A recent study conducted by the Urban Institute commissioned by the National Council of La Raza, a Hispanic civil rights organization, emphasizes that immigration raids have a bad psychological impact on immigrants’ children who are in majority U.S.

citizens.

The study shows the implications of three large workplace raids: two on December 12, 2006, at Swift & Company meatpacking plants in Greeley, Colo., and Grand Island, Neb.; and one on March 6, 2007, at the Michael Bianco leather good plant in New Bedford, Mass.

The National Council La Raza points out that they that, how law is enforced is the issue, not the fact that the Immigration and Customs Enforcements (ICE) has to enforce it. The study shows that after those raids, 506 children had at least one parent arrested, and for every two illegal immigrants arrested in a raid, at least one child is affected. Some immigrants after being arrested prefer not to declare that they have children because they are afraid they would be taken into custody or placed in foster homes.

In Colorado, two thirds of the children were U.S. citizens.

The Urban Institute's Randy Capps, lead author of the report said that ICE should provide access to social workers or someone with whom immigrants may feel more comfortable talking to. The report also shows that ICE should release more quickly immigrants who are sole care givers. Especially young children cannot understand what is happening, and they feel this sudden separation as personal abandonment.

Pat Reilly, ICE spokeswoman, declared that the agency's procedures protect children from abandonment. She said: "We grant humanitarian relief in the case that someone is a single parent or sole caregiver of a child."

Reilly also added that the raids will continue, warning that parenthood won’t protect illegal immigrants from arrest.