When researching our topic of the traumatic effects of deportation of a loved one on children we came across Dr. Zayas, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Zayas has a master’s in social work and a Ph.D. in developmental psychology from Columbia University. Angelica and I decided to interview Dr. Zayas to learn more about his research and to be aware of what actions have been made to help children whose parents have been deported and the traumatic effects caused by it.
In the interview, Dr. Zayas tells us the story of a case he helped in 2006 of a little girl named Virginia, a citizen whose father was an undocumented immigrant and was being deported. He would go back and forth looking at the literature to see what else was happening, what was being written about children of immigrants and saw how there wasn’t anything so he continued working on other cases with attorneys and represented families who were trying to cancel their deportations.
His 35th case was Virginia’s and her father’s which he used to open up his book Forgotten Citizens: Deportation, Children, and the Making of American Exiles and Orphans. The purpose and message Dr. Zayas wanted to get across in the book were to tell the world that these are U.S citizens that are being affected and if we harm them so early in life the results will be long-term. Without any intervention, they will be without a parent or they will go to a country that they do not know with their parents.
In the case, Dr. Zayas and a set of attorneys from St. Louis wanted to show that if Virginia’s father was deported there will be a great deal of harm that would befall this child and her siblings. Due to Dr. Zayas’s evaluation, he was able to win the case by demonstrating the effects of Virginia's father’s deportation by her suffering from selective mutism. Virginia would not speak to her teacher nor talk for months. Interestingly we learned that when an immigrant has an attorney the chances of winning are 80% but not all of them can afford $20,000 for representation.
Years later Dr. Zayas was contacted by a Mexican immigrant artist who heard about his case with Virginia and her father and was moved by it. She decided to make a painting piece and named it Virginia Silencio illustrating ICE and a little girl holding her hand across her mouth. The woman who painted this sold the painting and gave half of the earnings to Virginia, who is now thinking of college, and her family.
“I want to improve lives that can influence policies around how we handle immigrants, how clinicians can serve that, and how teachers can integrate the kids in the schools. That's what's of interest for me, not who quotes me in the scientific literature. That's what drives me.”
- Dr. Zayas
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