Christmas as a Weapon: How ICE Enforcement and a Government “Santa” Campaign Deepened Trauma for Immigrant Children

Herman Legal Group | December 23, 2025

For most families, Christmas is a season of reassurance—of warmth, safety, and togetherness.
For many immigrant children in the United States, Christmas 2025 became something else entirely: a season of fear.

As immigration enforcement intensified nationwide, the federal government released an AI-generated video portraying Santa Claus as an ICE agent, arresting migrants and loading them onto deportation flights. Dubbed the ICE Santa video traumatizes children, the video, distributed through official channels, was framed as holiday messaging. For immigrant families, it landed as something far darker.

This was not an isolated communications error. It was a symbolic escalation of an enforcement agenda that has increasingly entered children’s emotional and psychological space.

What Happened: ICE, Santa, and a Chilling Holiday Message

Understanding the Impact: How the ICE Santa Video Traumatizes Children

In late December 2025, the Department of Homeland Security and ICE circulated an AI-generated video depicting Santa Claus dressed in tactical gear, conducting immigration arrests and deportations. The video appeared alongside messaging promoting a $3,000 “self-deportation” incentive for migrants who leave the United States before year’s end.

Major outlets documented the backlash:

• The Daily Beast described the clip as a disturbing rebrand of holiday imagery in “DHS Gives Santa ICE Makeover in Deranged Christmas Video”

• The New York Post covered the release and reaction in “ICE Releases AI Video Showing Santa Claus Rounding Up Migrants”

• The Independent and Los Angeles Times reported on the broader political and cultural implications of using Christmas symbolism to promote deportation messaging

This was not merely provocative content. It was government-produced enforcement propaganda deployed during the most family-centered time of the year.

Why This Hit Children Especially Hard

For children—particularly those in mixed-status households—Santa Claus is not abstract. Santa represents:

• Safety

• Reward for good behavior

• Family unity

• Adult protection

Recasting Santa as an immigration enforcement officer collapses the emotional boundary between comfort and punishment.

For children already living with:

• Fear of a parent’s detention

• Anxiety about ICE raids

• Uncertainty about family stability

the message was unmistakable:
Even Christmas is no longer safe.

Educators and child-development experts interviewed in national reporting warned that such imagery can intensify anxiety, sleep disturbances, regression, and long-term trauma—especially when paired with real-world enforcement activity.

This Did Not Happen in a Vacuum: ICE’s Militarized Enforcement Agenda

The “ICE Santa” video emerged against a backdrop of historic enforcement escalation.

Throughout 2025—and accelerating into 2026—ICE has expanded:

• Interior raids far from the border

• Arrests of non-criminal immigrants

• Tactical operations using militarized equipment

• Detention capacity at record levels

Herman Legal Group has documented this shift extensively:

• Grinch Trump Rejects Bishops’ Christmas Plea to Pause ICE Enforcement. 

• Trump Will Expand Militarized Immigration Enforcement in 2026 — Scaling Up the Crackdown Unleashed in 2025

• ICE Protests in Columbus, Ohio: Community Response to Militarized Enforcement

National reporting confirms the scale of the expansion. Reuters detailed the administration’s multi-year enforcement build-out, including funding, detention growth, and interior arrest targets in “Trump Set to Expand Immigration Crackdown in 2026 Despite Backlash”.

For immigrant families, this means enforcement is no longer episodic. It is ambient—and children absorb that reality daily.

The Psychological Harm to Children: How ICE Enforcement Campaigns Become Trauma

Aggressive immigration enforcement in 2025 has created not only a legal crisis, but a mental-health emergency for immigrant families—especially children. The harm extends far beyond detention or deportation. It reshapes how children experience safety, trust, school, and family life.

Herman Legal Group has documented this crisis in detail, including how ICE raids and enforcement fear are driving anxiety, depression, and trauma symptoms across immigrant communities nationwide. See Mental Health Crisis for Children and Adults Due to ICE Raids: 2025 Update.

The ICE “Santa” campaign did not appear in a vacuum. It arrived at a moment when fear was already deeply embedded in daily life for immigrant families—and it amplified that fear in a uniquely damaging way.

What the Data Shows: Widespread Fear and Psychological Strain

National survey data confirms what advocates and clinicians have been observing on the ground.

A major 2025 survey conducted by KFF in partnership with The New York Times found that:

• More than one in five immigrants personally knows someone who has been detained or deported

• Nearly half of all immigrants report feeling less safe due to increased enforcement

• Immigrant parents report heightened fear for their children’s emotional well-being

Herman Legal Group analyzed these findings and their real-world consequences in Immigrant Survey 2025: KFF–New York Times Data Shows Rising Fear, Avoidance, and Mental Health Strain.

Families are changing behavior in response to fear—avoiding school events, medical care, public gatherings, and even holiday celebrations.

How Children Experience ICE Fear Differently

Children do not understand immigration enforcement as policy.
They experience it as personal threat.

For children in undocumented or mixed-status households, ICE often represents:

• The possibility that a parent may disappear without warning

• Fear of uniformed or armed officers

• Uncertainty about who will care for them

• Loss of emotional and physical safety

When enforcement messaging enters spaces traditionally associated with comfort—such as Christmas imagery—it destroys one of the last remaining emotional safe zones children rely on.

This is not symbolic harm.
It is developmental harm.

