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The Trump administration’s mass deportations plan is fueling fear and an increased demand for mental health services among New York immigrants, who already face barriers to getting care, officials and advocates said at a Council hearing this week.
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An unprecedented immigration enforcement crackdown—evident in ongoing arrests carried out at the city’s courthouses—has fueled fear among immigrant New Yorkers, many of whom have confined themselves from public life in response.
At a City Council hearing Tuesday, advocates said they have not only noticed that shift, but also the mental toll it’s having on immigrant communities across the city, highlighting the vast need for access to culturally competent mental health services.
Charles Brown, the director of the immigration legal program at Lutheran Social Services of New York, said they had assisted 83 migrants last month. “Almost every single one of those 83 people needed mental health services. Almost every one of them expressed to us that they didn’t believe they could access those services,” Brown said.
Still, the heads of two city agencies lawmakers invited to testify and answer questions at the oversight hearing didn’t show.
Alexa Avilés, the head of the Council’s Committee on Immigration, criticized the absence of both the heads of the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs (MOIA) and the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH). Both agencies sent staffers in their place.
Alluding to the absence of Adams administration leaders at another hearing on the impact of Donald Trump’s budget cuts the day before, Avilés expressed her disappointment. “I am continuing to be offended by this administration’s hypocrisy towards the immigrant communities, and the fact that they are a lot of talk and no action,” she said.
Access to mental health services is a problem for New Yorkers generally, and for immigrants, it’s even harder. According to a DOHMH report published in May, around 945,000 New Yorkers (or 14 percent of the population) reported having difficulty accessing the mental health treatment they needed, whether through counseling or medication.
One of the problems, the report explains, is that it can be hard to find a provider who speaks someone’s preferred language or understands their culture.
Another report published this year by DOHMH and MOIA found immigrants with depression are less likely to receive mental health treatment (34 percent) compared to U.S.-born New Yorkers with depression (48 percent).
Some of the challenges immigrants face that can contribute to their mental health struggles include language barriers, traumas experienced before, during, or post-migration, and economic instability, advocates explained at the hearing.
“Indeed, many of our clients arrive in the United States after suffering significant trauma in their country of origin, and on their journeys here, and they find themselves in New York City with mental health challenges resulting from their experiences,” Brown said. “Once they arrive, migrants are subjected to a complex immigration system that may appear designed to re-traumatize them.”
Since Spring of 2022, hundreds of thousands of migrants have come to New York City. Though the number of new arrivals has declined significantly in recent months, more than 34,000 remained in the city’s shelter system as of August.
Immigrant adults are nearly twice as likely as U.S.-born adults to lack health insurance, the MOIA/DOHMH report found. Last month, The City reported that enrollment in NYC Care, the city’s healthcare access program for low-income residents—regardless of immigration status— declined for the first time this year since it launched in 2019.
The anxiety of an encounter with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and fear of being deported has become part of the stressors in migrants’ lives, advocates said.
“We conceive of trauma through the lens of the triple trauma paradigm, including pre-flight trauma, trauma during and post-migration,” said Jess Rucker, director of rescue settlement at Catholic Charities Community Services. “This experience is compounded by systemic factors for immigrant populations, fear of law enforcement, language barriers, and lack of health insurance and public services.”
At the hearing, officials said that New Yorkers in crisis can access some services through a call, text, or chat to the 988 suicide and crisis lifeline, which merges local care and resources “with national standards and best practices,” its website explains.
Avilés criticized long wait times to get through on the 988 line, as well as what she described as the administration’s lack of preparedness to deal with issues affecting immigrant communities.
ICE agents have been arresting people as they show up for immigration hearings at 26 Federal Plaza in Manhattan, where critics say migrants are being held in crowded and unsanitary conditions. Nearly a dozen lawmakers were arrested Thursday outside the courthouse during a protest against ICE.
“We know there is a clear path of violence that this Trump administration is taking that the mayor is not standing up to,” Avilés said at Tuesday’s hearing.
The demand for mental health services is immense, advocates said—and city officials acknowledged. Officials testified that MOIA’s general hotline has received thousands of calls this year, many of them with questions about health, including dozens on mental health specifically.
One staff member at the Arab American Family Support Center, a non-profit serving Arab, Middle Eastern, Muslim, and South Asian immigrants and refugees, said the number of requests they’ve received from people seeking mental health help has gone up by 80 percent in the last few months.
There is also a lack of qualified workers in the city to meet the demand, according to advocates who testified and who urged the city to fund an immigrant health workforce.
A mental health clinician and supervisor at their Arab-American Family Support Center called for officials to “develop a linguistically competent mental health workforce by creating pathways and fast-track programs that empower skilled immigrants to serve their own communities.”
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