A new school year brings an array of feelings: excitement, anticipation, nervousness, homesickness. Maria Caballero Magaña, a K8 school counselor in Oxnard, knows these feelings well—familiar companions as students return to campus.
This year, however, she and other counselors detected acute emotional reactions: anxiety, sorrow and fear after a summer of intensified immigration raids.
Families in this majority Latino, agriculturally-centered part of Ventura County are still coming to terms with the mental health consequences of immigration enforcement. Children and their parents express worry that they may be ripped apart at any moment. Some already have.
Read more at CalMatters.
