March 6, 2025
Clavel Rangel & Katie Scarlett Brandt
The support group is small — five migrant mothers — but that these women have shown up here is big. They’re sharing the stories of their lives, the events that led them to flee their home country and what they encountered on their 7,000-mile journey from South America to the United States.
The mothers sit in a small, tiled room in Queens, New York. It’s a sunny September afternoon, and while mental health usually falls to the bottom of the survival priority list for forced migrants, these women have responded to an open call from Venezuelan Alliance for Community Support, Inc.
“I live with a headache. I have trouble concentrating,” says Nai, 35, when the facilitator asks the women why they have come to the consultation. “My son gets aggressive,” she adds, watching him play on the other side of the room. She does not elaborate.
Rosa Bramble (seated, left) is founder and director of Venezuelan Alliance for Community Support, Inc., an organization that supports immigrants in NYC. She talks with a group of women during a support session on December 5th 2024. Credits: Nathalie Sayago
Nai has brought her two children: Naomi, 6, and Kendri, 7. She worries most about Kendri, who has attention deficit disorder. Sudden changes upset him, and these days, there are many. The family must move to a new shelter again, due to New York’s 60-day time limit on stays, and the possibility of changing the children’s school scares Nai.
Scares her even though she spends hours a day commuting to get them to school and back, which makes it difficult for her to find a job and earn enough money to leave the shelter. But the school’s teachers welcomed the children warmly. The teachers spoke Spanish, and the school became their constant.
Nai (34) waits at the bus stop for the second bus she takes from the shelter to pick up her kids at the school in the Bronx. Credits: Nathalie Sayago
Like 46,000 others, Nai arrived in New York by bus from Texas. In Texas, Border Patrol had detained and processed her, and granted a court appointment. A few days after leaving the detention center, officials told her she was going to New York in a bus, for free.
Not everybody makes the trek for the same reason, but in general, many migrants leave because their homes cannot sustain them anymore, and — in the case of Venezuela — because the political system has stifled all freedoms and is currently under investigation for crimes against humanity.
Author Valeria Luiselli spent years volunteering with undocumented Latin American children as they faced deportation in New York. She was tasked with asking them questions about their background and reasons for coming to the U.S. In her 2017 book about the experience, Tell Me How It Ends, she shares their responses. Many came to reunite with a parent who had migrated years earlier. Others described fleeing “extreme violence, persecution and coercion by gangs, mental and physical abuse, forced labor, neglect, abandonment,” Luiselli writes. “It is not even the American Dream that they pursue, but rather the more modest aspiration to wake up from the nightmare into which they were born.”
In recent years, many of the people arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border came from Venezuela. And even though those numbers were large, the vast majority of migrants fleeing the country didn’t make it this far north. Nearly 8 million people have fled Venezuela over the past decade. Of those, 6.5 million have resettled in Latin American and Caribbean countries, according to the United Nations.
Ken (8) and Nao (6) stand near the East River at Brooklyn Bridge Park in Dumbo, Brooklyn. Credits: Nathalie Sayago
Hundreds of thousands continued onward, with more than 300,000 people crossing the Darién Gap from Colombia into Panama in 2024 — down 42% from the 520,085 who crossed in 2023. Roughly 70% came from Venezuela.
Since 2021, Texas has apprehended more than 525,800 people on the U.S. southern border. And with little warning to enable other states to plan and strategize around the crisis, Governor Greg Abbott spent $148 million through Operation Lone Star to bus 119,400 people to sanctuary cities in the north, primarily New York City and Chicago.
The influx overwhelmed the sanctuary cities’ shelter systems and resources. It also successfully pitted already under-resourced groups against the new arrivals. When Chicago, for example, planned to convert a park district fieldhouse in the Galewood neighborhood into a temporary shelter site, neighbors rallied to stop them. One local resident whose home borders Amundsen Park says that someone stood guard outside the fieldhouse for multiple days, armed. That same October 2023, another confrontation in the city’s Brighton Park neighborhood on the Southwest Side, residents — upset about a potential tent encampment — physically attacked Alderwoman Julia Ramirez and an aide.
Migration through the Darién Gap dropped drastically in 2024, compared to 2023. In New York, the number of migrants arriving fell from 4,000 per week in 2022 to about 350 per week in February 2025. Manhattan’s Roosevelt Hotel became the most visible face of this emergency. For months, hundreds of people slept on the sidewalk, in its shadow, waiting for a shelter bed.
