
Thus, many depend on public clinics or emergency rooms for health care. Undocumented immigrants are not provided access to health insurance exchanges or Medicaid/Medicare through the Affordable Care Act. Prior research has shown that undocumented immigrants have less access to health care than documented immigrants and non-immigrants, primarily due to the combination of health policies, immigration policies and enforcement, and discrimination. Taken together, these policies and threatened actions have created a hostile environment that potentially may cause immigrant families to avoid health-care settings or enrolling in government programs. Though they are still under consideration, the threat contributes to the anti-immigrant climate. Two draft executive orders by President Trump contribute to this concern one threatens to revoke current ICE policies that protect immigrants from being detained or deported at health care facilities and one would penalize immigrants who have received Medicaid, WIC, or other public benefits in their applications for residency and citizenship. Page & Polk speculate that the anti-immigrant climate may cause undocumented immigrants to avoid traveling to clinics or giving their information to clinics and government programs because they fear it will increase their likelihood of being detained and deported. This is particularly problematic given that immigration policy enforcement actions have been shown to contribute to poor health among Latino immigrants. Medical providers are concerned that these expanded immigration enforcement efforts-as well as rhetoric and other policies-have created an anti-immigrant climate that will result in a ‘chilling effect’ on undocumented immigrant’s willingness to receive health and social services. Since President Trump took office, his administration has expanded the number of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers, and there was a 40% increase in detention of undocumented immigrants in the first year of the Trump presidency. unlawfully) and to detain any other immigrants who are nearby at the time of arrest. While immigrant detention and deportation under the Obama administration focused mostly on ‘serious criminals’, the standard practice under the Trump administration is to target any undocumented immigrant who has broken the law (including entering the U.S. While enforcement of immigration laws has historically been part of federal policy, the federal government has recently broadened the criteria for immigrants it prioritizes for arrest and deportation. Immigration-related rhetoric, policies, enforcement, & health This paper aims to explore this question by reporting on in-depth interviews conducted with health and social services staff who work closely with immigrant families in Southeastern Michigan. presidential election have been frequent and have raised the question of how these changes have impacted the health of immigrants in the US. The immigration-related rhetoric and policy changes following the 2016 US.

The 2016 national election in the United States catapulted immigrants and immigration policies to the forefront of the collective public consciousness as politicians debated whether or not to include or exclude immigrants-particularly immigrants from non-European countries-in U.S. These results add to previous literature on the effect of immigration policies on the health and provide key insights for interventions to improve the health of immigrants within this socio-political environment. Staff members report that these three factors have had an impact on physical and mental health of these immigrant clients.

Our findings show three major themes: (1) An increased and pervasive fear of deportation and family separation among mixed-status immigrant clients, (2) The fear of deportation and family separation has resulted in fractures in community cohesion, and (3) Fear of deportation and family separation has had an impact on the healthcare utilization and health-related behaviors of mixed-status families.

The interviews were audio recorded, transcribed, and analyzed thematically. These staff had intimate knowledge of and insights into the lived experiences of the mixed-status immigrant families they serve. We conducted 28 in-depth interviews with frontline staff at two Federally Qualified Health Centers and a non-profit agency. In this study, we aim to better understand how post-election policy change may have impacted the health and well-being, including health and social service utilization, of Latino immigrants in Southeastern Michigan. Given the anti-immigrant rhetoric and policy proposals by President Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign and afterwards, his election to president in November 2016 and subsequent policy changes has affected immigrant families.
