Some immigrants in LA County struggle with post-election fear, anxiety. Here's where to seek help

More than 3.5 million immigrants live in Los Angeles County, and of those, over 800,000 are undocumented, according to recent estimates.

So after the re-election of Donald Trump, who promised the largest deportation effort in American history, many people and families are dealing with questions about what could happen next — and wrestling with the toll that is taking on their mental health.

Experts warn of possible negative health consequences from the ongoing stress. And some worry that people will not look for mental health care when they need it for fear of deportation, particularly those among the tens of thousands of DACA recipients in the region who are uncertain of what a Trump administration will mean for their immigration status.

Community organizers say there are resources available that could help people deal with those anxieties and fears including a directory of mental health professionals who work with the undocumented community.

“I think the stress level is definitely going to be a lot higher," said Dr. Imelda Padilla-Frausto, a research scientist at UCLA. "And because this has been such an ongoing issue, it’s a chronic stress.”

Anti-immigrant narratives on social media

Victor Guillén Febres, a program strategist with United We Dream, a youth-led non-profit for immigrants, said many conversations swirling on social media falsely paint immigrants as violent criminals, and those conversations are making people who are undocumented or on temporary protected status anxious.

“Mostly because we know that [this] kind of anti-immigrant disinformation, these anti-immigrant narratives and rhetoric, what it does is dehumanizes the people in our community,” Guillén Febres said. “When these narratives are hitting our For You pages and our media consumption ecosystems, it is really hard to escape.

"And it does translate into real fear.”

In recent years, anti-immigrant language online and off has often been directed at people who cross the southern border of the United States.

In his campaign speeches, Trump has focused on his border policies and has often used racist or xenophobic language when referring broadly to immigrants, repeatedly calling them “criminals.” (A study published in 2024 by the National Institute of Justice found that undocumented immigrants are arrested at less than half the rate of native-born U.S. citizens for violent and drug crimes and a quarter the rate of native-born citizens for property crimes.)

This week he tapped longtime advisor and immigration hard-liner Stephen Miller as his deputy chief of staff for policy. Miller has advocated for mass deportations and said the incoming administration would have immigration officials do workplace sweeps.

“A lot of the things that we have seen, especially when we talk to membership as well, is that it really has a significant effect on the mental health of our members who are directly impacted,” Guillén Febres said.

Increases in psychological distress

According to a study published last year by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, the percentage of immigrant adults in California with “serious psychological distress” increased by 50% between 2015 and 2021. The study defines serious psychological distress as severe, diagnosable mental health conditions, like depression and anxiety.

The study noted that 6% of immigrant adults who participated in the study reported having serious psychological distress from 2015-2017, and that percentage increased to 9% from 2019-2021.

The timeframe referenced in the study overlaps with the run-up to the 2016 election, when Trump was campaigning for president and won, but researchers stopped short of explicitly linking the election and/or Trump’s first term in office to its findings.

“Of course we can’t directly say that the [Trump] administration caused these increases,” Padilla-Frausto, a lead author of the study, told LAist. “But what we’re saying is that there was an association between this time period of the administration and mental health outcomes.”

As of 2021, more than one third of L.A. County residents were immigrants and of those, 8% were undocumented, according to USC Dornsife’s most recent State of Immigrants in LA County report. Between 2012 and 2021, the most prevalent countries of origin for immigrants in L.A. were Mexico, El Salvador, the Philippines, China, Guatemala, and Korea.

Padilla-Frausto said many immigrants in the region don’t have health insurance to help offset cost of treatment and therapy, but she said she may be more concerned about those who lack support from community or outreach programs.

“They’re going to go back into the shadows of being invisible because they don’t want to draw any attention to themselves,” Padilla-Frausto said.

DACA uncertainty

Karen Fierro Ruiz, an immigrant youth organizer with United We Dream, said she was bracing for what a Trump presidency might mean for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. The decade-old Obama administration program allows undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children to live and work in the U.S. temporarily without fear of deportation.

Ruiz said she and her colleagues are looking to work with members of Congress to advocate for immigrants. And she’s encouraging some DACA-recipients to talk with immigration lawyers to see what options might be available outside of the program.

As of March 2023, about 70,000 people with active DACA status lived in the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim metro area, according to USC Dornsife.

The Trump administration tried to dismantle the program during his first administration, with then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions declaring the program unconstitutional. The effort to rescind the program was blocked by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Ruiz said the average age of DACA recipients is 31, and many have been in the U.S. more than two decades.

“I’m a DACA-recipient, too. I fall in line with a lot of these statistics,” Ruiz said. “I know that a lot of folks are thinking about what does the future [look like] not just for ourselves, but also our families in this country for the next four years.”

Fighting isolation

Jenifer Garcia Mendoza, a program manager at United We Dream, said she was working to empower the immigrant community to protect each other, to know their rights and to reach out for help when needed.

“There are mental health providers out there... who are willing to work pro bono [or] sliding scale fee with our community,” Mendoza said.

Padilla-Frausto, at UCLA, said seeking community outside of the traditional mental health care setting can also be helpful to immigrants who are being pummeled with negative messages. She pointed to support groups in a church setting as one possibility.

“Trying to help people not feel isolated and alone I think is going to be really key in these next four years,” she said.