Community groups adapt mental health support as anxiety rises

Stressors affecting mental health tied to immigration enforcement in the United States have been on the rise for many Latino immigrants in Sunset Park during the current Trump administration.

The administration’s rhetoric toward various immigrant communities has focused on terms such as “trash,” “killers,” and “criminal migrants,” alongside policies proposing a system of “mass deportation” described as “Amazon Prime for human beings,” likely contributing to those stressors.

Compounding this is erratic communication from the White House, which has repeatedly cast immigration enforcement as a campaign against “the worst of the worst.” In February, however, CBS News reported that less than 14% of immigrants arrested had charges or convictions for violent criminal offenses.

This contradictory messaging has worsened the mental health of some members of immigrant communities, who have historically faced barriers to accessing services. In response, community organizations in Sunset Park have adapted to better serve those communities.

Increase in fear, increase in mental health problems

Fear in immigrant communities is nothing new, and it tends to rise and fall depending on how aggressively the administration in power enforces immigration laws. But during the current Trump administration, that fear has increased significantly.

“People are experiencing fear even when trying to meet their most basic needs,” said Cathy Vargas, director of the Community Services Program at the Center for Family Life in Sunset Park. Needs like “going to the doctor, getting food, taking their children to school -- that is not fair to the person.”

The Center for Family Life in Sunset Park is a community-based organization that has provided social services, education and recreation since 1978.

Those needs include demand for mental health services, which has been affected by this fear in what seems like a paradoxical way, as Aldonza Buerba, mental health coordinator at Mixteca, a Sunset Park organization that serves Mexican and Latin American communities, explains.

“We have definitely seen fluctuations,” Buerba said. “Even in the number of people who come forward to ask for services, but it has two sides because, on the one hand, there have been times when maybe it drops out of fear, but at the same time it has gone up.”

That increase reflects many people recognizing certain symptoms and taking the initiative to address them. Several therapists in Sunset Park have noticed increased demand for services. Some have also reported that many of their patients have experienced a worsening of symptoms over the past year tied to fears around immigration.

A 2025 KFF/New York Times survey found that 40% of immigrant adults overall and nearly eight in ten likely undocumented immigrants (77%) said they had experienced negative health impacts due to immigration-related worries.

To serve immigrant communities, providers have had to develop strategies to support their clients as they navigate this new reality or, as Buerba put it, “what we have really had to do is adapt.”

Community as a solution

Last year, at a City roundtable on mental health support in immigrant communities, Eva Wong, executive director of the Mayor’s Office of Community Mental Health, said that “every New Yorker deserves access to mental health care tailored to their circumstances, in their language and in their community.”

Language is one of the main reasons many people in immigrant communities do not seek mental health services. According to a 2023 New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene report on barriers to mental health treatment, 10% of Latino adults said they could not find a provider who spoke their language or understood their culture.

Faced with this reality, organizations in Sunset Park have adapted their services. That can include offering more remote mental health services, visiting clients, or drawing on cultural traditions to create spaces where people feel safe.

For Cathy Vargas of CFL, the challenge is how to make “people feel safe when it is a difficult time to feel safe.”

The idea is that when people seek safety by staying home, isolating themselves and avoiding basic health services, these community spaces can respond to both needs: a sense of safety and access to care.

Aldonza Buerba shared that these types of workshops come from “a blind faith that community is where hope is generated, where resilience is generated.”

Mixteca organizes a variety of activities that combine cultural specificity with therapeutic value. In some workshops, participants -- many from agricultural backgrounds -- grow corn in a community garden. In others, as part of a workshop called “Your Community Shelters You,” participants weave a blanket while sharing stories and building connections. In Spanish, the workshop title, “Tu comunidad te cobija,” plays on the word cobija, which can mean both “blanket” and “shelter.”

“The more isolated we are, the more fear grows,” Buerba explained. “And stress grows, and anxiety grows. So yes, we have been very intentional about trying to protect those community spaces and, at the end of the day, Mixteca as a space is a place where people feel safe.”