September 14, 2025 • 30 mins
There are more than 4 million American kids with at least one undocumented parent, and their summer break this year was unlike any other. They told us things like: “My family's worried when they go outside because of ICE,” or “I dreamed about the police coming to our house and they got our parents.”
As increasingly aggressive ICE raids sweep the country, Latino USA follows the stories of young Latinos with undocumented parents navigating the quiet hopes, joys and challenges of summer vacation. They do this in a stark new immigration reality in which fear, uncertainty and the looming threat of family separation now shape even the smallest details of everyday life.
Latino USA is the longest-running news and culture radio program in the U.S., centering Latino stories and hosted by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Maria Hinojosa.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
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(00:30):
you do that, then click play. Let's go to the show.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Well.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
It's nine am at summer camp.
Speaker 4 (00:45):
This morning at the tile well, and I fell.
Speaker 5 (00:50):
Asleep about fifty kids and teens from kindergarten to high
school or getting ready to start the day, and in the.
Speaker 4 (00:58):
Money, I was tiled. But then it's excited when.
Speaker 5 (01:01):
The campers are carrying lunchboxes and walking into this brightly
lit space where the walls and windows are covered in.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
Drawing, It's back to you.
Speaker 6 (01:12):
A handful of.
Speaker 5 (01:13):
Kids find a table and they quickly start a game
of Oh no.
Speaker 7 (01:17):
You guys are cooked.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
Stop say that.
Speaker 5 (01:22):
Some of the kids are coloring quietly with the counselors,
and a group of middle school girls are sitting in
the corner sipping out of pink water bottles.
Speaker 7 (01:32):
The pea cheating off the straff.
Speaker 5 (01:34):
But the counselors are wearing these colorful name tags and
red whistles around their necks. This is a community with
a large immigrant population, so they're switching between English and Spanish.
How at a glance, this looks like a typical summer camp,
but for the kids here, this summer has been anything
(01:56):
but normal. We're not going to tell you where this
camp is or what anyone's name is in order to
ensure their safety. And remember those red whistles around the
councilor's next. They have a very specific purpose. They're the
first line of defense against ice. If a federal agent
shows up at camp, they'll blow the whistle. A counselor
(02:18):
tells us that this is part of a carefully designed
plan that volunteers and campers have been practicing like a
fire drill.
Speaker 8 (02:28):
We have two outdoor monitors, we have door monitors. We
have a campus monitor that's just keeping an eye out.
We took down our signage, taped up paper on the walls.
We're going to have some of the students draw on it.
But that's an ice measure.
Speaker 5 (02:45):
These children and teens are some of the over four
million US citizens under the age of eighteen who live
with at least one undocumented parent, and for them Trump's
mass deportation campaign.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
Feels like it's at the front door of their lives,
even in safe havens like camp.
Speaker 6 (03:07):
This is a my drowning of a cat.
Speaker 7 (03:09):
So the camp was living in a neighborhood in a
box because his family went to go on fine Field
and they got lost. Even the bodda trying to find
the family, the mom and dad, and he also got lost.
He felt nervous, sad. He was crying because she didn't
(03:32):
found his family.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
From Fudurrobibia. It's Latino USA. I'm Maria and your horsa
today a summer vacation like no other. Summer came as
ICE increasingly began to target undocumented people with no criminal
record whatsoever. We wanted to know what summer break looks
like for US citizen children of undocumented immigrant parents, the
(04:01):
millions of American kids who live in fear that their
own parents could be taken by ICE. We take you
to two places. The camp that you just heard about.
We're also going to introduce you to a teenage girl
who's navigating her final summer before starting college. We're going
to hear in their own words, what it's like to
(04:21):
grow up in the backdrop of Trump's America in the
summer of twenty twenty five. I'm going to pass the
mic back to producer Ariel Goodman, who's going to take
us now to meet the teenage girl, Sophie.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
No sorry, Sophie is practicing parallel parking.
Speaker 5 (04:45):
She's in this sprawling parking lot outside of a mall.
Speaker 3 (04:48):
She's getting ready for her driver's test.
Speaker 9 (04:51):
I'm I used to parking in parking lots, so that's
what we're doing right now.
Speaker 6 (04:56):
We're practicing in a parking lot.
Speaker 5 (04:59):
This is a mile stone that she's been working towards
for months, and it's one that's required sixty five hours
of driving practice with her dad, Ba.
Speaker 10 (05:10):
Ba And as you can imagine, it hasn't always been pretty.
Speaker 11 (05:21):
Sofas pedro recomendo sofa yellow Movian.
Speaker 6 (05:32):
We get into fights, but he's a good teacher.
Speaker 9 (05:34):
Like we might scream at each other, but like at
the end, I'm a better driver regardless.
Speaker 5 (05:40):
Sophie's dad is undocumented and he's been in the US
longer than he ever lived in Mexico, where he was born.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
He was Sophie's age when he first came here, really close.
Speaker 5 (05:51):
He was working these long night shifts at a bakery,
and he didn't have a license back then, but he
needed to drive in order to get to work, so
he would risk it.
Speaker 9 (06:01):
Me as an eighteen year old, I can't imagine like
not being able to have your license where you're driving,
Like that's really hard.
Speaker 6 (06:08):
Even with my permit, it still feels really scary.
Speaker 3 (06:11):
Sophie is a US citizen, she was born here.
