Paying the Price: The Impact of Immigration Raids on America’s Children
Fieldwork approach. Discussions with intermediary organizations and a first set of contacts guided us toward diverse community leaders, service providers, and other key respondents. In each site we also attempted to contact everyone who had been quoted in the media, and in most cases we were successful. Focus groups of social service, child protective, and mental health case workers were organized through local community respondents. Caregivers were contacted through formal and informal networks, both through intermediary organizations and some of our local community respondents. In each site, a snowball sampling technique was used, starting from at least two different points of contact, to ensure that respondents did not all originate from the same source. Caregiver interviews took place in safe settings such as churches, community-based organizations, and, in some cases, people’s homes. A small number of interviews were also conducted over the phone. Confidentiality of respondents and study sites. Study respondents were very candid in their interviews with us, and strict measures have been taken to protect their confidentiality. All respondents were guaranteed anonymity, and their responses were rephrased in many cases to protect their confidentiality. The Urban Institute’s Institutional Review Board reviewed the study methodology, interview discussion guides, and data collection and storage techniques for confidentiality and protection of human subjects. Data obtained and analyses conducted. For each site, we collected as much data as possible on the number of children affected and their characteristics (age, citizenship status, etc.) from different sources. Data were also collected on the number of arrestees, their countries of origin, and their status (e.g., detained locally, detained in another state, released on bond, deported) both immediately following the raids and at the time of the site visits. Complete data on the number of arrestees with children, along with the number of children and their characteristics, were only available for one site based on a list of all arrestees. For the other two sites, there was no such comprehensive list of arrestees combined with data on children, so the report relies on counts of families with children and their characteristics, where available, from multiple sources: schools, service providers, and lawyers. For these two sites, the number of children included in the report are incomplete and therefore represent an undercount. The number of arrestees with children; number of children; and their age, citizenship status, and other characteristics are compared with national data based on the 2005
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