Leveraging community psychology to counter harmful policies and foster well-being in migrant children.

Harmful child detention and deportation policies, along with dehumanizing migrant narratives, are part of a global pattern of systemic oppression targeting people on the move. This paper reviews the psychological harms experienced by migrant children caused by detention, separation, and deportation, critiquing the limitations of trauma-focused, individual therapeutic approaches often adopted by service-oriented fields. Community psychology principles are presented as an alternative framework, emphasizing ecological and systemic approaches to design more just and humane immigration policies at societal, organizational, and community levels.