Here’s How You Can Help Migrant Children

Introduction

Immigrant children have arrived alone at the US border each year. More children arrive with their families. And our communities hold many immigrant families with children. Many generous Americans have come forward, wanting to help.

But immigrant children face numerous challenges to building a new life. The systems to help children in the US are overwhelmed and under-resourced. Extreme cuts to social service agencies have made things worse, meaning less assistance to children. If you are ready to make a difference, here are some ways that you can become involved.

What is the Current Situation for Migrant Children? 

Understanding Immigrant Children’s Vulnerabilities

Immigrant children face many obstacles that require our urgent and compassionate attention. These include:

Immigrant children need to heal from trauma.

Immigrant children who have arrived from Central America and further afield carry heavy burdens of traumas. Many have been exposed to trauma both in their home country and in their perilous journeys to safety in the US, such as repeated exposure to community violence, endemic and generational poverty, the losses of family members, abuse, or one-time experiences of violence and harm. Treating children’s trauma brings lifelong benefits and allows children to be children again.

Family separations inflict lasting harms on children.

As the second Trump administration begins to ramp up deportations, we expect that families settled in US communities will be affected. More than five million US citizen children live with one or more undocumented parent. Deportations of people in these mixed-status families will hinder children’s growth, social development, and capacity to attach to adults in healthy ways. 

During the first Trump administration, the family separation policy, also known as “Zero Tolerance,” irreparably harmed families. Thousands of families were broken up. Today, hundreds of children remain separated from their parents or guardians, with traumas that are severe and long lasting. While the major lawsuit–known as Ms. L vs ICE (see box below)–was settled in December 2023, WRC continues to work to ensure that the affected families receive the services and rights offered to them as redress for the US government’s actions and that family separation never happens again.

Immigrant children have difficulties with access to housing, school, medical care, and legal help.

As WRC has documented, it is challenging for immigrant families with children to find stable and affordable housing, especially when recently arrived. As the current administration cancels the legal status of many families, the difficulties will increase. Families can find themselves moving from shelter to shelter or homeless. Precarious circumstances make it hard for children to enroll in school and build a stable support system. Parents of children too young to attend school often lack affordable childcare options, pushing immigrant families into a Catch-22 where the parents must work to earn enough to move into permanent housing, but cannot find childcare to allow them to work. Medical care and legal help may be unaffordable or entirely unavailable in local communities.

What Are Local Actions To Take To Help Immigrant Children?

If you are looking to take ways to help immigrant children, these are local actions you can take.

You can volunteer to help immigrant children.

People who take the time and initiative to volunteer with immigrant children and families can make all the difference in their lives. What children who have faced the adversity and trauma associated with migration most need is to feel seen, supported, and heard. WRC encourages supporters of immigrant children to investigate volunteer opportunities with:

• Local schools and afterschool programs
• ESL classes, especially night classes for adult learners
• Food banks that provide directed services to immigrant families
• Migrant solidarity projects, which help recently arrived immigrant families meet their material needs like clothing, food, and household goods
• Court-Appointed Special Advocates for children (CASA/GAL) and Child Advocate programs.

You can give financial to support local organizations serving immigrant families.

Local NGOs help children and families navigate their new communities and assist with acute needs. Frontline organizations are heavily affected by recent, drastic funding cuts, and immigrant families bear the brunt of defunding. Medical care, dental care, and stable housing are among the biggest challenges for newly arrived immigrant children and their families. Parents whose children have disabilities must also learn to navigate a new cultural environment and the special education system. Legal aid organizations help families with complicated immigration cases and endless immigration paperwork—usually in children’s and families’ second or third language.

You can sign up to foster an immigrant child.

Some immigrant children—typically those without a parent or close relative in the US—will end up in foster care as the most appropriate family-like place for them to grow up. Yet state agencies report widespread shortages of bilingual foster parents, especially foster families willing to host teenagers. For individuals ready to make the challenging but life-changing commitment to foster an immigrant child, we provide more information below in our section on fostering an immigrant child.

