02/12/2026
This is one of those posts that sits in your drafts for a minute.
You feel the heat around it. You know people are going to read it through their political lens. And you ask yourself, “Is this worth it?”
Here’s where I landed.
Immigration is debated in policy rooms.
But what happens to children when families live in fear is not a debate. It is a mental health reality.
When a child is sitting in algebra wondering if their parent will be detained…
🧠When a student hears rumors about ICE raids in their neighborhood…
🧠When a classroom feels like a waiting room for bad news…
🧠The brain does not shift into learning mode. It shifts into survival mode.
In neuroscience terms, chronic fear activates the stress response system. Cortisol rises. The amygdala, the brain’s alarm center, goes on high alert. The prefrontal cortex, the part responsible for focus, planning, and reasoning, goes offline.
We cannot ask children to solve for X while their nervous system is solving for safety.
This is not a partisan statement.
This is a developmental statement.
Trauma research reminds us that persistent threat disrupts attachment, concentration, and identity development. Schools become environments of hypervigilance instead of growth.
And here is the truth:
When children are worried about the detainment of their neighbors, parents, classmates, or themselves, learning becomes biologically secondary.
That is not ideology. That is physiology.
As a trauma-informed clinician and educator, I almost did not share this because the conversation is visceral right now. But silence does not protect children’s nervous systems.
If our mission is mental health, belonging, and psychological safety, then we have to be honest about the environments that shape those outcomes.
Mental health does not exist outside of context.
And context matters.
-TJ
News update: Liam Ramos returned to Minnesota after a judge ordered his release. Hundreds of children are still detained in Dilley, TX, including a second gr...
