'Stress, depression': Migrants bear brunt of Trump border policy

Colombian Sindy Estrada and her family try to stay off the streets of New York as they battle her deportation order for fear they could be detained by the authorities.

Estrada and her family received a deportation order from the US government telling them to leave the country by April 30.

"It has caused a nervous breakdown -- we have suffered stress, depression, anxiety, panic," said the businesswoman, 36, who fled Colombia three years ago after her husband's business was targeted by extortionists.

Now, US immigration officials have fitted her husband with an electronic ankle bracelet to track his whereabouts and her 16-year-old son has begun therapy amid the emotional toll of their situation.

Her son "started biting his nails and couldn't sleep, his grades dropped a lot," Estrada said. "At his school they ask him what's going on -- whether he will stay or go."

"(Despite) my desire to pack a suitcase and go... I think about what would await me there. I'm afraid to return to Colombia."

Estrada and her family, who live in New Jersey, are among the millions of undocumented migrants in the United States fearful of President Donald Trump's onslaught against non-citizens.

Experts say his crackdown has exerted a psychological toll akin to the September 11, 2001 attacks that claimed almost 3,000 lives.

Trump has vowed to undertake the largest mass deportation of undocumented migrants, who number around 11 million, in US history.

He denounces people who entered the country illegally, visa overstayers, or those with legal temporary residence permits while they pursue options like asylum, describing them as "criminals" who must be returned at all costs.

Trump has been accused of unlawful deportations without due process to a maximum security counterterrorism prison in El Salvador while also scrapping the longstanding policy of US citizenship through birth and seeking to block migrants challenging their detention.

'TOTALLY TRAUMATISING'

In the past week the Republican offered a $1,000 payout to undocumented migrants who leave voluntarily.

Although the shock troops of Trump's crackdown, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, insist they target undocumented criminals, US media reports few arrestees fall into that category.

The presence of ICE agents in migrant neighborhoods or on subway routes used by immigrants -- particularly Hispanics -- has sown fear.

The "uncertainty, fear, anguish" experienced by migrants "is similar to what was endured during the September 11 attacks" of 2001, said New York City Department of Health Services mental health consultant Juan Carlos Dumas.

The mental health crisis has led to increased alcohol and drug abuse, as well as family conflict, the Argentine psychotherapist, 68, told AFP.

"The anguish has to go somewhere," he said.

Self-harming among young people has increased, just as it did after 9/11, he said.

Youths "exorcise their feelings through aggression," Dumas said at the gate of a school in Harlem where he works to detect such issues among pupils.

"They each try to deal with the fear in their own way," he said. "We haven't seen anything like this for years."

Migrants who have been in the country for many years and built a life are affected the most.

The prospect of having to leave it is "totally traumatizing," he said, recommending that no one should feel the need to stay indoors.

Dumas said that New York, a sanctuary city where local police do not cooperate with ICE to deport people, has a range of mental health services including social workers, psychologists and therapists for those in need.

"Not everyone has it in for migrants," he said.