How to Speak Up on Behalf of Immigrant Children

Communities multiply their impact when they act collectively. You can engage in your local community and with local representatives to encourage them to support and fund programs that help immigrant children and families in need. These can include:

• Legal assistance programs
• Rental assistance programs
• General support programs
• Community navigator programs
• Expanded afterschool programs
• Expansions in social service programs that serve immigrant children via therapy and behavioral health programs
• Programs that ensure immigrant children can attend school.

At the state level, tell your state representatives that you support your immigrant neighbors by writing or calling your representatives’ offices, attending town halls, joining rallies, and amplifying the voices of people who are directly affected by policies. In addition to supporting local initiatives, states can expand Medicaid to all immigrant children (as 12 states have done) and food-assistance programs to non-citizens.

At the federal level, and especially when issues regarding immigrant children rise into the national news, your voice is critical. You can call, write, or visit the local offices of your Senators or Representative to make your views known. You can join calls to action or “advocacy days” that coordinate visits with leaders to demonstrate widespread public attention. And you can write op-eds and letters to the editor, which are often especially impactful in local newspapers and local media.

Children deserve the right to be children, no matter where they come from.

The Need For a Systemic Approach To Help Immigrant Children

Our nation’s challenges to care for and protect immigrant children are systemic. Charities, local governments, and local nonprofits cannot solve these problems alone.

WRC works at a systemic level to ensure that children are protected, supported, and given the opportunities they deserve. We work toward systemic change to:

Safeguard and care for immigrant children.

Immigrant children require personalized care and protection that consider each child’s unique circumstances. Policies for unaccompanied children must ensure the highest quality of care and must guarantee that unaccompanied children go to safe and stable homes that remain safe and stable. WRC has successfully advocated for a federal directive to hire Child Welfare Professionals in Border Patrol stations and partnered with the Office of Refugee Resettlement to improve efforts against child abuse and neglect in shelters. We have also worked with legislatures and Congress to fully fund programs in local communities, making $500+ million annually available for services for immigrant youth.

Address the specific needs of immigrant girls.

Sustainable and equitable change requires that we recognize the additional challenges that immigrant girls face, including gender-based violence, discrimination and exclusion, lack of adequate reproductive and abortion care, and the need for gender-sensitive social services at all levels. Yet policies rarely pay attention to girls’ specific needs. WRC engages in critical research and advocacy to identify additional vulnerabilities and service gaps and provide evidence-based recommendations for future policy. WRC was instrumental in the implementation of new standards for pregnant and parenting youth in US government custody, which radically improved their quality of care.

Support immigrant families torn apart by Family Separation.

The Family Separation policy had devastating effects on children and their families, causing lasting trauma and instability. WRC works to ensure that no family separation policy happens again. We work with federal agencies through rulemaking and regulatory processes to protect the dignity and integrity of immigrant families, monitor the implementation of the legal settlement in the Ms. L case, and advocate to Congress for better services for survivors.

Learn more about fostering an immigrant child and supporting WRC’s work.

Fostering an Immigrant Child

Most of the children coming to the US have family members in this country who can care for them. For the small percentage of children without family in the US, foster families are a critical need so that they have a home in which to thrive. Spanish-speaking foster families are a consistent need. If you are interested in being a foster parent or family, the best advice is to begin the process to become licensed foster parents. This is run through your local child welfare organization and is required by the Office of Refugee Resettlement. You may wish to contact the two organizations that generally manage foster care for unaccompanied minors: the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and Global Refuge (formerly Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service).

Make a Donation

Your donations to the Women’s Refugee Commission support the Migrant Rights and Justice program, which has been fighting on behalf of immigrant children for many years. We work to hold the government accountable and to ensure that immigrant children and families are treated humanely and fairly. We monitor and inspect detention centers and border enforcement policies. We work with litigators and service providers to expose and halt mistreatment. And we work with Congress and policymakers to preserve and strengthen human and civil rights for immigrants. Your donations help ensure that families and children have the best possible chance at justice and safety.