Illegal Immigrants “Grapple” With Fear, Anxiety, Depression Under Trump

Ok, now let me explain this headline.  

The USA Today ran an article today with the headline:  Endless fear: Undocumented immigrants grapple with anxiety, depression under Trump

Here’s a screencap:

Here is a sample of the dripping bias from the article:

Gustavo Guerrero, 27, said there’s not a day that goes by when he’s not thinking of his immigration status. “It’s always in the back of your mind,” he said, “You’re driving, you’re working, you’re sleeping in your home, you’re picking up your kids from school, you’re constantly thinking about it.”

Guerrero, who is originally from Honduras, said he swam across the Rio Grande when he was 12 years old. Guerrero, who is a musician in Nashville, Tennessee, struggles with anxiety related to his undocumented legal status. He needs counseling, but without health insurance, he said he pays the $150 per session out of pocket. He can only afford to go once a month.

Others, like Azul Uribe, don’t learn of their undocumented legal status until later in life. Uribe came to the United States from Mexico by plane when she was 11, but her mother never told her she was undocumented — she wanted Uribe to assimilate, and to not live fearfully. 

She learned of her undocumented legal status one week after her 22nd birthday — her brother told her over the phone. 

“I’d gone from being this really gregarious, social, extroverted person to not being able to go to the grocery store when there were other people around because I felt like I was having a heart attack,” said Uribe, now 35.

For years, Uribe was locked in a legal battle to fight deportation. She had trouble sleeping and lost her appetite.

“I was very anxious a lot. I was broke and I could barely take care of my needs. I was just very poor and very anxious and very depressed,” Uribe said. 

It would’ve been impossible to have a normal life — there was a constant echo of “You could be deported at any second,” she said. Miserable and hopeless, she wondered: “How long is my life going to stretch out like this?”

Three years after the start of her immigration case, Uribe agreed to voluntarily deport from the U.S. Uribe said she left on September 5, 2009, taking a bus to Mexico, a place that felt foreign to her because she had left there for the last time when she was 11 years old.