“They See It in My Eyes”: How Undocumented Mothers Experience and Transmit Immigration-Related Fear

This study explores how undocumented mothers in the United States experience immigration-related fear and how they perceive that fear being transmitted to their U.S. citizen children. Using a secondary qualitative analysis of interviews originally collected for a study on guardianship decision-making, this research focuses on a subset of participants—Latina mothers raising children without their husbands due to separation or deportation. Guided by feminist motherhood theory and emotion socialization theory, the analysis highlights how legal precarity, gendered caregiving responsibilities, and exclusion from essential services shape daily life and parenting. Although the original interviews did not focus specifically on fear transmission, mothers described living with constant anxiety and adapting their behavior, routines, and emotional expressions to protect their children. They also reflected on how their children came to recognize and internalize that fear, often without direct conversations. This study contributes to feminist social work by illuminating the emotional and structural burdens undocumented mothers carry alone and by urging practitioners to recognize the ways fear is absorbed within families. It calls for trauma-informed, culturally responsive, and community-based interventions that address the layered vulnerabilities of undocumented single mothers and help them better support their children under conditions of chronic uncertainty.