Duration in Immigration Detention and Health Harms.

Importance: Length of custody is a mechanism by which carceral systems can worsen health. However, there are fewer studies examining US immigration detention, in large part because US immigration detention is largely privately operated and opaque by design.

Objectives: To examine the association between duration spent in US immigration detention with subsequent health outcomes.

Adverse Infant Health Outcomes Increased After the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election Among Non-White U.S.-born and Foreign-born Mothers.

Macro-level events such as elections can improve or harm population health across existing axes of stratification through policy changes and signals of inclusion or threat. This study investigates whether rates of, and disparities in, adverse birth outcomes between racialized and nativity groups changed after Donald Trump's November 2016 election, a period characterized by increases in xenophobic and racist messages, policies, and actions in the United States. Using data from 15,568,710 U.

COVID-19's Unequal Toll: Differences in Health-Related Quality of Life by Gendered and Racialized Groups.

We examine whether the COVID-19 pandemic was associated with changes to daily activity limitations due to poor physical or mental health and whether those changes were different within and between gendered and racialized groups. We analyze 497,302 observations across the 2019 and 2020 waves of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System survey. Among White men and women, the COVID-19 pandemic was associated with fewer days of health-related activity limitations and decreased frequent activity limitation (≥14 days in the past month) compared to the prepandemic period.

Advancing Research To Address The Health Impacts Of Structural Racism In US Immigration Prisons.

The US is the world leader in imprisoning immigrants. Its mass immigration detention system emerged as an extension of mass incarceration, rooted in a legacy of racist US immigration and criminal laws. Immigration policy is a structural determinant of health that negatively affects the health of imprisoned immigrants, their families, and their communities.

Cumulative Risk of Immigration Prison Conditions on Health Outcomes Among Detained Immigrants in California.

Objectives: The USA maintains the world's largest immigration detention system. This study examines the mechanisms by which detention serves as a catalyst for worsening health.

Methods: Using data from detained immigrants in California (n = 493) from 2013 to 2014, we assessed the prevalence of exposure to conditions of confinement hypothesized to negatively influence health; the extent to which conditions of confinement are associated with psychological stress, diagnosed mental health conditions, and/or declines in general health; and the cumulative impact of confinement conditions on these outcomes.

DACA's Association With Birth Outcomes Among Mexican-Origin Mothers in the United States.

The 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program granted work authorization and protection from deportation to more than 800,000 young undocumented immigrants who arrived to the United States as minors. We estimate the association between this expansion of legal rights and birth outcomes among 72,613 singleton births to high school-educated Mexican immigrant women in the United States from June 2010 to May 2014, using birth records data from the National Center for Health Statistics. Exploiting the arbitrariness of the upper age cutoff for DACA eligibility and using a difference-in-differences design, we find that DACA was associated with improvements in the rates of low birth weight and very low birth weight, birth weight in grams, and gestational age among Mexican immigrant mothers.

Risk of Poor Outcomes with COVID-19 Among U.S. Detained Immigrants: A Cross-Sectional Study.

Conditions in immigrant detention centers facilitate the spread of infectious diseases like COVID-19. However, there is no publicly-available data on detainees' health characteristics, making it difficult to estimate the prevalence of risk among detained people. We use cross-sectional survey data from the only survey of detained immigrants, conducted in California in 2013-2014, to assess the prevalence and health-related correlates of health conditions among detained immigrants.

Understanding US Immigration Detention: Reaffirming Rights and Addressing Social-Structural Determinants of Health.

A crisis of mass immigration detention exists in the United States, which is home to the world's largest immigration detention system. The immigration detention system is legally classified as civil, rather than criminal, and therefore non-punitive. Yet it mimics the criminal incarceration system and holds detained individuals in punitive, prison-like conditions.

Uncertainty About DACA May Undermine Its Positive Impact On Health For Recipients And Their Children.

Undocumented immigrants and their children have worse self-reported health than documented immigrants and US citizens do. Evidence suggests that the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which was created in 2012 by President Barack Obama and which granted some rights to undocumented immigrants who arrived as children, improved the well-being of recipients and their children in the first three years after the program's introduction. However, DACA is subject to executive discretion, and the US presidential campaign that began in 2015 introduced substantial uncertainty regarding the program's future.

From undocumented to lawfully present: Do changes to legal status impact psychological wellbeing among latino immigrant young adults?

Exclusionary immigration policies, as a form of structural racism, have led to a sizeable undocumented population that is largely barred from access to resources in the United States. Existing research suggests that undocumented immigration status detrimentally impacts mobility, yet few studies have tested the impacts of legal status on psychological wellbeing. Most importantly, we know little about how changes to legal status impact wellbeing.