Immigrant, transgender patients report post-election anxiety, mental health workers say

Mental health professionals say many Long Island immigrants and transgender people are anxious and afraid about their futures after the election of Donald Trump as president, amid his vows of mass deportation and curtailment of transgender health care, and a campaign that singled them out in speeches and advertisements.

After social worker Maryse Emmanuel-Garcy and a colleague from the nonprofit Haitian American Family of Long Island received worried texts and WhatsApp messages Wednesday from Haitian Long Islanders, they organized an emergency online meeting to air and address their mental-health concerns.

"It’s very, very stressful," said Emmanuel-Garcy, cofounder and executive director of the organization. "Anxiety is high. We tried our best in the conversation to encourage people to feel hopeful, to not feel hopeless."

In an interview Thursday with NBC News, the president-elect reiterated his call for mass deportations. Trump has made other comments that have caused alarm among immigrants, including that some are "poisoning the blood of our country." One of his most widely viewed ads, which attacked government funding for gender-affirming surgeries for federal prisoners, said, "Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you."

Psychologist Christopher Fisher said some of his patients were happy with the election results. He said clients at his Rockville Centre practice have been "experiencing the full spectrum of emotion."

"There is excitement and hopefulness all the way down to despair, worry, fear and sadness," said Fisher, who is also director of adult outpatient psychiatry at Northwell Zucker Hillside Hospital. "I think that each side and everyone along that spectrum is feeling those emotions more intensely."

Emmanuel-Garcy said Trump has been causing especially intense anxiety among Haitian Americans since he first falsely stated in the Sept. 10 presidential debate that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, are eating their neighbors’ dogs and cats. That spurred a surge in bigotry against Haitians, along with "pain" among Long Island immigrants as work colleagues ask them if they, too, eat dogs and cats, she said.

Much of what he said was aimed at immigrants in the country illegally, but he has also vowed to deport Haitians from Springfield, even though many are in the country legally under a program that protects people fleeing danger in their home countries. 

Taylor Eckhaus, a social worker at South Shore Guidance Center in Freeport, said an 11-year-old Latina girl opened up to her Wednesday about her intense fears of being deported.

"She looked me in the eyes and she asked me, ‘Are I and my family going to be deported? Are we not going to be able to live here anymore? I hear my parents talking and now I’m worried that somebody is going to show up to our house and take us away,’" Eckhaus said.  

Eckhaus said even though the girl and her parents are naturalized citizens — who, with rare exceptions, cannot be legally deported — they are worried.

"A lot of what we’re seeing not only on social media, but in talks within families, is, 'How much is this going to potentially escalate?' And that’s the uncertainty causing the anxiety,’" she said.

Trump has vowed to end birthright citizenship, which grants anyone born in the United States automatic citizenship, on his first day in office, although legal experts question whether he would have that power.

The Trump campaign did not respond to requests for comment.

State Republican Party spokesman David Laska said in a text that mental health professionals should also discuss "the fear and anxiety young girls experience when exposed to men in their locker rooms, or the fear and anxiety faced by victims of crimes committed by illegal immigrants and drug gangs."

Laska's comment on locker rooms alluded to policies that allow transgender women who are or were biologically male to use women's bathrooms and locker rooms. Crimes committed by people in the country illegally, and the influx of fentanyl and other potentially dangerous drugs across the border, were a major focus of the Trump campaign, although multiple studies show crime rates are lower among immigrants without legal authorization than among citizens.

Claudia Boyle, CEO of Hispanic Counseling Center in Hempstead and Bay Shore and a mental health counselor, said many immigrants strive to obtain legal residency. There is a "sense of doom" among many who are in the process of seeking legalization of their immigration status, or have family members who are doing so, she said.

Edith Chaparro, a psychologist and social worker whose Riverhead practice is almost entirely immigrants, said many of her clients the past few days have had "a lot of physical stress and cognitive stress," with anxiety-related headaches, sweating and stomach aches, and an inability to concentrate at work or school.

Shari Lurie, senior director of clinical services for South Shore, said children are especially "terrified."

"Kids are afraid to go the bus stop," she said. "These are little kids — to have that kind of fear to leave your home and be afraid to go to the bus stop, to be afraid you’ll be whisked off the street. That’s not just their imagination. It’s potential reality. That’s what’s being threatened."

Lurie said the lack of control children feel over their futures "is really too much for a child’s mind to deal with."

Chaparro said many of her clients fled their homelands because of domestic violence, political repression, gangs or extortion, or because of violence, threats or bullying due to their sexual orientation.

Trump’s election caused a "retriggering of trauma" in some, with harrowing flashbacks and a "fear they’ll have to suffer this persecution again by possibly having to return to their country."

Transgender community 'very anxious'

Trump also has targeted transgender people in his rhetoric, and in his proposals, such as legislation to declare there are "only two genders," and banning hormone treatment and gender-affirming surgery for minors nationwide.

"The LGBT community and the trans community, specifically, are very anxious about what’s to come," said Dr. David Rosenthal, founding medical director of the Northwell Health’s Center for Transgender Care in New Hyde Park. "They are afraid that they won’t be able to continue their health care or continue to transition or continue to be given equal rights."

New York offers transgender people many protections, but Rosenthal said people from other states who received care at Northwell worry "their medicines will be taken away and they won’t be able to continue to receive the care they need."

Eckhaus said transgender people, "especially trans women who feel they do not, quote unquote, pass" are now more fearful of going to the store and otherwise being in public, because of potential violence or harassment. Transgender youth say there has been an increase in classmates calling them slurs and bullying them.

"A lot of them are having a hard time not giving up on themselves when they see not just how the newly elected president but his supporters are talking about them and villainizing them and dehumanizing them," she said.

Eckhaus also helps survivors of sexual assault, and many of them were "devastated" by the election of a man who was found by a jury to be liable for sexual abuse, and who has bragged on video of grabbing women’s genitalia, something he joked about even in a recent speech. 

"There's just a lot of hopelessness — it's been really, really hard for them," she said.