Avoiding the Re‐traumatization of unaccompanied immigrant youth in the United States
| Published date | 01 April 2023 |
| Author | Emily Ruehs‐Navarro |
| Date | 01 April 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/imig.13131 |
wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/imig 369
Int Migr. 2023;61:369–371.
COMMENTARY
Avoiding the Re-traumatization of unaccompanied
immigrant youth in the United States
Emily Ruehs-Navarro
Elmhurst University, Elmhurst, Illinois, USA
Correspondence
Emily Ruehs-Navarro, Elmhurst University, Elmhurst, IL, USA.
Email: emily.navarro@elmhurst.edu
DOI: 10.1111/imig.13131
Received: 1 February 2023 Accepted: 6 February 2023
In recent years, social service providers have begun to consider the impact that a trauma history has on the expe-
rience of individuals who are processed through social service agencies. There has been a move to implement
trauma-informed practices and policies, which are meant avoid the re-traumatization of the individual. However, for
social service providers working with unaccompanied immigrant children and youth in the United States, there are
many barriers to providing care that is truly trauma-informed. This is particularly true in the legal system.
According to the Institute on Trauma and Trauma-Informed Care (2022), trauma-informed policies rely on a series
of principles to avoid the re-traumatization of the individual. The five principles are safety, choice, collaboration,
trustworthiness and empowerment. Although implementation varies depending on the type of service provider, the
institute notes several general practices that contradict these principles, including practices that restrict the choice
and decision-making of the individual and those that require an individual to ‘continually retell their story’.
When immigrant youth arrive without legal guardians to the US–Mexico border, they are apprehended by
Customs and Border Protection and then handed over to the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR). The ORR
provides long-term shelter, works to reunite youth with families, and attempts to connect youth to legal aid, as youth
fight defensively for their right to remain in the United States based on a series of humanitarian visa options. Some
practitioners have begun to implement trauma-informed practices in this work. However, the system itself contra-
dicts the very principles of trauma-informed care, making these practices difficult to implement, particularly in regard
to the legal system.
Humanitarian-based immigration relief options require practices that fundamentally contradict trauma-informed
principles. Humanitarian relief options require an exchange between an individual's story of suffering and legal relief
(Galli, 2020; Galli, 2023 forthcoming; Ruehs-Navarro, 2022). That is, the trauma experienced by the individual is
turned into a productive account of their life that can be used to remain in the country. For unaccompanied youth,
this most typically comes in the form of asylum (intended for persecution based on membership of a social group), or
Special Immigrant Juvenile Status (SIJS), in which a history of parental abuse or neglect is exchanged for legal relief.
This means that the breadth of an individual's suffering must be shaped into an incredibly narrow narrative that fits
into these categories. Attorneys report that this requires a mining of previous histories, often forcing young immi-
grants to reshape the preferred narrative they have about their past into a narrative that fits the law.
Many devasting histories of suffering simply cannot fit into the law; for example, gang-based asylum claims
have historically been difficult cases to argue, a reality that was worsened by policies implemented by the Trump
© 2023 International Organization for Migration.
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