surging mental – In Los Angeles, one primary care clinic says its standardized mental health screenings show steep increases in anxiety, depression, and suicidal thoughts during periods of intensified immigration enforcement. Patients describe fear that raids and court dates m
When immigration enforcement intensifies in and around Los Angeles, Zocalo Health starts seeing the consequences not only in court records, but on exam forms and in patients’ bodies.
Researchers and health care workers say the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. now in its second year. is creating a mental health crisis in immigrant communities.. At Zocalo Health. a primary care clinic serving Latino families on Medicaid. standardized screenings have shown a sharp rise in anxiety. depression and suicidal thoughts among patients since raids began in 2025.. The clinic’s behavioral health leadership described immigration enforcement as a stressor that operates in real time—turning daily uncertainty into symptoms that clinicians screen for and patients carry home.
“When we look at our data during periods of intensified enforcement. our screening data showed a clear rise in distress. ” Sophia Pages. a licensed marriage and family therapist and executive director of behavioral health at Zocalo Health. said.. “Immigration enforcement is functioning as a real time public health stressor in the communities that we serve.”
Zocalo requires every patient to complete standardized mental health screenings for problems like anxiety and depression.. Pages and her colleagues tied the worsening symptom patterns to the period when immigration enforcement agents began raiding farms and neighborhoods in the Los Angeles area in 2025.. In that stretch. Pages said. “More than half of the patients we screened had anxiety that was severe enough to interfere with their daily life. and nearly three quarters were experiencing depression.” She added that nearly “1 in 8 individuals struggled with thoughts of suicide. ” which the clinic said is “more than double the rate of suicidal ideation in the general population.”
“What seemed to sit underneath it for many patients was this profound sense of helplessness,” Pages said.. She described it as a belief that even carefulness—changing routines. staying home more—does not create real protection for patients or their families.. “And that loss of control was deeply destabilizing and can intensify depression, trauma-related distress and suicidal thinking.”
For anyone considering suicide or in crisis, the National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is available by texting or calling 988, with Press 2 to speak to a counselor in Spanish.
A 29-year-old patient named Esperanza lives in King City, Calif.. She came to the United States in 2023 with her husband and her older son, who is now 11 years old.. Originally from Oaxaca. Mexico. she said her family fled after a local cartel made them pay a fee to farm their own land and kept demanding that her husband do drug runs for them.. She requested that only her first name be used because she fears that talking to the press could harm the process of seeking asylum for her and her family.
Before leaving, Esperanza said life in Oaxaca had become increasingly unsafe.. “When things started getting really bad, we grabbed our stuff and came to the border, the Mexico-US border,” she said.. She described the journey as stressful and said men who worked for the local cartel followed them until they reached the U.S.. border.. Once she and her family began building a life in California, she said her body was stuck in fear.
“I wasn’t sleeping,” Esperanza said. “I was having heart palpitations. I was just getting clammy all the time. And that was really affecting me as a woman, as a wife and as a mother.”
When ICE raids started in and around Los Angeles last year, Esperanza said her symptoms worsened. Going to immigration court, she described being overwhelmed by fears of deportation. “What if they send me back? What if my kids stay and they just send me? What’s going to happen to them?” she said.
Her 11-year-old son, she said, carries the same fears.. “My son hears a lot of news from school, especially about immigration.. He is scared of me going out alone without him because he says that maybe immigration will get me and he would be left behind on his own.. And he says, ‘Well, if they get both of us, then at least we’ll be together.”
Clinicians say this kind of fear can create stress that lasts far beyond the day of a raid or the outcome of a hearing.. Ariana Hoet. a pediatric psychologist at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus. Ohio. said immigrant communities were already vulnerable to higher rates of mental health symptoms in children.. “Latino children often have higher rates of things like depression. anxiety. ” she said. describing how families can face stresses adapting to a new culture. language and environment while also struggling with past traumas.. Hoet said discrimination can further worsen mental health.
“All those things existed already, putting these communities at risk,” Hoet said. “Now we add a chronic stressor — this is what’s happening with immigration.”
For families, a major source of stress is fear of separation. Hoet said that for mixed documentation families, many children are acutely aware of their circumstances and live with fear for caregivers. “We know some parents have already been removed from the home.”
A recent study in the New England Journal of Medicine concluded that the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown has become a toxic stress for children likely to leave a lasting impact on developmental. physical and mental health.. Hoet said. “Children who experience a parent’s deportation. our research shows. that it’s more than double the odds of developing PTSD. ” referring to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.. She said the effects extend to children who do not directly experience deportation.. “Children in those communities are also at higher risk, and also report depression, anxiety and trauma-like symptoms.”
Hoet said those symptoms can show up as physical problems—belly aches. head aches. changes in sleep and appetite—or as changes in children’s behavior.. “You see kids become more clingy, very anxious and worried,” she said.. “They can become quieter, withdrawn socially.. They don’t want to do things that they typically do.”
In the Los Angeles area, Zocalo’s therapists—who only see adults—have been supporting patients like Esperanza.. For her, care has been a way to bring some control back into her day-to-day life.. “It has helped me a lot.. It has helped me with my self-worth and just how I see myself, my situation,” she said.. “It’s helped me with my panic attacks.”
Esperanza said she learned tools to calm herself when anxious, including breathing exercises, music and baking.. She said she joined a local church and has found community and strength there.. “Right now I’m at least able to talk to other people and sometimes even venture into the street and walk. ” she said.. She also said she is sharing coping strategies with her husband and son so they can manage their circumstances, too.
The pattern doctors and clinicians describe ties screenings. enforcement intensity. and patient fear into the same sequence: when raids and intensified enforcement began in 2025. Zocalo’s standardized screens showed rising distress. and clinicians link that chronic stress to symptoms that can spread through families—especially when children worry about what happens to parents.
At the same time, patients’ accounts show how fear isn’t abstract.. Esperanza said immigration court days make her feel overwhelmed with questions about whether she will be sent back. and her son said he worries about being left behind if she leaves home alone.. In homes where uncertainty is constant. mental health symptoms described by the clinic—severe anxiety. depression. and suicidal thoughts—become part of a larger. ongoing struggle to feel safe enough to function.
Zocalo Health Los Angeles immigration enforcement mental health anxiety depression suicidal ideation ICE PTSD children