“It’s Horrible to Live Like This”: Immigration Policy’s Real-Time Impact on Young Children - Insights from Child Care Providers

Oct 15, 2026

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Explores how U.S. immigration policies under the Trump administration affect young children in day-to-day family life, using insights from child care providers. Providers describe pervasive fear among immigrant families, changes in daily routines, and increased stress and anxiety in children who absorb parents’ worry. The report links these qualitative accounts to quantitative research on deportation concerns in December 2024, highlighting risks across mixed-status and all-citizen immigrant families.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryHealthcare

FormatPDF

Pages13

Reading Time33 min

AccessFree to download

It’s Horrible to Live Like This: Immigration Policy’s Real-Time Impact on Young Children

Insights from Child Care Providers

About The Research

July 2025 “It’s Horrible to Live Like This”: Immigration Policy’s Real-Time Impact on Young Children Insights from Child Care Providers BY JULIANA ZHOU AND ELISA MINOFF Children need love, community, and safety to thrive. These foundational elements are not luxuries—they are developmental necessities. The same is true for the families and caregivers who makeup children’s support systems. Yet across the country, families are being robbed of that sense of safety by the climate of fear created by the Trump administration’s immigration policies. In its first few months, the administration launched a mass deportation campaign and unleashed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers in workplaces and communities across the country.1 It has revoked protections from immigration enforcement in schools and hospitals and other sensitive locations.2 It has deported parents of American citizens to prisons in foreign countries in direct violation of judicial orders and detained documented immigrants and U. S. citizens without due process.3 To better understand the impact of these actions on the day-to-day lives of families with young children, we interviewed child care providers in late-April and early-May 2025. Child care providers have special insight into the experiences and needs of families and communities. Because of the nature of their work with infants and toddlers, they often develop close relationships with parents, who may turn to them as trusted sources of information and counsel in the course of their daily interactions. Child care programs also frequently serve as resource hubs, connecting families to non-childcare related community supports, such as food pantries, housing assistance, and legal services. As a result, providers are not only knowledgeable about children’s social and emotional health, developmental needs, and overall wellbeing, but they also have insight into parents’ concerns, families’ financial circumstances and living arrangements, as well as how community organizations and local agencies are responding to national political and policy developments. We interviewed five child care providers who work with children in immigrant families in diverse geographic areas across the United States to learn how the Trump administration’s actions are affecting families with young children. Each of the people we interviewed work in a community with a large number of immigrants, and at least two of the five are immigrants or children of immigrants themselves. Given the nature of their relationships with parents, and the number of immigrant families they serve, they spoke with deep knowledge and authority about the effect of immigration policy on families with young children, and the strategies they are deploying to try to protect the wellbeing of children and families who are struggling to understand how such policies will affect them and connect them to resources. The child care providers we spoke with detailed how the Trump’s administration’s actions have caused widespread fear among the immigrant families they serve—affecting families regardless of the immigration status of the children or parents. These qualitative findings are supported by quantitative Center for the Study of Social Policy “It’s Horrible to Live Like This”: Immigration Policy’s Real-Time Impact on Young Children 1 research conducted by the Urban Institute shortly after the presidential election, which found in a survey conducted in December 2024 that adults in immigrant families with children were anticipating changes in immigration policy, with more than one in three worried about deportation for themselves, a family member, or a close friend. Fear was most prevalent in mixed-status families, with more than half of respondents concerned about deportation, but even in all-citizen immigrant families with children one in six adults were still worried about deportation, showing that fear of deportation exists regardless of i

FAQs

What effects do child care providers report from the immigration policies described in the document?

Providers report widespread fear among immigrant families, shifts in daily routines, and heightened anxiety in children who sense parents’ fear.

How do the interviews for this research help explain the impact on families?

The study uses in-depth semi-structured interviews with five child care providers, leveraging their close relationships with parents and their role as community resource hubs.

What does the document say about fear of deportation across different families?

It cites survey findings showing fear is strongest in mixed-status families, yet adults in all-citizen immigrant families with children also show meaningful concern about deportation.

Oct 15, 2026

Upload by James