is a systemic problem created to hurt others.
It is essential to name this clearly: distress in the face of state violence is not a mental illness, rather, it is a human response to injustice.
No amount of grounding exercises can make family separation humane. No coping skill can override the terror of living under surveillance and therapy alone cannot fix systems designed to harm.
But therapy can help people reconnect with their bodies, validate emotional truth and resist internalizing shame that does not belong to them. A trauma-informed, anti-oppression approach recognizes that many symptoms are survival strategies not pathology.
Immigrant Justice Is Mental Health Justice
If we care about mental health, we must care about policy. If we care about trauma, we must talk about power. And if we care about healing, we must be willing to name injustice when we see it. If you are feeling overwhelmed, activated, numb or enraged right now, you are not alone. If you want more resources, please reach out to us, even if you aren’t interested in therapy. We are happy to connect and share any valuable resource we know with you.
Lastly, Take action with us and use your voice!
There are so many ways to help: donating to grassroots immigrant justice collectives, mutual aid, protesting, sharing ‘know your rights’ education, calling your senators to demand a stop to ICE, having hard but necessary conversations with family and friends who are entrenched in anti-immigrant propaganda, reading books about migration and so much more. Taking action moves us out of freeze and increases hope that fighting this is possible and our efforts are not futile.
If you want emotional support in navigating all of this, we are here to help you; we do not shy away from politics in therapy. Reach out if you’d like support from a therapist who understands the intricacies of how societal trauma and oppression impact our individual mental health.