Speaker 9 (06:15):
But still I could be a really good driver, but
once that police car comes behind me, everything comes out
the window. Because I'm with my dad or I'm with
my mom, Like they could take my mom, they could
take my dad, they could take me, because racial biases
are all the same. You see me, you see my mom,
you see my dad. The common denominator is that we're
(06:37):
in Mexican, and like, I don't want to be detained,
but knowing there's about possibility when you go outside, it's
hard for me to enjoy my summer.
Speaker 5 (06:49):
Sophie is not alone in this feeling. In fact, the
reason we're telling you her story is because of just
how common this is. It's also the reason that we're
not telling you what city were in, or the names
of anyone else in her family come.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
Okay.
Speaker 5 (07:06):
Sophie's dad shares this sense of unease. It's one of
the main reasons he's teaching his daughter to drive this summer.
Speaker 11 (07:12):
The then was mio Qui Juan.
Speaker 5 (07:16):
He and his wife are scared of being taken by ice,
but their biggest concern is what would happen to their
daughter's life if they were.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
Taken Sophie.
Speaker 11 (07:28):
Suela.
Speaker 5 (07:33):
Sophie's dad says that teaching her how to drive means
that if the worst were to happen, he would at
least know that she could get herself to college or
drive herself to doctor's appointments.
Speaker 11 (07:44):
Maybe maibe in Sofia Hey practical.
Speaker 5 (07:50):
Sophie's dad has worked in construction for over a decade,
and last year, the owner of the construction company where
he works voted for Trump, and soon after the inauguration.
Speaker 11 (08:04):
Lost problem say especially.
Speaker 5 (08:07):
His boss called him. He told him it's best that
you stay home. Once things quote calm down, we can
get back to work.
Speaker 11 (08:15):
I didn't lose my job, it was just like the
person I was working he know, feels safe for me.
Speaker 6 (08:22):
Well, you're no longer working with him, though he's not
giving you pay leave like he fired you. Papa.
Speaker 11 (08:31):
If he's afraid that when somebody call the police, I
could get the party. So he's he's not he's no
one on his on his conscient He.
Speaker 6 (08:44):
Doesn't want to lose his most valuable worker, basically. But
I find kind of.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
Suspicious.
Speaker 9 (08:52):
If I feel comfortable because my dad likes his boss,
I guess, But me personally, I am giving him this.
It's giving situationship like you're not getting any of the benefits.
You're just doing his work.
Speaker 3 (09:12):
N he didn't value you.
Speaker 5 (09:17):
At this point, Sophie has practiced parallel parking over twenty times.
Under the beating hot sun. She parks and gets out
her log book from the glove compartment. It's filled with
these carefully handwritten entries that log every time her and
her dad have practice driving this summer. She logs her
practice session and then she realizes she's reached the sixty
(09:38):
five hours that she needs to get her license.
Speaker 6 (09:40):
Everything's good right now, life is good.
Speaker 9 (09:44):
Yeah, as completion for my sixty five hours of driving,
We're going to the Mexican ice cream place.
Speaker 6 (09:54):
Yes, it's a tree for both of us. She built love.
Speaker 5 (10:00):
We drive to the ice cream store and walk in.
Sophie and her dad are excited. They say that this
shop is the best one in town.
Speaker 6 (10:13):
Well, I like their Bubblegum flavor ice cream.
Speaker 3 (10:19):
It's really good.
Speaker 6 (10:21):
My mom likes her on us.
Speaker 5 (10:23):
As we wait for our order, all of our eyes
drift to the TV hanging in the back wall of
the shop.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
It's a national newscast from Univision.
Speaker 5 (10:34):
A councilman from Los Angeles is describing this massive ice
rate that just took place amidst the uprisings in LA
over the summers, and so they're taking workers, the councilman says,
people with families and deep roots in this country. They're
(10:55):
entering churches without Warrantsrero's.
Speaker 7 (11:03):
Familias he is.
Speaker 3 (11:04):
Ada for young people like Sophie. This summer sort of
looks like any other.
Speaker 5 (11:12):
It's filled with long, hot days, fun moments with friends,
some boredom. But in the background of day to day
life is this sense of profound and encroaching fear that
a parent and life as they know it could get
taken away from them at any moment.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
Coming up on Latino USA. As ice raids swept small
towns and big cities across the country this summer, we
ended up speaking with experts about the trauma that children
experience when they're forced to live in a state of
fear about their parents' safety. Stay with us, Yes, hey,
(12:15):
we're back. Before the break, we heard from Sophie. She's
a teenager navigating summer vacation amidst the fear of ice.
And as the season went on, ice raids continued to intensify,
sending shockwaves through many immigrant communities. Producer Ariel Goodman takes
(12:36):
us back to the summer camp now that we visited
at the top of the show, and we're going to
try to understand how the kids there are making sense
of it all.
Speaker 5 (12:47):
This summer's ice raids followed a similar playbook. Dramatic videos
show federal agents detaining day laborers and home depot parking lots,
and chasing farm workers across fields. Groups of masked officers
swarming in and picking people up off the streets, shoving
them into unmarked cars, Massive groups of armed agents descending
(13:11):
on workplaces.
Speaker 6 (13:13):
Vice agents swarming all the gates.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
Here at the car wash, grabbing some of the workers
as they dried cars.
Speaker 5 (13:18):
It didn't matter if it was a small town or
a big city. Each raid started to feel more militarized
than the previous one, and the ripple effects could be
felt everywhere. Back at summer camp, the same one we visited.
At the beginning of this piece, a high schooler is
(13:40):
celebrating her birthday. The camp's director is checking in with
the over fifty campers, whose ages run from kindergarten to
high school, as if there.
Speaker 12 (13:55):
Is something that worried you today or the warriors this week.