Observed Psychological Effects in Children

As detailed in HLG’s 2025 mental-health reporting, children exposed to immigration enforcement fear frequently show:

• Chronic anxiety and hypervigilance

• Nightmares and sleep disruption

• Regression in speech, toileting, or behavior

• Difficulty concentrating and declining school performance

• Withdrawal, irritability, or depression

• Distrust of authority figures, including teachers and doctors

See Mental Health Crisis for Children and Adults Due to ICE Raids: 2025 Update.

Mental-health professionals describe these symptoms as consistent with toxic stress—a prolonged stress response that can alter emotional regulation and cognitive development in children.

Why Holiday-Themed Enforcement Is Especially Harmful

Psychologists emphasize that trauma is intensified when fear intrudes into moments normally associated with safety, ritual, and bonding.

Christmas serves as:

• An emotional anchor for children

• A signal of stability and protection

• A period of reassurance during uncertainty

By portraying Santa Claus as an ICE agent, the government collapsed the boundary between joy and punishment. For children, this creates:

• Confusion about morality (“Did we do something wrong?”)

• Fear that celebration invites danger

• A sense that no time or place is safe

This form of messaging does not deter behavior.
It rewires how children understand safety itself.

U.S. Citizen Children Are Often the Most Harmed

A critical but often overlooked reality is that many children harmed by ICE enforcement are U.S. citizens.

When a parent is detained or deported, citizen children may experience:

• Sudden loss of a primary caregiver

• Exposure to armed enforcement actions

• Placement with relatives or foster care

• Long-term emotional and financial instability

HLG’s reporting emphasizes that these harms are legally significant and increasingly raised in immigration proceedings involving family unity and hardship.

Psychological Harm Is Foreseeable—and Legally Relevant

The mental-health consequences of immigration enforcement are not accidental. They are well documented and foreseeable.

ICE and DHS have been repeatedly put on notice—through litigation, expert testimony, and public-health research—that:

• Enforcement actions traumatize children

• Family separation creates long-term psychological harm

• Fear-based messaging exacerbates those harms

As HLG explains in its 2025 mental-health analysis, psychological evidence is now frequently used in:

• Bond hearings

• Cancellation of removal cases

• Asylum claims

• Constitutional challenges involving family integrity

See Mental Health Crisis for Children and Adults Due to ICE Raids: 2025 Update.

What Parents Can Do to Reduce Harm

While no preparation can eliminate risk, families can take steps to protect children:

• Create child-centered emergency and caregiving plans

• Limit children’s exposure to enforcement-related media

• Speak with qualified immigration counsel early

• Ensure schools and caregivers have emergency contacts

• Seek mental-health support when trauma symptoms appear

Legal preparation and psychological protection must go hand in hand.

Key Takeaway

The ICE “Santa” campaign was not just offensive.
It was psychologically dangerous.

When immigration enforcement reaches into children’s emotional lives—especially during moments meant for safety and joy—the harm can last far beyond any single arrest or deportation.

Herman Legal Group will continue documenting, analyzing, and challenging enforcement practices that traumatize children and destabilize families, because immigration policy should never be built on fear.

Legal Analysis: Where Enforcement and Child Trauma Collide

1. Due Process and Family Integrity

The Fifth Amendment prohibits the government from depriving individuals of liberty without due process of law. Courts have long recognized a constitutional interest in family unity, particularly where U.S. citizen children are involved.

Aggressive ICE enforcement that results in:

• Sudden parental detention

• Lack of notice or access to counsel

• Children left without caregivers

raises serious procedural and substantive due process concerns—especially when the government can reasonably foresee harm to minors.

2. Equal Protection and Disparate Impact

Interior enforcement disproportionately affects immigrant-dense communities, many of which are communities of color. When enforcement actions and messaging:

• Concentrate geographically

• Target culturally significant moments

• Predictably traumatize children

they invite scrutiny under equal protection principles, particularly when less harmful alternatives exist.

3. International Child-Protection Norms

International human-rights frameworks emphasize the best interests of the child in any government action affecting family unity.

While not always directly enforceable in U.S. courts, these norms increasingly appear in:

• Federal litigation

• Amicus briefs

• Policy advocacy

When the government knowingly deploys fear-based messaging that affects children, it strengthens arguments that psychological harm was foreseeable and avoidable.

What Families Should Know Right Now

If your family is affected by immigration enforcement—or fears it may be—preparation matters:

• Speak with qualified immigration counsel immediately

• Create a written family emergency and caregiving plan

• Know your rights during ICE encounters

• Avoid attending high-risk appointments alone

• Keep copies of all immigration documents accessible

Herman Legal Group publishes ongoing guidance to help families navigate enforcement risk safely and lawfully.

Related Herman Legal Group Resources

• Trump Will Expand Militarized Immigration Enforcement in 2026

• Columbus ICE Protests and Community Response

• Coming soon: Protecting Mixed-Status Families During Interior ICE Enforcement

Final Thought: Christmas Should Not Be a Tool of Fear

Immigration enforcement is a legal process.
It is not a children’s story.

When the government repurposes symbols of joy and safety to market deportation—especially during Christmas—it crosses a moral and psychological line. For immigrant children, the result is not deterrence. It is trauma.

At Herman Legal Group, we believe enforcement must be lawful, restrained, and humane—with full awareness of its impact on children and families.