A college diploma after 2019 detention fears

Jair Solis graduated from UC Merced after years of navigating family detention, fears of deportation and immigration raids, and the financial shock that followed his father’s 2019 arrest. He says immigration enforcement damaged his mental health and disrupted

When immigration agents pounded on his family’s apartment door in 2019, Jair Solis was 15 years old and standing between them and his father. He refused to let them inside without the proper warrant.

Seven years later, that same quiet insistence on due process helped carry him to a moment he says he once believed was out of reach. This spring, Solis graduated from UC Merced—two months after his mother became a permanent U.S. resident.

He wore the stole from his graduation ceremony, the kind of detail families remember later because it makes an enormous journey look tangible. Solis, 22, called the milestone “a blessing” and said he never thought he would be standing there.

“Knowing that I’m the only one to get an education and have that opportunity — have the platform to grow as an academic, as a professional, it’s really a blessing for me,” Solis said. “I don’t take it for granted, but it’s just — I never thought I would be in this position.”

His graduation is personal, but it also lands inside a wider pattern. A recent analysis from the Brookings Institute estimated that more than 100,000 children—most of them U.S. citizens—were separated from their parents during the Trump administration’s latest immigration crackdown. though researchers believe the number is likely higher. Multiple studies have found that children whose parents are detained or deported report higher levels of anxiety and depression. And a 2025 report from Children’s Equity Project at Arizona State University found that children exposed to immigration detention or deportation are more likely to experience chronic absenteeism. lower academic performance and higher dropout risks—challenges Solis said he faced during and after his father’s detention.

For Solis, the hardest part wasn’t just the fear. It was how quickly that fear moved through everyday life—work schedules, school decisions, and the way a family tries to keep going without knowing when the next knock will come.

After the 2019 detention, his father’s job was lost and the family was denied his final paycheck. The church and school communities stepped in with meals. emotional support and financial help. but Solis said the detention destabilized everything anyway. including his own ability to stay enrolled without interruption.

Solis pushed forward through high school and college. He also made choices that kept him in class—sometimes by sacrificing other parts of being young. He left Merced for a school year to save up money because the family’s financial struggles meant they couldn’t support him monetarily. He said he was also racially profiled by police multiple times. experiences he said strengthened his resolve to pursue law school.

During college, he took a gap year to work and save money so he could continue attending school.

Those decisions weren’t abstract. They were tied to the moment his father was taken and the days that followed, when stability disappeared before the family had time to adjust.

A father detained, legal help secured, and a family shaken

On the Sunday morning in 2019. Solis’ mother says her son’s instinct to demand the proper warrant from immigration agents is likely why they left shortly after. But before school the following Tuesday morning. she woke him in a panic: Immigration agents had tailed and detained his father as he drove to work.

As his mother called their pastor and a family member, Solis contacted the school staff member who led the Wise Up! program. She informed CHIRLA, and CHIRLA quickly provided an immigration attorney for the family.

“Jair called all the right people,” said Ofelia Garcia, Solis’ mother, about that day. “It’s traumatic because you see it on the news, but you never imagine it will happen to you.”

CHIRLA’s attorneys secured his father’s release within a month and continued supporting the family until he was approved for permanent U.S. residency.

Still, the detention immediately destabilized the family. Solis said his father lost his job and the family was denied his final paycheck. Their church and school communities stepped in with meals, emotional support and financial help, but Solis knew the family was struggling.

Eventually, he spoke with his mother about leaving school to work and help pay bills.

“She just looked at me with this look of … I could just tell it was this look of disappointment and hurt because my mom tried to pursue her own educational dreams, but she stopped due to her status,” Solis said.

Solis credits his mother with keeping him in school and not missing a single day during his father’s detainment. For her, staying in school was the most practical and safest choice.

“They were safest at school,” Garcia said. She explained that if she were also detained, her children would at least be surrounded by trusted adults. Garcia also feared they would isolate themselves emotionally if they stopped attending classes.

“I told them that the only way they could help me was by studying,” she said.

That emphasis on education had been shaped by earlier restrictions too. Solis’ mother had given up her dream of becoming a kindergarten teacher because she was undocumented.

A school program became a lifeline

The detention wasn’t the first time Solis saw immigration enforcement close to home. In the school year around his father’s arrest. his school—Academia Avance Charter School—made national headlines when one of his classmates recorded a video of immigration agents detaining her father near campus. The school community rallied around that classmate as her family successfully fought to stop her father’s deportation.

Around that same time, Solis joined Wise Up!, a school-based club organized by the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, or CHIRLA. Solis said he felt a responsibility to understand how to protect his family.

“My parents sacrificed everything, left their whole lives in a whole other country to come start something new here and to provide for me,” Solis said. “I saw it as a responsibility to be educated and know the steps to take for them to be safe.”

The legal rights training he learned through Wise Up! became critical two years later, when Solis and his family became the ones the school community rallied around.

Even after the immediate crisis eased, the immigration system stayed present.

Immigration fears returned as his mother sought residency

During Solis’ final years in college, he said he began confronting the return of the federal administration that had once detained his father, a sharp increase in immigration raids in Los Angeles, where his family lives, and several high-profile deaths involving immigration enforcement agents.

“The fact that I’m working for an immigration firm and I’m learning about immigration [law in a class] right now. this is all that I’m thinking about right now. ” Solis said about his time in Washington. D.C. earlier this year. “From work to class to when I’m talking to my parents, this is just on top of my mind.”.

His fears intensified because, about two years earlier, he urged his mother to begin preparing paperwork to apply for permanent residency once he turned 21—the age at which she could petition for her legal status.

When they filed the paperwork after his birthday, they did not know immigrants attending the type of court appointments his mother would later attend would soon begin facing detention—and in some cases, rapid deportation—under the Trump administration’s immigration policy.

Solis said he often spiraled into rabbit holes, imagining the multiple ways his mother could be detained and worrying about what would happen to his younger brothers if they lost her.

“It was kind of like when you have an open wound and they just pour alcohol in it,” Solis said.

A grief he says he avoided, until he couldn’t anymore

Solis said he realized recently that he had gone through college without fully processing his father’s detention and eventual release. He said that last year, as immigration raids intensified while his mother’s permanent residency application was being processed, memories surged back.

“What happened to my dad, I’ve been avoiding thinking about it. I feel like I didn’t fully grieve, in a way,” Solis said. “During that time. I was just thinking about staying afloat. staying afloat. and I wasn’t really thinking about my mental [health]. It just finally got to me when I was in D.C., because I was by myself.”.

Now, with both of his parents holding legal status and his college degree completed, Solis said he is beginning to confront anger, resentment and fear tied to his family’s experiences with the immigration system. He recently began seeing a therapist for the first time and plans to continue.

What comes next: policy, law school, and a mother returning to school

During his final semester as a political science major, Solis interned with a national immigration policy organization in Washington, D.C. He plans to attend law school and is applying for jobs in policy and the legal field.

Even as he looks forward, he’s still trying to make the next milestone possible for the people who carried him there. Seven years after that knock at the door, he is still looking out for his parents—this time by encouraging his mother to return to school.

Now that she has a legal work permit, she can pursue better work opportunities and continue the three years of community college she once put aside.

Solis said his mother recently told her children: “I’m going to return to school so you can attend my graduation and feel proud of me.”

Jair Solis UC Merced immigration enforcement detention CHIRLA Wise Up! CHIRLA attorneys permanent residency student mental health chronic absenteeism law school political science