Speaker 3 (14:10):
Is past.
Speaker 5 (14:11):
I'm afraid they'll take my parents away. It's a common
feeling at this summer camp. According to the camp's director,
whose name we're not going to use in order to
protect him and everyone else.
Speaker 12 (14:26):
We know that in the town there has been high
levels of anxiety by the presence of eyes in which
lately has been showing as a militarized police. That image
is really terrorizing because it's people who are coming equip
with many weapons on them. And I think one of
(14:49):
the losses is normality. Normality to go for chopping, normality,
to put the kids to the school boss, normality used
to walk as a family in the park, the normality
to have fun, and the kids are feeling unsafe. Of course,
they are not blind. They listen, they see they understand
(15:10):
what is happening around.
Speaker 5 (15:22):
In order to understand what young people in the US
are going through right now, I spoke to experts who
study the effects of war on children. One of them
was a cousin of mine, clinical child psychologist doctor Andrea
Goodman Hansel, whose doctoral research focused on the kind of
trauma that children carry when they survive things like a holocaust,
(15:44):
a war, or a natural disaster.
Speaker 6 (15:46):
After a natural disaster, people can say to a child, Okay,
the hurricane is over, it's not going to hit here again.
Speaker 7 (15:55):
You are safe.
Speaker 3 (15:56):
We're going to build from here.
Speaker 5 (15:57):
But children worried about their parents getting to have no
sense of relief. She says that living in this state
of unknowing produces a kind of chronic PTSD that leads
kids to lose trust in the world itself. It was
something that the dozens of kids that I spoke to
(16:18):
for this piece were managing in different ways, but they
were all reckoning with something similar, a loss of the
idea that the world is a safe place.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
I just hope my parents don't like get taken away,
or like they don't get caught something like that, because
it's sad seeing how others get their parents taken away,
and I like every crime for them.
Speaker 9 (16:50):
Mostly all the summer i've been home, I haven't really
been going places. My family's like worried when they go
outside because of ice could be anywhere.
Speaker 7 (17:01):
Sometimes my dad showed my mom videos stuff ice the
police deporting people. Were scared that the police comes to
our block and knock on all the doors and checked
up their immigrants or not. One time I dreamed about
(17:23):
the police coming in our house and they got our parents,
and then all my cousins started crying. I jumped off
my bed and I started running to my mom's room
because I was scared, and then then I walked them up.
Speaker 6 (17:43):
And what's your message to other kids who are going.
Speaker 11 (17:46):
Through this.
Speaker 7 (17:49):
If they get like nervous, like, don't get shy and
breathing and reale and continue what you was doing.
Speaker 5 (18:00):
Okay, let's see you do it.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
We'll be right back. Yes, hey, we're back. Before the break,
we heard directly from some of the more than four
million US citizen kids who are grappling with the looming
(18:32):
terror of Trump's immigration policies. We're going to go back
now to Sophie, who's the teenager that we last heard
from when she was practicing for her driver's test, and
our producer Ariel Goodman is going to take it from here.
Speaker 5 (18:47):
For Sophie, this was a summer of milestones, and it
started with her high school graduation.
Speaker 9 (18:56):
I was scared of walking up on the stage. Those
heels were really killing me. I was thinking, Wow, I'm
finishing high school. I'm going out to college.
Speaker 5 (19:07):
Sophie's mom grew up in Mexico and this was a
scene that she had only ever watched in movies from
the US JOOI and Fendicula Mexico Quelos Studiente s at
savan suvirete, the classic scene of smiling teenagers throwing their
caps up into the air. So soon, Sophie will be
(19:32):
the first member of her family to go to college,
where she plans to study immigration law.
Speaker 3 (19:37):
This means a lot to Sophie's mom.
Speaker 5 (19:40):
When she first got here, she was undocumented, she was
navigating a new country, she didn't speak the language, and
she often felt like she couldn't give her daughter the
support she needed at school. But on top of getting
a high school diploma, Sophie also received a special recognition
from the school district for being a bilingual student. She
(20:00):
was being recognized for something that her mom taught her
her Spanish.
Speaker 13 (20:05):
Medioma mil ingua la manela and let me be that
la mandela, let me carrassan maybe the then tu san diaz,
india frutos.
Speaker 9 (20:19):
I know she was ashamed of her Spanish when she
came here, but now I'm like, wow, I am getting
recognized that I can speak Spanish.
Speaker 5 (20:28):
A few days after graduation, Sophie's family and friends gathered
to celebrate in a park and.
Speaker 9 (20:34):
We were pairing for the party and we were all
setting up and like there's a lot of police activity
because I heard like ambulances and stuff. I was like, ooh,
I don't know what's happening there. And then we saw
a band and I was like, whoa a band? And
then I saw I was like, oh, white my heart
saying because like how how myself was to react? I
(20:56):
was scared, but like, thankfully it wasn't any Ice fans,
but it's still kind of like made me remember, like
you're not really safe even if you're celebrating the best moments.
Speaker 5 (21:07):
You know, throughout Sophie's summer, that fear hung at the
edges of her everyday life.
Speaker 3 (21:14):
Like a distant ghost. I'm about go to college.
Speaker 9 (21:17):
I want to go to the pool. I want to
hang out with my boyfriend. I want to hang out
with my friends like I want to be a teenager.
I want to get in trouble with my parents, not
with the Department of Homeland Security, you know, or ice.
Speaker 5 (21:35):
But still, Sophie moved forward with her summer despite the fear.
She celebrated her eighteenth birthday this then it was time
for a long awaited moment.
Speaker 11 (21:49):
Okay, it's fuss.
