What It Means to Live With Fear That Never Fully Leaves You

I grew up understanding fear before I had the language to explain it. When I was little, I remember being told very clearly not to open the door for anyone. Especially not the police. It was not framed as a suggestion. It was a rule tied to survival. If someone knocked, I was to stay quiet. I was to pretend no one was home. I was to get an adult.

At the time, I did not think of it as trauma or anxiety. It was just life.

I did not understand immigration policy or enforcement. I only understood tone. I understood urgency. I understood that the police did not represent safety in the way other children were taught. They represented risk.

That lesson stayed in my body.

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I will be the guest on a show hosted by Neil Parekh and my good friend Dawn Neuburg, “Shining Light on Shadows: A Candid Conversation About Mental Health.” Ep. 45 will focus on the Mental Health impact of living in fear of ICE and be livestreamed Thursday, March 5 at 7pm ET / 6pm CT. You can watch the recording on Facebook*, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube or below.

*Facebook will delete the video in 30 days (approx. April 4).

https://vimeo.com/5772116

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It followed me into adulthood, long after I had built a life that, on paper, looked stable. I remember one afternoon when my car broke down on the freeway. I was stranded on the side of the road, unsure what to do. Two police officers pulled over and approached my car. They asked if I needed help.

I panicked.

My instinct was not relief. It was fear. Even though I had done nothing wrong. Even though I needed assistance. Even though they were calm and kind. I told them someone was already on their way. I lied because I wanted them to leave. I did not want to answer questions. I did not want to be seen too closely.

After they drove away, I remember sitting there, shaken. I remember thinking about how deeply that fear had been ingrained in me. How it overrode logic. How it made me choose vulnerability over perceived safety.

Even when you are doing everything right, there is often a part of you that never fully exhales.

As a child, fear [of ICE] lived quietly in the background of my life. It was present in ways that were easy to overlook from the outside but impossible to escape from within. It shaped how I paid attention to the world. It shaped how I understood safety.

As I grew older, I worked hard to build stability. I pursued my education. I built a career. I created a life that felt grounded and meaningful. Over time, I allowed myself to believe that I had moved further away from that fear.

But in recent weeks, watching immigration raids unfold across the country has brought those feelings back to the surface.

Seeing videos of people being taken from their workplaces and neighborhoods has been deeply unsettling. Not only because of the harm itself, but because it reawakens something familiar. There is a particular kind of grief in realizing that the distance you thought you had from that fear was never as solid as it seemed.

It reminds me that fear like this does not simply disappear. It becomes part of how your body remembers. It resurfaces when you are confronted with the reality that safety is not always permanent.

It can create a complicated relationship with belonging. I am deeply rooted in the only home I have known. My life is here. My work is here. My relationships, my memories, and my sense of self have all been shaped here. And yet, there are moments when I am reminded that my presence exists within a political conversation that I did not choose.

That awareness can make you question how safe it is to fully exist. How visible it is safe to be. How much you can trust that the life you are building will be allowed to continue uninterrupted.

Even now, I notice how my body responds to uncertainty. There is tension. There is vigilance. There is an awareness that never fully turns off.

I do not share this because I believe my experience defines anyone else’s. It does not. But I know this kind of fear exists, and I know how deeply it can shape a person.

I see versions of it in the students I work with. I see their brilliance, their drive, and their ambition. I also see the weight they carry. I recognize the emotional labor of building a future while managing uncertainty in the present.

For me, the mental health impact has been cumulative. It has influenced how I understand safety. It has influenced how I move through the world. It has influenced how I understand belonging.

And still, I continue to build my life. Just like I know other immigrants are.

We continue to show up. We continue to invest in our community. We continue to create stability where we can. Not because fear is absent, but because it exists alongside everything else.

Fear can leave lasting imprints. But so can resilience. So can the decision to build a life anyway.