By Raimy Khalife-Hamdan

Examining the harmful impacts of detention and deportation of Arab, Middle Eastern, and Muslim parents on their citizen children immediately after 9/11, Raimy Khalife-Hamdan asks: What are the implications of this on inconsistent citizenship?

The terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001 startled the world, leaving many fearful and horrified. In response, the U.S. government intensified policing of Arab, Middle Eastern, and Muslim populations, and particularly those with fewest protections: noncitizens. Legislation, such as the 2001 USA PATRIOT Act, was ostensibly passed to prevent future terrorist attacks. It granted the government increased authority to detain noncitizens through expanded powers to surveil, investigate, and apprehend any suspected domestic or foreign terrorist. Many of these detained and deported individuals experienced heightened fearfulness, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, insomnia, and hypervigilance.

Past research reveals that family separation has psychological and embodied effects. A 2010 study considered 190 children in 85 immigrant families in which at least one parent was deported and concluded that many of these children experienced behavioral shifts in eating and sleeping habits. They also experienced emotional changes such as increased sadness, anxiety, anger, aggression, fearfulness, and social withdrawal that persisted six months after deportation. These changes persisted even after family reunification. Due to its traumatic nature, family separation is also a source of PTSD, with varying levels of severity depending upon the age of the child during separation from one or both parents.

Furthermore, paternal detention and deportation leads to figurative household reconstruction, as familial roles shift to compensate for the loss of a parental figure. “Suddenly single mothers,” as characterized by anthropologist Joanna Dreby, often take on new economic responsibilities by working longer hours, which consequently lessens their contact with their children. This decreased attention to youth tends to worsen their mental health. However, rather than simply or exclusively being victims of a robust immigration enforcement system, these children also may adapt to their transforming family circumstances. Youth adapt to their new home structures by mentally reconstructing the conception of their family as their cognitive ability adjusts to a new reality. Social scientists observe that many children overcome such serious hardships, especially if their sense of stability is restored.

After studying the impact of 9/11 on immigration enforcement, research is needed on the experiences of these Arab, Middle Eastern, and Muslim individuals’ families—and particularly on the experiences of their children. It is important to better understand the social and developmental effects of parental separation on youth’s wellbeing after increased immigration enforcement—in other words, how they are now? Moreover, such research has the potential to reveal deeper implications for membership and belonging in the United States and other places where individuals now live.

Thus far, scholars have demonstrated how spouses and children of detained and deported individuals after 9/11 are subject to heightened Islamophobia. Drawing from the personal narratives of thirteen deported Muslim men, the ACLU emphasizes the profound traumatization of haphazard arrests experienced by families. Sunaina Marr Maira (2009) argues that while national-security legislation like the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001 targeted both aliens and citizens, there is a peculiar repression reserved for U.S. citizen Muslims and Muslim converts. Furthermore, a 2007 study interviewing 12- to 18-year old Muslim Americans revealed that these individuals faced at least one act of discrimination in the previous year. In the face of such ethno-religious discrimination, a 2011 study examines the methods of coping with stressful interpersonal events, such as Islamophobia, experienced by Muslims in the U.S. following the 9/11 attacks.

Now, almost two decades after the 2001 terrorist attacks, the children of detained and deported Arab, Middle Eastern, and Arab noncitizens are now young and middle aged adults. Social scientists and medical professionals must continue conducting research with these adult children and must investigate the long-term health, developmental, and psychological impacts of the family separation that occurred in 2001. Empirical research could also analyze whether or how the religious and cultural upbringing of these children influenced their experience of family separation. This research could inform the work of NGOs that support children of detained and deported parents and further expose the effects of family separation that results from contemporary U.S. immigration enforcement. While the youth of 2001 are now adults, there are currently thousands of migrant children at the U.S.-Mexico border who are pulled from their parents. The harmful health effects of family separation will certainly apply to these children.

Many of the children separated from their parents after 9/11 were U.S. citizens, which encourages us to consider their unique experiences of citizenship. The psychological shock of parental detention and deportation likely informed these American children’s interpretation of the U.S. as exclusionary, violent, and family-rupturing. While citizenship seems to render full and equal belonging to a nation-state, not all U.S. citizens enjoy the same privileges of membership. Rather, citizenship is a dynamic mediator of experience that intertwines with various social factors and identities, such as ethnicity, race, and religion. The violent experience of family separation devalues citizenship, especially as citizen individuals—particularly minor citizens—who are legal members are undermined by the particularities of their social situations. By separating families, entangling experiences of citizenship with those of non-citizenship, the U.S. government devalues the citizenship of those from mixed-status families instead of envisioning an extension of membership to families.

As the effects of post-9/11 immigration policing continue to compound, it has become more important than ever to conceive of, design, and conduct related research. Exploring the question—how are they now?—could provide key insights into the experiences of those of Arab, Middle Eastern, and Muslim heritage in the United States or who left after September 11th. Moreover, it would permit greater understanding of the ways in which citizenship is not a determinative aspect of membership and does not secure all national members with equal privileges and protections. Such research would be crucial to reflections on the traumatic experiences of family separation to which the U.S. government has subjected thousands of its minor citizens, and the reorientation of immigration enforcement, such that it would protect those that most deserve protections: youth.    

About the author 

Raimy Khalife-Hamdan is a second-year student at the Robert D. Clark Honors College of the University of Oregon. She is majoring in Romance Languages and International Studies, with a concentration on migration, refugees, and displacement.