The Roosevelt Hotel in Manhattan became the arrival center for all migrant families who arrived in New York from Texas. Credits: Clavel Rangel
Nai and her children arrived in the middle of the presidential election season, with immigration at the center of the debate. This family’s story along with thousands of others reveal how the public school systems in New York and Chicago have responded to the children who crossed the Darién Gap and ended up in faraway cities. Just as those families are gaining traction, finding work and community through church and school, they’re once again facing persecution.
Nai picks up her kids at the school located in the Bronx. Credits: Nathalie Sayago
The Trump administration has made chasing down and deporting migrants a key promise. And the administration has a high record to beat; the Biden administration in 2024 deported 271,000 people — more than any year in the past decade.
In late January, President Trump ended the visa protection program and work permits that the Biden administration had offered to more than 600,000 Venezuelans in the U.S. People who could not safely return to their country qualified for the 18-month program — called Temporary Protected Status (or TPS).
Alongside this removal, President Trump wasted no time in granting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) permission to track down people in spaces formerly considered out-of-bounds: schools, churches, and hospitals. The move has sent tremors of fear throughout migrant and undocumented communities alike, as rumors and confusion reign. But the reality is just as chilling. On January 24, federal agents showed up at a West Side elementary school, and Chicago Public Schools staff turned them away.
The district has stood strong in barring federal agents from schools unless they bring a judicial warrant, but in New York City, Mayor Eric Adams blurred the lines in a directive to city employees at shelters, schools, and hospitals: “If, at any time, you reasonably feel threatened or fear for your safety or the safety of others around you, you should give the officer the information they have asked for (if available to you) or let them enter the site,” a memo to city workers advised.
Another memo, sent on January 16 to public hospital employees, included the same statement with an additional note: “Please note, it is illegal to intentionally protect a person who is in the United States unlawfully from detention. You should not try to actively help a person avoid being found by ICE.”
The memos come on the heels of Adams’ blossoming relationship with Trump. Then, on February 10, the U.S. Justice Department ordered Manhattan prosecutors to drop corruption charges that had been brought against Adams.
Once back at the shelter, Ken shows his school iPad, on which he receives his assignments. Credit: Nathalie Sayago
While many New Yorkers loudly accused Adams of currying favor, many migrant families quietly appear to have kept their children home from school. New York City Public Schools’ daily attendance averaged 90% during the 2023-2024 school year, but it fell to the mid-80s after President Trump’s announcement, according to Education Department daily attendance data. Some parents reported keeping their children home out of fear that they’d be taken and never see them again; teachers said that children expressed similar fears.
Facade of one school in the Bronx. Credits: Nathalie Sayago
For children who already faced dangers in coming to the U.S., the threats continue. And despite reassurances from Chicago Public Schools officials, the system has also seen attendance drop at many schools, as families fear separation.
“I want our families to know that our schools remain the safest, best places for all of our students,” Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez wrote in a rare Saturday email to families following the encounter with federal agents at Hamline Elementary. “Our schools are filled with dedicated, thoughtful adults who are here to support our students and their families both inside and outside of the classroom. And we have protocols in place to make sure that our schools remain safe for all of our students, regardless of who they are or where they come from.”
Nao uses her phone, which has a sticker of the Venezuelan flag, while waiting at a pizza restaurant in Brooklyn. Credits: Nathalie Sayago
The United Nations Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR) and the UN’s children-focused aid organization UNICEF recommend that countries receiving migrants prioritize mental health care. UNHCR emphasizes that if children have access to opportunities and resources, most go on to lead healthy and emotionally fulfilling lives — with remarkable resilience — in their host countries after overcoming emotional challenges.
Yet, in two reports published at the end of 2024, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) and Refugees International highlight the shortcomings of the humanitarian response — particularly the lack of services available to children.
Schools and shelters are typically the main places children access services. But the U.S., even before migrants began arriving, was already in the thick of a youth mental health crisis. In the years leading up to the pandemic, persistent sadness, hopelessness, and suicidal thoughts had increased to 40% among young people, with 20% of high school-aged students considering suicide, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Nao swings on a swing at the park near to her school. Credits: Nathalie Sayago
Researchers point to a variety of causes, including increased social media usage, limited access to mental health care, and societal stressors such as income inequality, racism, gun violence, and climate change.
The Covid pandemic has only made things worse.
