Mental health is a well brought up topic in regard to family life, school, and the workplace. Removing yourself from stressful situations and giving yourself time to relax and rest is often articulated by institutions to maintain one’s mental health. But what do you do if you are not allowed to seek asylum in a safe environment? How is mental health maintained when the country you believed was safe sends you back to a dangerous environment?
The World Health Organization states that mental health is a human right (Mental Health, 2022). Such human rights are often not extended to asylum seeking populations, especially when they are termed aliens and illegals. While looking for sources for this post, I came across a page on the Human Rights Watch detailing the stories from those who have been deported from the U.S.. I highly recommend looking through this page to gain insight on the reality of what it means to be a deportee and what sorts of violence they are thrown back into. Several deportees reported that they had been robbed or kidnapped and held for ransom by local cartels in exchange for money. Cartels target returning asylum-seekers, often identified by the red bag given to them by Immigration agents, with the belief that they have made lots of money working in the U.S. (The deported, n.d.). These events are significant stressors and can lead to diminished functioning and an un-fit mental state.
A study done by Juliana Morris and Daniel Palazuelos (2015) determined that three main axes of being deported led to negative health outcomes: having to leave behind family and reintegrating into a foreign lifestyle, the financial strain from no longer being employed in the U.S. and having no money to send to family and being subjected to the widespread violence due to being a deportee. Alfonso was taken into custody after he called the police on himself while he and his wife were having an argument over Alfonso not spending enough time with the family. Even though his wife explained that he never hit her, he was still arrested for domestic violence. This instance highlights the racial profiling that Latinos experience at large. Alfonso was detained in immigrant detention while his wife and children had to seek shelter from Hurricane Harvey (The deported, n.d.). It is not hard to imagine the stress of being taken away from your family and hoping that they survived a harrowing storm. Experiencing such harrowing ordeals can cause some to lash out in anger or to completely shut down. This decrease in mental fitness often puts detainees and deportees in even more harm as they are likely to experience more violence at the hands of Immigration officers and violent gangs.
Women are a large population who are often at high risk of negative health outcomes during their encounters within humanitarian institutions. Many women flee their home countries after violent rapes or threats towards themselves or their children. In a report from the UNHCR, a Mexican women claimed she felt extreme bouts of anxiety whenever the officers closed the doors to her cell and locked them (Women on the run, 2015). Feelings of anxiety and hopelessness are not perpetrated only by deportation but by detainment and confinement by the government. As mentioned earlier, outbursts of anger are common due to having their concerns not addressed or being told that they are overreacting. A psychologist at a human’s rights center in Tapachula explained that women’s suppressed anger often became misdirected towards their children, which creates the familial cycle of violence leading to more internal anger and self- blame (Wurtz, 2022). Mental fitness decreases as asylum seekers drown in their problems with no feasible way out.
Unable to take care of themselves and sometimes even their families, detainees and deportees lose their sense of self which can lead to lack of self-preservation and self-harm. Mental health is a much-overlooked problem in government detainment as racialized populations lead to forms of bias and stereotyping that regularly denies them the services that they need. More awareness and scholarship on mental health and asylum seekers can lead to better treatment in detainment and less psychological outbreaks that only perpetuate violence against them. Learning and reading the stories of those dealing with mental health issues after encounters with Immigration services also allows us to be better informed about the reality of escaping violence for many families. Advocating for proper mental health practices and services for those who cannot for themselves and telling the world their stories allows for their voice to be heard and for change to be enacted. Taking the steps to help asylum seekers does not have to be on a national scale but can start from the simple change of one’s mindset.
Works Cited
Mental health. (2022, June 17). World Health Organization. https://www.who.int/news- room/fact-sheets/detail/mental-health-strengthening-our-response
Morris, J.E., & Palazuelos, D. (2015). The Health Implications of Deportation Policy. Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved 26(2), 406-
409. https://doi.org/10.1353/hpu.2015.0038.
The deported. (n.d.). Human Rights Watch. https://www.hrw.org/blog-feed/the- deported?gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAjw_LOwBhBFEiwAmSEQAcHdFRHy3683- jn9ncWnw9cvqbouXANQWcfyWTZJrilVzShbDeY1YRoCx6gQAvD_BwE
Women on the run. UNHCR US. (2015, October). https://www.unhcr.org/us/media/women-run
Wurtz, H.M. (2022), Mobility Imaginaries of Humanitarian Intervention: Gender, Migration, and Violence along Mexico's Southern Border. Med. Anthropol. Q., 36: 479-
496. https://doi.org/10.1111/maq.12716