Speaker 9 (21:52):
Right now, we're in my car or my dad's car,
because we are going to my exam for driving.
Speaker 5 (22:01):
On a rainy morning, Sophie gripped the steering wheel and
she drove with her parents to take her driver's license test.
We got to the offices, Sophie registered with an instructor
and then got into the car that despite her being
kind of embarrassed about it, her parents were both filming
(22:21):
the whole thing on their cell phones with huge smiles
on their faces.
Speaker 13 (22:26):
Uh.
Speaker 5 (22:28):
She pulled out of the parking lot and her mom
and dad waited, but when she came back, she was crying.
Speaker 3 (22:34):
She didn't pass.
Speaker 5 (22:38):
Okay, you're strong, her dad tells her. This isn't going
to break you. You get three chances, it's gonna be fine.
Sophie moved on with her summer, but in the background,
the Trump administration's attacks on immigrants continued to intensify. Parents
(23:02):
trying to drop off their kids at school watched as
Ice agents handcuffed a woman just a block away from
the playground. As the end of the summer approached, All
of this was in the back of Sophie's mind as
she prepared to leave home and go to college.
Speaker 9 (23:17):
It feels wrong because you assume, I guess a child,
that your parents would protect you no matter what. But
what happens when they can't protect you, and what happens
when they leave you? How am I going to support
myself if I don't know how to?
Speaker 5 (23:37):
Sophie took her driver's test again, and this time she
passed and got her license. Then, as often happens during
summer vacation, it was like you close your eyes and
all of a sudden.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
Good morning.
Speaker 3 (23:50):
How is everybody exciting done? It's freshman drop off day
at college.
Speaker 5 (23:57):
The dorm is filled with families taking pictures and accompanying
slightly lost looking students as they move in Sophie's dad
carries these huge boxes of shoes.
Speaker 3 (24:07):
And bedding up two flights of stairs.
Speaker 5 (24:11):
Her mom is carefully disinfecting the drawers of the dorm
room bureau and neatly putting her clothes away. After they finish,
Sophie and her mom hug and start to crack. Her
dad is filming the whole thing and trying to get
her to smile. You're gonna try your best and build
(24:35):
something better for yourself, he says. Then he makes her
send a message to someone who will also miss her,
their dog Max.
Speaker 11 (24:49):
Okay, I love you.
Speaker 3 (24:52):
Back at camp, the kids are also getting ready to
say goodbye.
Speaker 4 (24:56):
Tell us what we're doing right now? We're going to
see The river is.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
At night.
Speaker 4 (25:03):
It might look scary, but to me, it kind of
looks beautiful. And there's leaves, trees, grass, birds, animals in
a river.
Speaker 5 (25:15):
The path that we're walking on is this tunnel of
green forest. It's the kind of place where everything around
us looks and feels alive.
Speaker 4 (25:24):
You're just did to see butterflies and birds.
Speaker 6 (25:27):
What do you think it's like to be them.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
Sad whore?
Speaker 7 (25:32):
Because what if like they lose their family member, or
like what if their home gets chopped down because they
live in trees.
Speaker 5 (25:41):
I spent this whole summer talking to young people, hearing
different versions of a similar painful story. Their sense of home,
of safety is getting taken away. It's like everyone forgot that.
Just outside the frame of the news report or the
ral video, there are children there and they're a part
(26:04):
of this story too.
Speaker 7 (26:08):
Birds really need home, Like they make nests, and maybe
like in the nest there's their baby, and people just
like chopped down the trees or something.
Speaker 4 (26:19):
So I feel bad for the babies. They just got
born and they could have seen the world and like
other stuff.
Speaker 5 (26:30):
One hundred and eighty thousand people have been deported since
Trump took office in January, and countless more have been
taken to immigration detention camps, and this administration shows no
signs of slowing down its mass deportation campaign.
Speaker 3 (26:47):
The quote Big Beautiful Bill.
Speaker 5 (26:49):
That passed by Congress in July has allocated an extraordinary
seventy five billion dollars to ICE. That's more than the
entire military buzzy for almost every country in the world.
But still, in every conversation with kids, you can feel
them blossoming. They're discovering the world and asserting their place
(27:14):
within it. And if you listen closely, you can hear
them imagining a future that they are a part of
and inviting us all to help them build it.
Speaker 4 (27:29):
If you could say, like a message to the world,
or would it be My message is to let it grow.
Speaker 7 (27:36):
Don't chop off the trees, because you never know when
burn us are in there or birds are in there.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
This episode was produced by Ariel Goodman. It was edited
by Seer Quevedo and Latino USA's managing editor Fernanda Echavarri.
It was mixed by Julia Caruso. Fact checking for this
episode by Rosanna Aguire. Our cover art was created by
Josse Ortis Pagan special thanks to Ramiro aguilad Villa Marin
(28:29):
and Maria del Garmin. The Latino USA team also includes
Jessica Ellis, Renaldolanos Junior, Stephanie Lebau, Andrea Lopez Crusado, Luis
Juna Frimar, Marquis, Julieta Martinelli, Monica Murles, Garcia, Adriana Rodriguez
and Nancy Trujuillo. Penille, Ramirez and I are co executive
(28:50):
producers and I'm your host Magino Posa. Latino USA is
part of Iheart's Michael Dura podcast Network. Executive producers that
iHeart are The Gomez and Arlene Santana. Join us again
on our next episode, and in the meantime, I'll see
you on our social media. And remember, dear listener, if
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Speaker 2 (29:27):
Latino USA is made possible in part by the Annie
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Speaker 7 (29:32):
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Dear, let you know USA listener. Before we start, you
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So click the link in the episode description and after
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you do that, then click play. Let's go to the show.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Well.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
It's nine am at summer camp.