“The pandemic era’s unfathomable number of deaths, pervasive sense of fear, economic instability, and forced physical distancing from loved ones, friends, and communities have exacerbated the unprecedented stresses young people already faced,” U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, MD, wrote in a 2021 advisory on youth mental health.
Amid the increasing demand for mental health services, there was an extreme shortage of psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, and counselors. Less than half of people with mental illness in the U.S. had access to timely care in 2021, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. And by 2023, half of Americans were living in a mental health workforce shortage area, resulting in long waits for appointments or even complete inability to access mental health care. In Illinois alone, the American Association of Medical Colleges reported that the state’s mental health workforce could meet only 24% of mental health needs.
Nao plays on her school iPad in a Bronx park after school. Credits: Nathalie Sayago
The American School Counselor Association guidelines calls for 1 counselor per 250 students. In reality, the national average sits at 1 counselor per 376 students. And half of America’s public schools don’t provide mental health assessments or treatment services, according to a 2022 Pew Research Center study.
In 2023, Chicago Public Schools reached a ratio of 1 counselor per 364 elementary students, compared to 414 students in 2021. That was made possible after it received a $15 million Department of Education School-Based Mental Health Services Grant to support credentialed mental health service provider recruitment and retention.
New York’s ratio of counselors and social workers is better, according to the Hopeful Futures Campaign, which rates all states based on policies that support school mental health. The state has a ratio of 1 counselor per 288 students. However, for psychologists in New York, the ratio is 1 psychologist per 648 students, while the recommended ratio is 1 per 500. For social workers, the ratio is 1 per 773 students, compared to the recommended 1 per 250.
By The Numbers
By The Numbers
Statistics from the Hopeful Futures Campaign, which ranks all states based on policies that support school mental health
The causes of the school counselor shortage include onerous administrative work, poor pay, and safety concerns, among other reasons, according to a 2023 report from the American School Counselor Association.
Federal funding is one key way to address the shortage. The government had made a one-time investment six months earlier when the American Rescue Plan Act allocated $130 billion for K-12 schools, though it didn’t specify how schools use the money. And spread across 98,577 K-12 public schools in the U.S., even that large amount went quickly.
The goal was to hire approximately 5,400 school-based mental health professionals and train an additional 5,500 to build a diverse cadre of school-based mental health service providers through two Department of Education grant programs: the School-Based Mental Health Services Grant Program and the Mental Health Service Professional Demonstration Grant Program.
Liliana Torella, a psychologist from Venezuelans and Immigrants Aid (VIA) — an organization founded by Venezuelans to help migrants — emphasized the urgency of addressing families’ mental health. “We need to act, provide care, train people, and directly raise awareness among parents and families,” she says.
Even as school counselor ratios improved, language created another barrier for migrant students. This is because not only does the United States have a shortage of mental health workers, but within that workforce, more than 80% of psychologists and counselors are white; the vast majority do not speak Spanish.
“We need to continue our efforts to broaden the array of services and the array of professionals who can provide those services, including identifying providers that best reflect the community being served,” says Sharon Hoover, PhD, professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.
“We could be expanding our array of services to include early intervention for mild to moderate concerns, versus defaulting everyone to mental health treatment. We could do these things more cost effectively if we thought about both of those things — earlier intervention and broader provider array.”
Between 2022 and 2024, the number of English-learner (EL) students increased in Chicago and New York. This created a challenge, but at the same time, the children of asylum seekers became the saviors of school enrollment in both cities, reversing an ongoing decline in student numbers. Between 2019 and 2022, public schools in the United States lost more than 1 million students.
In New York City, the percentage of English language learners (ELL) increased from 13.3% in 2019-2020 to 16.3% in 2023-2024.
Data obtained from the official websites of Chicago Public Schools, New York City Public Schools, and the Department of Education.
“For some of the schools, the migrants coming here have been a godsend because we’ve lost so many other kids. Some schools were being threatened with whether we’re going to be able to keep the doors open,” then-New York City Schools Chancellor David C. Banks told The New York Times in September 2024.
In Chicago, the percentage of English Learners (EL) increased from 18.6% in 2020-2021 to 27.3% in 2024-2025, according to official data.
But the resources have not increased accordingly.
Illinois State Rep. Lilian Jiménez, in May 2024. Credits: Clavel Rangel | Chicago Teachers Union members speak to the press in Springfield, May 2024. Hundreds of educators traveled down to the state capitol to advocate for more school resources. Credit: Katie Scarlett Brandt
Illinois State Rep. Lilian Jiménez has been leading the plea for more resources.
