Surviving the ICE Age: UAlbany Sociologist Examines Impact of ICE on Immigrant Families

By Mirai Abe | November 10, 2025

Photo Credit: Joanna Dreby

While news coverage and academic discussions often focus on the immediate trauma of immigration arrests and deportations, a new book by a University at Albany sociologist examines a less explored impact: how an enduring ICE presence shapes immigrant families across generations.

In Surviving the ICE Age, Joanna Dreby details how the creation of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in 2003 has affected immigrants and their children, describing years of family strain, fear and lasting generational harm. 

For the 248-page book published by the Russell Sage Foundation in June, Dreby interviewed several hundred children of immigrants in New York for over five years to untangle the often-overlooked stories of a generation of youth living in fear during the era of ICE.  

Dreby said fear has always been a tactic used in immigration policies, but since ICE was created, empowered with the ability to arrest, detain and deport those in the U.S. without legal documentation, it is more present. 

That fear, she added, has inculcated a culture of silence in immigrant families about their history, journeys and status in the United States.

During her research, Dreby said she began to notice a pattern: members of migrant families whose children grew up after ICE was formed, especially during the years when its presence was most intense, often had never been told their migration stories, unlike those whose children grew up before 2003.

In one chapter, “Hush Hush,” one interviewee said she did not know about her Malaysian parents’ immigration status until she was 18, when her parents faced possible deportation. 

“Parents do this because they want to protect their children,” Dreby said.

Parents tend to choose silence to protect their children from violence or to help their children better “fit in” psychologically and socially in U.S. society, added Dreby. 

But for children, this silence can cause psychological trauma. Some of the interviewees told Dreby they have gaps in their childhood memories from the time their parents faced deportation or were deported. Those gaps were a way for children to protect themselves from the traumatic and painful experience of a parent being detained or deported. 

Dreby said when children and other family members experience a relative’s deportation, it can trigger a “spiraling effect.” Families often relocate, struggle to pay rent or move in with another household.

Dreby’s research for this book began well before the U.S. president’s mass deportation plan targeting undocumented immigrants, which since Jan. 20 has led to the deportation or self-deportation of over two million immigrants from the U.S., according to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). 

Federal deportation policies have escalated in recent weeks with the deployment of the National Guard to major cities such as Washington D.C., Chicago and Portland, where agents have been detaining those with valid visas or minor convictions, such as traffic tickets. 

About 30% of detainees as of Sept. 21 had criminal convictions, according to a Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) report. 

“The fear is much more widespread to a much larger population,” said Dreby, reflecting on the intensified immigration policy changes practiced by ICE. Surviving the ICE Age is Dreby’s third book on immigration, following  Everyday Illegal: When Policies Undermine Immigrant Families, published in 2015. 

“[Children] hear it, they see it in the media, and they know about it,” Dreby said. 

Even when parents avoid discussing it at home to spare their children the stress of knowing how federal enforcement could affect their lives, fear persists throughout childhood. 

“People are afraid. They’re uncertain what to do. It feels out of control,” said Dreby, referring to ICE’s current deportation effort.   

Dreby said society can help reduce the fear and stress immigrant families face if schools teach about immigration and the rights of immigrants. That education can help students whose parents are immigrants be better prepared to cope if their family is affected. 

“The young people I met who had that experience fared much better when something did happen in their families,” she said. 

Dreby added that training social workers and teachers to activate support when they notice a child going through something related to immigration can also serve as an important resource – as can educating the wider community to help debunk the “moral claims” that label some immigrants as “criminals.”

Over the years, the immigration system has increasingly made it more difficult for people to emigrate legally and to navigate the immigration process. Communities can help families with rent assistance to reduce the disruption to children’s lives and with legal support. 

“At the end of the day, we, as humans, migrate. This is a normal process,” Dreby said.  “Maybe when everybody’s seeing ICE being so much more active and targeting people that they didn’t  think they would target… maybe that helps people say, ‘you know what, I’m a migrant too.’"