Speaker 4 (00:45):
This morning at the tile well, and I fell.
Speaker 5 (00:50):
Asleep about fifty kids and teens from kindergarten to high
school or getting ready to start the day, and in the.
Speaker 4 (00:58):
Money, I was tiled. But then it's excited when.
Speaker 5 (01:01):
The campers are carrying lunchboxes and walking into this brightly
lit space where the walls and windows are covered in.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
Drawing, It's back to you.
Speaker 6 (01:12):
A handful of.
Speaker 5 (01:13):
Kids find a table and they quickly start a game
of Oh no.
Speaker 7 (01:17):
You guys are cooked.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
Stop say that.
Speaker 5 (01:22):
Some of the kids are coloring quietly with the counselors,
and a group of middle school girls are sitting in
the corner sipping out of pink water bottles.
Speaker 7 (01:32):
The pea cheating off the straff.
Speaker 5 (01:34):
But the counselors are wearing these colorful name tags and
red whistles around their necks. This is a community with
a large immigrant population, so they're switching between English and Spanish.
How at a glance, this looks like a typical summer camp,
but for the kids here, this summer has been anything
(01:56):
but normal. We're not going to tell you where this
camp is or what anyone's name is in order to
ensure their safety. And remember those red whistles around the
councilor's next. They have a very specific purpose. They're the
first line of defense against ice. If a federal agent
shows up at camp, they'll blow the whistle. A counselor
(02:18):
tells us that this is part of a carefully designed
plan that volunteers and campers have been practicing like a
fire drill.
Speaker 8 (02:28):
We have two outdoor monitors, we have door monitors. We
have a campus monitor that's just keeping an eye out.
We took down our signage, taped up paper on the walls.
We're going to have some of the students draw on it.
But that's an ice measure.
Speaker 5 (02:45):
These children and teens are some of the over four
million US citizens under the age of eighteen who live
with at least one undocumented parent, and for them Trump's
mass deportation campaign.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
Feels like it's at the front door of their lives,
even in safe havens like camp.
Speaker 6 (03:07):
This is a my drowning of a cat.
Speaker 7 (03:09):
So the camp was living in a neighborhood in a
box because his family went to go on fine Field
and they got lost. Even the bodda trying to find
the family, the mom and dad, and he also got lost.
He felt nervous, sad. He was crying because she didn't
(03:32):
found his family.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
From Fudurrobibia. It's Latino USA. I'm Maria and your horsa
today a summer vacation like no other. Summer came as
ICE increasingly began to target undocumented people with no criminal
record whatsoever. We wanted to know what summer break looks
like for US citizen children of undocumented immigrant parents, the
(04:01):
millions of American kids who live in fear that their
own parents could be taken by ICE. We take you
to two places. The camp that you just heard about.
We're also going to introduce you to a teenage girl
who's navigating her final summer before starting college. We're going
to hear in their own words, what it's like to
(04:21):
grow up in the backdrop of Trump's America in the
summer of twenty twenty five. I'm going to pass the
mic back to producer Ariel Goodman, who's going to take
us now to meet the teenage girl, Sophie.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
No sorry, Sophie is practicing parallel parking.
Speaker 5 (04:45):
She's in this sprawling parking lot outside of a mall.
Speaker 3 (04:48):
She's getting ready for her driver's test.
Speaker 9 (04:51):
I'm I used to parking in parking lots, so that's
what we're doing right now.
Speaker 6 (04:56):
We're practicing in a parking lot.
Speaker 5 (04:59):
This is a mile stone that she's been working towards
for months, and it's one that's required sixty five hours
of driving practice with her dad, Ba.
Speaker 10 (05:10):
Ba And as you can imagine, it hasn't always been pretty.
Speaker 11 (05:21):
Sofas pedro recomendo sofa yellow Movian.
Speaker 6 (05:32):
We get into fights, but he's a good teacher.
Speaker 9 (05:34):
Like we might scream at each other, but like at
the end, I'm a better driver regardless.
Speaker 5 (05:40):
Sophie's dad is undocumented and he's been in the US
longer than he ever lived in Mexico, where he was born.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
He was Sophie's age when he first came here, really close.
Speaker 5 (05:51):
He was working these long night shifts at a bakery,
and he didn't have a license back then, but he
needed to drive in order to get to work, so
he would risk it.
Speaker 9 (06:01):
Me as an eighteen year old, I can't imagine like
not being able to have your license where you're driving,
Like that's really hard.
Speaker 6 (06:08):
Even with my permit, it still feels really scary.
Speaker 3 (06:11):
Sophie is a US citizen, she was born here.
Speaker 9 (06:15):
But still I could be a really good driver, but
once that police car comes behind me, everything comes out
the window. Because I'm with my dad or I'm with
my mom, Like they could take my mom, they could
take my dad, they could take me, because racial biases
are all the same. You see me, you see my mom,
you see my dad. The common denominator is that we're
(06:37):
in Mexican, and like, I don't want to be detained,
but knowing there's about possibility when you go outside, it's
hard for me to enjoy my summer.
Speaker 5 (06:49):
Sophie is not alone in this feeling. In fact, the
reason we're telling you her story is because of just
how common this is. It's also the reason that we're
not telling you what city were in, or the names
of anyone else in her family come.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
Okay.
Speaker 5 (07:06):
Sophie's dad shares this sense of unease. It's one of
the main reasons he's teaching his daughter to drive this summer.
Speaker 11 (07:12):
The then was mio Qui Juan.
Speaker 5 (07:16):
He and his wife are scared of being taken by ice,
but their biggest concern is what would happen to their
daughter's life if they were.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
Taken Sophie.
Speaker 11 (07:28):
Suela.
Speaker 5 (07:33):
Sophie's dad says that teaching her how to drive means
that if the worst were to happen, he would at
least know that she could get herself to college or
drive herself to doctor's appointments.
Speaker 11 (07:44):
Maybe maibe in Sofia Hey practical.
Speaker 5 (07:50):
Sophie's dad has worked in construction for over a decade,
and last year, the owner of the construction company where
he works voted for Trump, and soon after the inauguration.
Speaker 11 (08:04):
Lost problem say especially.
Speaker 5 (08:07):
His boss called him. He told him it's best that
you stay home. Once things quote calm down, we can
get back to work.
Speaker 11 (08:15):
I didn't lose my job, it was just like the
person I was working he know, feels safe for me.
Speaker 6 (08:22):
Well, you're no longer working with him, though he's not
giving you pay leave like he fired you. Papa.
Speaker 11 (08:31):
If he's afraid that when somebody call the police, I
could get the party. So he's he's not he's no
one on his on his conscient He.
Speaker 6 (08:44):
Doesn't want to lose his most valuable worker, basically. But
I find kind of.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
Suspicious.
Speaker 9 (08:52):
If I feel comfortable because my dad likes his boss,
I guess, But me personally, I am giving him this.
It's giving situationship like you're not getting any of the benefits.
You're just doing his work.
Speaker 3 (09:12):
N he didn't value you.
Speaker 5 (09:17):
At this point, Sophie has practiced parallel parking over twenty times.
Under the beating hot sun. She parks and gets out
her log book from the glove compartment. It's filled with
these carefully handwritten entries that log every time her and
her dad have practice driving this summer. She logs her
practice session and then she realizes she's reached the sixty
(09:38):
five hours that she needs to get her license.
Speaker 6 (09:40):
Everything's good right now, life is good.
Speaker 9 (09:44):
Yeah, as completion for my sixty five hours of driving,
We're going to the Mexican ice cream place.
Speaker 6 (09:54):
Yes, it's a tree for both of us. She built love.
Speaker 5 (10:00):
We drive to the ice cream store and walk in.
Sophie and her dad are excited. They say that this
shop is the best one in town.
Speaker 6 (10:13):
Well, I like their Bubblegum flavor ice cream.
Speaker 3 (10:19):
It's really good.
Speaker 6 (10:21):
My mom likes her on us.
Speaker 5 (10:23):
As we wait for our order, all of our eyes
drift to the TV hanging in the back wall of
the shop.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
It's a national newscast from Univision.
Speaker 5 (10:34):
A councilman from Los Angeles is describing this massive ice
rate that just took place amidst the uprisings in LA
over the summers, and so they're taking workers, the councilman says,
people with families and deep roots in this country. They're
(10:55):
entering churches without Warrantsrero's.
Speaker 7 (11:03):
Familias he is.
Speaker 3 (11:04):
Ada for young people like Sophie. This summer sort of
looks like any other.
Speaker 5 (11:12):
It's filled with long, hot days, fun moments with friends,
some boredom. But in the background of day to day
life is this sense of profound and encroaching fear that
a parent and life as they know it could get
taken away from them at any moment.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
Coming up on Latino USA. As ice raids swept small
towns and big cities across the country this summer, we
ended up speaking with experts about the trauma that children
experience when they're forced to live in a state of
fear about their parents' safety. Stay with us, Yes, hey,
(12:15):
we're back. Before the break, we heard from Sophie. She's
a teenager navigating summer vacation amidst the fear of ice.
And as the season went on, ice raids continued to intensify,
sending shockwaves through many immigrant communities. Producer Ariel Goodman takes
(12:36):
us back to the summer camp now that we visited
at the top of the show, and we're going to
try to understand how the kids there are making sense
of it all.
Speaker 5 (12:47):
This summer's ice raids followed a similar playbook. Dramatic videos
show federal agents detaining day laborers and home depot parking lots,
and chasing farm workers across fields. Groups of masked officers
swarming in and picking people up off the streets, shoving
them into unmarked cars, Massive groups of armed agents descending
(13:11):
on workplaces.
Speaker 6 (13:13):
Vice agents swarming all the gates.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
Here at the car wash, grabbing some of the workers
as they dried cars.
Speaker 5 (13:18):
It didn't matter if it was a small town or
a big city. Each raid started to feel more militarized
than the previous one, and the ripple effects could be
felt everywhere. Back at summer camp, the same one we visited.
At the beginning of this piece, a high schooler is
(13:40):
celebrating her birthday. The camp's director is checking in with
the over fifty campers, whose ages run from kindergarten to
high school, as if there.
Speaker 12 (13:55):
Is something that worried you today or the warriors this week.
Speaker 3 (14:10):
Is past.
Speaker 5 (14:11):
I'm afraid they'll take my parents away. It's a common
feeling at this summer camp. According to the camp's director,
whose name we're not going to use in order to
protect him and everyone else.
Speaker 12 (14:26):
We know that in the town there has been high
levels of anxiety by the presence of eyes in which
lately has been showing as a militarized police. That image
is really terrorizing because it's people who are coming equip
with many weapons on them. And I think one of
(14:49):
the losses is normality. Normality to go for chopping, normality,
to put the kids to the school boss, normality used
to walk as a family in the park, the normality
to have fun, and the kids are feeling unsafe. Of course,
they are not blind. They listen, they see they understand
(15:10):
what is happening around.
Speaker 5 (15:22):
In order to understand what young people in the US
are going through right now, I spoke to experts who
study the effects of war on children. One of them
was a cousin of mine, clinical child psychologist doctor Andrea
Goodman Hansel, whose doctoral research focused on the kind of
trauma that children carry when they survive things like a holocaust,
(15:44):
a war, or a natural disaster.
Speaker 6 (15:46):
After a natural disaster, people can say to a child, Okay,
the hurricane is over, it's not going to hit here again.
Speaker 7 (15:55):
You are safe.
Speaker 3 (15:56):
We're going to build from here.
Speaker 5 (15:57):
But children worried about their parents getting to have no
sense of relief. She says that living in this state
of unknowing produces a kind of chronic PTSD that leads
kids to lose trust in the world itself. It was
something that the dozens of kids that I spoke to
(16:18):
for this piece were managing in different ways, but they
were all reckoning with something similar, a loss of the
idea that the world is a safe place.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
I just hope my parents don't like get taken away,
or like they don't get caught something like that, because
it's sad seeing how others get their parents taken away,
and I like every crime for them.
Speaker 9 (16:50):
Mostly all the summer i've been home, I haven't really
been going places. My family's like worried when they go
outside because of ice could be anywhere.
Speaker 7 (17:01):
Sometimes my dad showed my mom videos stuff ice the
police deporting people. Were scared that the police comes to
our block and knock on all the doors and checked
up their immigrants or not. One time I dreamed about
(17:23):
the police coming in our house and they got our parents,
and then all my cousins started crying. I jumped off
my bed and I started running to my mom's room
because I was scared, and then then I walked them up.
Speaker 6 (17:43):
And what's your message to other kids who are going.
Speaker 11 (17:46):
Through this.
Speaker 7 (17:49):
If they get like nervous, like, don't get shy and
breathing and reale and continue what you was doing.
Speaker 5 (18:00):
Okay, let's see you do it.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
We'll be right back. Yes, hey, we're back. Before the break,
we heard directly from some of the more than four
million US citizen kids who are grappling with the looming
(18:32):
terror of Trump's immigration policies. We're going to go back
now to Sophie, who's the teenager that we last heard
from when she was practicing for her driver's test, and
our producer Ariel Goodman is going to take it from here.
Speaker 5 (18:47):
For Sophie, this was a summer of milestones, and it
started with her high school graduation.
Speaker 9 (18:56):
I was scared of walking up on the stage. Those
heels were really killing me. I was thinking, Wow, I'm
finishing high school. I'm going out to college.
Speaker 5 (19:07):
Sophie's mom grew up in Mexico and this was a
scene that she had only ever watched in movies from
the US JOOI and Fendicula Mexico Quelos Studiente s at
savan suvirete, the classic scene of smiling teenagers throwing their
caps up into the air. So soon, Sophie will be
(19:32):
the first member of her family to go to college,
where she plans to study immigration law.
Speaker 3 (19:37):
This means a lot to Sophie's mom.
Speaker 5 (19:40):
When she first got here, she was undocumented, she was
navigating a new country, she didn't speak the language, and
she often felt like she couldn't give her daughter the
support she needed at school. But on top of getting
a high school diploma, Sophie also received a special recognition
from the school district for being a bilingual student. She
(20:00):
was being recognized for something that her mom taught her
her Spanish.
Speaker 13 (20:05):
Medioma mil ingua la manela and let me be that
la mandela, let me carrassan maybe the then tu san diaz,
india frutos.
Speaker 9 (20:19):
I know she was ashamed of her Spanish when she
came here, but now I'm like, wow, I am getting
recognized that I can speak Spanish.
Speaker 5 (20:28):
A few days after graduation, Sophie's family and friends gathered
to celebrate in a park and.
Speaker 9 (20:34):
We were pairing for the party and we were all
setting up and like there's a lot of police activity
because I heard like ambulances and stuff. I was like, ooh,
I don't know what's happening there. And then we saw
a band and I was like, whoa a band? And
then I saw I was like, oh, white my heart
saying because like how how myself was to react? I
(20:56):
was scared, but like, thankfully it wasn't any Ice fans,
but it's still kind of like made me remember, like
you're not really safe even if you're celebrating the best moments.
Speaker 5 (21:07):
You know, throughout Sophie's summer, that fear hung at the
edges of her everyday life.
Speaker 3 (21:14):
Like a distant ghost. I'm about go to college.
Speaker 9 (21:17):
I want to go to the pool. I want to
hang out with my boyfriend. I want to hang out
with my friends like I want to be a teenager.
I want to get in trouble with my parents, not
with the Department of Homeland Security, you know, or ice.
Speaker 5 (21:35):
But still, Sophie moved forward with her summer despite the fear.
She celebrated her eighteenth birthday this then it was time
for a long awaited moment.
Speaker 11 (21:49):
Okay, it's fuss.
Speaker 9 (21:52):
Right now, we're in my car or my dad's car,
because we are going to my exam for driving.
Speaker 5 (22:01):
On a rainy morning, Sophie gripped the steering wheel and
she drove with her parents to take her driver's license test.
We got to the offices, Sophie registered with an instructor
and then got into the car that despite her being
kind of embarrassed about it, her parents were both filming
(22:21):
the whole thing on their cell phones with huge smiles
on their faces.
Speaker 13 (22:26):
Uh.
Speaker 5 (22:28):
She pulled out of the parking lot and her mom
and dad waited, but when she came back, she was crying.
Speaker 3 (22:34):
She didn't pass.
Speaker 5 (22:38):
Okay, you're strong, her dad tells her. This isn't going
to break you. You get three chances, it's gonna be fine.
Sophie moved on with her summer, but in the background,
the Trump administration's attacks on immigrants continued to intensify. Parents
(23:02):
trying to drop off their kids at school watched as
Ice agents handcuffed a woman just a block away from
the playground. As the end of the summer approached, All
of this was in the back of Sophie's mind as
she prepared to leave home and go to college.
Speaker 9 (23:17):
It feels wrong because you assume, I guess a child,
that your parents would protect you no matter what. But
what happens when they can't protect you, and what happens
when they leave you? How am I going to support
myself if I don't know how to?
Speaker 5 (23:37):
Sophie took her driver's test again, and this time she
passed and got her license. Then, as often happens during
summer vacation, it was like you close your eyes and
all of a sudden.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
Good morning.
Speaker 3 (23:50):
How is everybody exciting done? It's freshman drop off day
at college.
Speaker 5 (23:57):
The dorm is filled with families taking pictures and accompanying
slightly lost looking students as they move in Sophie's dad
carries these huge boxes of shoes.
Speaker 3 (24:07):
And bedding up two flights of stairs.
Speaker 5 (24:11):
Her mom is carefully disinfecting the drawers of the dorm
room bureau and neatly putting her clothes away. After they finish,
Sophie and her mom hug and start to crack. Her
dad is filming the whole thing and trying to get
her to smile. You're gonna try your best and build
(24:35):
something better for yourself, he says. Then he makes her
send a message to someone who will also miss her,
their dog Max.
Speaker 11 (24:49):
Okay, I love you.
Speaker 3 (24:52):
Back at camp, the kids are also getting ready to
say goodbye.
Speaker 4 (24:56):
Tell us what we're doing right now? We're going to
see The river is.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
At night.
Speaker 4 (25:03):
It might look scary, but to me, it kind of
looks beautiful. And there's leaves, trees, grass, birds, animals in
a river.
Speaker 5 (25:15):
The path that we're walking on is this tunnel of
green forest. It's the kind of place where everything around
us looks and feels alive.
Speaker 4 (25:24):
You're just did to see butterflies and birds.
Speaker 6 (25:27):
What do you think it's like to be them.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
Sad whore?
Speaker 7 (25:32):
Because what if like they lose their family member, or
like what if their home gets chopped down because they
live in trees.
Speaker 5 (25:41):
I spent this whole summer talking to young people, hearing
different versions of a similar painful story. Their sense of home,
of safety is getting taken away. It's like everyone forgot that.
Just outside the frame of the news report or the
ral video, there are children there and they're a part
(26:04):
of this story too.
Speaker 7 (26:08):
Birds really need home, Like they make nests, and maybe
like in the nest there's their baby, and people just
like chopped down the trees or something.
Speaker 4 (26:19):
So I feel bad for the babies. They just got
born and they could have seen the world and like
other stuff.
Speaker 5 (26:30):
One hundred and eighty thousand people have been deported since
Trump took office in January, and countless more have been
taken to immigration detention camps, and this administration shows no
signs of slowing down its mass deportation campaign.
Speaker 3 (26:47):
The quote Big Beautiful Bill.
Speaker 5 (26:49):
That passed by Congress in July has allocated an extraordinary
seventy five billion dollars to ICE. That's more than the
entire military buzzy for almost every country in the world.
But still, in every conversation with kids, you can feel
them blossoming. They're discovering the world and asserting their place
(27:14):
within it. And if you listen closely, you can hear
them imagining a future that they are a part of
and inviting us all to help them build it.
Speaker 4 (27:29):
If you could say, like a message to the world,
or would it be My message is to let it grow.
Speaker 7 (27:36):
Don't chop off the trees, because you never know when
burn us are in there or birds are in there.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
This episode was produced by Ariel Goodman. It was edited
by Seer Quevedo and Latino USA's managing editor Fernanda Echavarri.
It was mixed by Julia Caruso. Fact checking for this
episode by Rosanna Aguire. Our cover art was created by
Josse Ortis Pagan special thanks to Ramiro aguilad Villa Marin
(28:29):
and Maria del Garmin. The Latino USA team also includes
Jessica Ellis, Renaldolanos Junior, Stephanie Lebau, Andrea Lopez Crusado, Luis
Juna Frimar, Marquis, Julieta Martinelli, Monica Murles, Garcia, Adriana Rodriguez
and Nancy Trujuillo. Penille, Ramirez and I are co executive
(28:50):
producers and I'm your host Magino Posa. Latino USA is
part of Iheart's Michael Dura podcast Network. Executive producers that
iHeart are The Gomez and Arlene Santana. Join us again
on our next episode, and in the meantime, I'll see
you on our social media. And remember, dear listener, if
you want to skip the ads, then just join Futura Plus.
(29:12):
It's so easy, so affordable, and you get all kinds
of fun bonus content. Join Futura Plus right now. You
will be so thankful you did it. A start Approximate Joe.
Speaker 2 (29:27):
Latino USA is made possible in part by the Annie
Casey Foundation.
Speaker 7 (29:32):
Creates a brighter future for the nation's children by strengthening families,
building greater economic opportunity, and transforming communities. W. K.
Speaker 3 (29:42):
Kellogg Foundation, a partner with communities where children come First,
and funding for Latino USA's coverage of a culture of
Health is made possible in part by a grant from
the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
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