“I worry about how this is going to be conveyed to young people, especially since they are moving into neighborhoods like mine that already have high rates of youth violence,” Jiménez says, also citing the unemployment and hopelessness rampant in many of the low-income neighborhoods on Chicago’s South and West sides.
“School mental health remains a priority,” Hoover says. “School mental health remains a nonpartisan issue. Our national center has been doing this work for 30 years, and we will continue to have many new arrivals to our country who need support so they can be productive, effective, and well in our society.”
Jiménez sees these children with no resources, whose parents have not yet found work, watching the neighborhood around them, including people selling drugs along the streets. “This is what the kids are seeing around them after the trauma they’ve experienced. To bring these new families into this without having processed what they’ve been through — it’s very concerning on a daily basis for me to think about,” Jiménez says.
In Tell Me How It Ends, Luiselli writes: “‘Why did you come to the United States?’ we asked. They might ask a similar question: ‘Why did we risk our lives to come to this country?’ Why did they come when, like in a circular nightmare, they arrive at new schools, their new neighborhoods, and find there the same things they were fleeing?”
Jiménez wonders of the migrant children, “What can we expect from them in five, 10, 15 years? We can either have a wonderful contribution to our community, or we can have more issues that we need to deal with in the future.”
Credit: Katie Scarlett Brandt
One Wells High School teacher advocating in Springfield implicates the past in our current problems. “It’s funny how [elected officials] can’t seem to wrap their heads around ‘Why is there all this violence occurring?’ It’s the neglect of our neighborhoods and public schools.”
The Chicago Teachers Union maintains a public tracker of job openings, displaying them in a list and on a map of the city. By far, most of the job openings are concentrated on the South and West Sides, where most of the newcomer students also enrolled. As of January 2025, the Chicago Teachers Union listed 1,242 vacant positions, with 51 of those job openings for school counselors, psychologists, and social workers.
Nai takes pictures of her kids at the Brooklyn Bridge in NYC. Credits: Nathalie Sayago
In New York, Nai is fighting for her children’s education, too.
Many migrant children coming from Venezuela have not attended school regularly, either due to Venezuela’s public school crisis or because of the migration journey.
School in the U.S. has become a landmark around which newly arrived families can build their lives and communities. Behind the scenes, though, schools have struggled to adjust to the influx of students, says Rohini Singh, director of the School Justice Project with Advocates for Children.
Nai picks up her kids from school, located in the Bronx. Credits: Nathalie Sayago
The nonprofit focuses on students in New York who have barriers to education, such as those from low-income families. With the newly arrived students, “The scramble initially was to get kids into schools. Now we’re seeing that these students need extra support,” Singh says.
Nai worries that her children’s behavior has changed since they arrived in the U.S. They’ve become irritable, anxious, and defiant, she says.
Rosa Bramble, a trauma-focused social worker and founder of the Venezuelan Alliance for Community Support, Inc., says these behaviors are common signs of trauma in children. Her organization is one of dozens supporting migrants in New York.
Rosa Bramble, founder and director of Venezuelan Alliance for Community Support, Inc., talks with a woman during a support session on December 5, 2024. Credits: Nathalie Sayago
Bramble explains how trauma shows up in children during the migrant mothers support group at the organization’s Queens office. Often, children express their stress in their drawings. And that’s exactly what has happened in schools, confirms Ana Gil, coordinator and founder of the Illinois Venezuelan Alliance, an organization that supports Venezuelan migrants in Chicago. “Everything they drew was about their journey through the Darién,” she says.
“We have heard parents say: my child has changed, my child does not behave the same, my child is more restless, he is more quiet and he used to be very talkative and he is not anymore,” says Niurka Meléndez, from Venezuelans and Immigrants Aid (VIA), founder of the organization that works to empower asylum seekers and forcibly displaced people. “Culturally speaking, there is a kind of taboo on the emotional issue because it is related to weakness.”
A child draws a black rainbow over a river during a support session in Queens. Credits: Nathalie Sayago
Nai, tall and very thin, tells the group that she has trouble sleeping. When she left Venezuela in 2021, her daughter, then 2 years old, was seriously ill from chronic malnutrition. The effects of the pandemic and the humanitarian crisis in Venezuela had worsened the family’s economic situation. Nai was working at the time as a kitchen assistant.
Nai looks out the bus window on her way to pick up her kids at school. Credits: Nathalie Sayago
The family first emigrated to Colombia, but as the Colombian economy worsened and xenophobia increased, she decided to take the Darién route, turning herself and her children in to the U.S. Border Patrol in Texas in November 2023.
Since their release, Nai and her children have lived in six different shelters. The only constant has been her children’s school in the Bronx.
Nai carries her daughter Nao on a walk across the Brooklyn Bridge. Credits: Nathalie Sayago
In schools, however, mental health support for migrant children remains inconsistent. “There are no specific mental health services for this population, no targeted support,” Singh says. “It’s piecemeal. A lot of schools that have enrolled a lot of students might be using discretionary funding to go into communities and try to get support. In terms of any centralized plan or model, we are not aware of one.”
Nai doesn’t know how the school is addressing her children’s needs, but the teachers’ attentiveness reassures her. Still, she says her children are not happy in the city. “Neither am I. Sometimes I feel like asking to be deported,” Nai confessed in early September 2024. “I’m not the same person. I forget things, and I always have to be on alert. I sleep very little. I wake up constantly. It must be because of everything that’s on my mind.”
Nao shows her notes from school. Credits: Nathalie Sayago
In December 2024, walking from school back to the shelter, Nai went over assignments with Naomi. “The teacher says we need to work on reading,” Nai says. Meanwhile, Kendri played with a soccer ball. It was their second winter in New York, and Nai still wasn’t used to it. The children dressed lightly in thin coats and hats.
Kendri plays with his soccer ball at the park after school. Credits: Nathalie Sayago
At a park near the school, Naomi proudly showed her schoolwork. At the top of the page, it read: “First Day Feelings.” In her still-developing handwriting, she had written: “was fun.”
She had been unemployed for several weeks, and although she now had time to take the children to and from school, survival in the city was increasingly difficult. A few days later, instead of school, Nai and her children rushed to their court appointment, where they were scheduled to testify about their case. Nai had no private legal representation — just the court notification and understanding that she must not miss the hearing. But the hearing never came to be; the date was postponed. Nai left the courthouse, walking through the World Trade Center memorial.
The children watched the ice-skating rink, already set up for winter. They had just moved again — to a Bronx hotel converted into a shelter.
Facade of the Royal Hotel in the Bronx where Nai and her two children, Nao and Kendri, were relocated after their previous shelter shuttered. Credits: Nathalie Sayago
“I’ve decided to try my luck in another city. But if things don’t improve, if I can’t find a job, I might go back to Venezuela,” Nai said at the time. She was saving up for bus tickets.
In January 2025, Nai and her children boarded a bus headed out of state. A friend there offered to help her look for work.
They have a new court date, set for February 28. Nai is afraid. “Now they’re saying they’re going to deport everyone, asylum or not. I’m scared,” she says.
This project is the work of reporters from El Tiempo Latino and Chicago Health Magazine, supported by the Fund for Investigative Journalism, International Women’s Media Foundation’s Lauren Brown Fellowship, and IRE Chauncey Bailey Journalist of Color Investigative Reporting Fellowship.
A production of
INVESTIGATION AND PRODUCTION
Clavel Rangel, Katie Scarlett Brandt, and Tibisay Zea
TEXT
Clavel Rangel and Katie Scarlett Brandt
VIDEO AND PHOTOGRAPHY
Nathalie Sayago and Joel Angel Juárez
ILLUSTRATION AND ANIMATION
Gabriela Rodríguez Soledad
GRAPHICS
Roberth Delgado and Gabriela Rodríguez Soledad
EDITING
Tibisay Zea, Catherine Gianaro, and Rafael Ulloa
FACT CHECKING
Shannon Sparks
DESIGN Y WEB DEVELOPMENT
Gabriela Rodríguez Soledad and Roberth Delgado
SOCIAL MEDIA
Gabriela Rodríguez Soledad, Clavel Rangel and Katie Scarlett Brandt
ADDITIONAL PHOTOS
Katie Scarlett Brandt and Clavel Rangel
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This project was made possible with investigative guidance from Peniley Ramírez of Futuro Media Group and Kate Howard of Reveal at the Center for Investigative Reporting.
And our profound thanks to the families who trusted us with their stories, the educators who shared their experiences throughout this crisis, and the mental health experts dedicated to helping children process and integrate their experiences.