A nanny in a major U.S. city said her brother was recently deported. She's a citizen, but her boss's politics have her "walking on eggshells."

In early November, a nanny in a major U.S. city sent a last-minute text to the family she works for, letting them know she couldn't come to work that day.

Her brother had been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

"I was with my sister-in-law and my nephew," recalls the nanny, who asked USA TODAY to withhold her name, citing fears of putting more of her family members at risk. "They were destroyed."

The mother of the baby she nannies replied, questioning her citizenship. The nanny knew her boss's politics, even though they'd never discussed it. She'd seen the family wearing red "Make America Great Again" hats in public, and spotted the pro-President Donald Trump flags inside their home.

While the nanny was born in the United States, several of her family members were not. Her brother, who has since been deported to Mexico, lived in America since he was an elementary schooler, she says, and as far as she knows has no criminal record. "He's the hardest working man I know," she adds.

The nanny told her boss she needed a couple of days off to support her family while her brother was detained.

"I woke up to a really long text (from the mother). She was saying, 'What are we going to do now?... I understand it's hard, but it's not our problem.' " Her boss told her government agents had a job to do, and that they "just want to get rid of any criminals."

"I just started crying," the nanny says. "How can somebody have no compassion? Like, she doesn't see how much I love her kid, how much I take care of her kid? And she can't have a little compassion for me?"

In 2025, ICE agents have arrested more than 225,000 people, according to federal data obtained and published by the Deportation Data Project. About one-third of those arrests involved people with no criminal convictions or pending criminal charges, although the Trump administration has said their goal is to target violent criminals. The immigration enforcement crackdown has sparked widespread fear among immigrants and citizens alike, and the child care sector is feeling the squeeze.

For some, schools no longer feel like a safe place. A child care worker in Chicago was detained at work in November, the Associate Press reported. According to the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment at the University of California, Berkeley, at least 21% of child care workers in the U.S. are immigrants. A newly released report from New America, a nonpartisan think tank based in Washington, D.C., found the recent escalation in immigration enforcement has led to 39,000 fewer foreign-born child care workers and, in turn, 77,000 fewer working moms.

"A lot of theories have been put forward about what's driving this reduction" of women in the workforce, says Chris Herbst, a public policy professor at Arizona State University who led the research for New America. "Is it return to office policies? The rise in trad wife culture? But nobody's really been talking about the role that the increase in ICE activity has played."

Immigration crackdown has big impact on child care, working parents

The child care sector is one of the most immigrant-dependent labor markets, Herbst says. Because some of these workers have been arrested, detained or fled the country in fear this year, some families are in a lurch.

"What we're hearing from moms around the country is that what ICE is doing is really having a devastating impact on the child care sector, which was honestly already struggling before these horrendous attacks on immigrants started," says Donna Norton, executive vice president at MomsRising, a grassroots organization advocating for better supports for moms and families.

And that's to say nothing of the mental health impacts on children in these workers' care, especially when ICE agents come knocking on school and child care center doors, Norton adds.

"It's absolutely chilling for moms to have masked, armed federal agents hovering outside their children's child care facilities and then even entering, at times, what should be safe places for our youngest children," Norton says. "Moms are horrified and they know that children are being deeply traumatized in ways that will affect them for years."

Suma Setty, senior immigration policy analyst for The Center for Law and Social Policy, a nonprofit policy think tank in Washington, D.C., says child care providers have also lost some of their workers with Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) "because of fears of immigration enforcement." DACA is a government program that allows for work authorization and puts a temporary hold on deportation for those who were brought into the country illegally as children.

"It's not just undocumented people" who are dropping out of the workforce, Setty says. "It's impacting people who do actually have work authorization."

U.S.-born child care workers have also decreased this year, Herbst adds. Any progress the sector made since the pandemic "seems to be teetering at this moment because of the disruptive effects that ICE has had on child care."

"And of course, that has implications for families' ability to go to work," he says.

Interestingly, in Herbst's research published by New America, he found child care worker decreases in center-based facilities, but a rise in private household child care workers like nannies. He thinks center-based workers "probably feel pretty exposed, pretty vulnerable," but those working for individual families in their homes have more privacy.

"Which is not to say that these workers are any less fearful," Herbst adds.

'Every day I dread going in there.'

Since her boss's comments about ICE left the nanny in tears, she says she feels like she's "walking on eggshells in her house." She's on the lookout for a new job.

"Every day I dread going in there."

She works part-time for other families who have been understanding of her brother's situation, the nanny says. She loves working with children and would like to be a nanny for the rest of her life. But she's scared. She carries her passport with her at all times, and worries every day for her other family members who don't have citizenship.

"I think it's really unfair," she says, through tears. Her family has always paid taxes. They only immigrated to the United States "because they wanted something better for us." Now that he's been deported, her brother will miss the birth of his second child.

"It just crushes my soul so much because (his wife) is due any day now," she says. "And it's going to be so sad that he's not going to be there."

Madeline Mitchell's role covering women and the caregiving economy at USA TODAY is supported by a partnership with Pivotal and Journalism Funding Partners. Funders do not provide editorial input.

Reach Madeline at memitchell@usatoday.com and @maddiemitch_ on X.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: This nanny is a citizen, but her brother's deportation has made work unbearable

Reporting by Madeline Mitchell, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

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