Federal Departments Will Research Children and Immigration Enforcement

Seth Freed Wessler reports.

By Seth Freed Wessler Aug 24, 2012

On Monday I spoke about my Shattered Families investigation on a panel at the Center for American Progress. The panel aired live on C-Span 2 and can be viewed here.

I joined a several others on the panel, including Ajay Chaudry, (prepare for the longest title ever) Deputy Assistant Secretary for Human Services Programs in the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation. Chaudy announced that HHS recently issued a call for proposals for a national research project on the implications of immigration enforcement on children. The project will include analysis of children in foster care with deported parents and call for proposals cites the Shattered Families investigation.

Before Shattered Families was released, there was no data on the number of children in foster care with detained and deported parents. That’s largely because no government agency collects the data. The call for proposals is a small step toward changing that, though once the research grant is awarded, researchers will have more than a year to complete it, so we’re not likely to have any new information any time soon.

Monday’s panel also included Joanna Dreby, a sociologist who just completed a paper on the impacts of immigration enforcement on children and Miriam Yeung, director of the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum.