Seeking Asylum: A Conversation on Refugee Mental Health
Doctor of Counseling Psychology (PsyD) student, Alex Olson ‘22 spent a week in El Paso, Texas this past April volunteering to assist refugees seeking asylum. The experience has had a lasting impact—Olson aims to continue working with refugee and immigrant populations throughout her career. We sat down with her to discuss the impact of what she saw at the border and how it informed her future plans.
In addition to her volunteer work, Alex works as a Student Success Coach.
How did you get interested in working with refugee and immigrant populations?
Alex: I've always been interested in different languages and cultures because I am bicultural. My mom is French. Growing up, we traveled a lot. From an early age, I've been expanding my knowledge of different cultures and languages, but I think it really solidified to refugee and immigrant populations because of what’s going on politically in our world. There is a need for this attention right now.
Can you talk a little bit about your experience volunteering at the southern border this past April and how you decided to do that?
A: I knew that I wanted to be on the ground, seeing what was happening and helping. I speak Spanish and have been learning how to be a good counselor. I really wanted to put the two together. I thought it would be really important for me to be able to see what kind of emotions [refugees and immigrants] were carrying and what their faces looked like before I could actually do this kind of work.
“You can read as many news stories as you want but being there gives you a lot more perspective.”
I learned about the opportunity through Casa San Jose, an organization in Pittsburgh that works with Latino immigrants. They were desperately looking for volunteers at the border so I emailed them and they said, Great, you’re in! It was just as chaotic as you might think. More often than not, folks cross the border then wait to get picked up by Border Patrol. Border Patrol will then put them in a detention center until they either decide that they get deported immediately or they get a chance to seek asylum somewhere in the United States.
So people intentionally get picked up to have the opportunity to get asylum?
A: Yes. They call it a fear-based interview. [Refugees] want to have that interview, they want to explain why they risked their lives and left everything to be here. If they're lucky enough, they get that chance. Not everybody does. The people who were granted the potential to seek asylum were the ones that I saw. They were the “lucky ones.” They would get bussed over to the shelter [where I worked]. Upwards of 300 people a day came to us.
What percentage of that 300 would you work with in a day?
A: All of them. They had limited Spanish-speaking volunteers and often I was the only one to do intake. At intake I would get their information, figure out where they were going to get asylum and when their court date was. Usually it's in a place where they have family or friends. After that, I would do an assessment of how they were health-wise. Then I would explain everything:
“We're trying to get you out of here. We're going to get your family members to buy you a plane or bus ticket. I will keep you updated on what happens.”
It was a really arduous process. There was a lot of fear because they weren’t sure if I was trustworthy. Nothing had been explained to them yet. I also spoke to their sponsors to say, ‘Hey, they're here with us, they're safe. You need to buy them a ticket.’ Their sponsors are typically immigrants who have limited English. They haven't bought a bus or plane ticket in America yet so I have to explain how to do that. I would say it typically took about two days before folks left the shelter to travel to their sponsors.
It was constant chaos. If the nurse wasn’t in, someone had to serve as the nurse. A lot of folks were really ill because they didn't get treatment in the detention centers. I had to serve as the nurse a few times and I don't have any medical training. You just have to jump in where you can, when you can, to treat whatever needs are coming at you.
What were the predominant mental health impacts you saw?
A: Interestingly enough—but I think this makes sense—a lot of folks weren't talking about mental health. If I were to probe, ‘How are you feeling?’ their minds were elsewhere. Their focus is: I need to get to this city and I need to get asylum. Then I can process this. I did have some people tell me horrific things that they'd been through on their journey. Not many people talked about the reasons why they left but that’s traumatizing as well. I knew that they had this baggage with them but they weren't in a place to talk about it yet. A lot of the research shows that the mental health issues you see [affecting asylum-seekers] are trauma, post-traumatic stress, depression, and anxiety. What intensifies these issues is the discrimination that they often experience once they are here. They've got trauma before they migrate, trauma during their migration process, and then trauma once they’re resettled. It's hard to tease apart.
What have you learned, working with refugee and immigrant populations that you feel the general population isn't aware of?
A: A lot of people have misconceptions. I don't think they think through the reasons why someone might flee their home. There is this narrative of: “They're taking our jobs.” I believe that if everybody went to the border and saw what was happening, they wouldn’t say that anymore. No one puts their life or their child’s life at risk like that just to get more money. They're crossing the border because they would have died being where they were.
“People say, ‘Why are they crossing the border illegally?’ It's not because they want to. It’s because they don't have the means to do it legally.”
A photo Alex took while at the shelter
They don’t have passports. They are doing it in the most legal way they have access to. They're going to the border crossings and waiting. It doesn’t warrant this underlying tone of ‘They’re trying to get us.’
Were a lot of the people you were interacting with separated from their families or had they been reunited?
A: Both. Out of all the emotions that were coming out, it was most often sadness and exasperation about being separated from someone. That’s the hardest thing to talk about because there wasn't anything I could do to reunite them. The first phone call that I picked up someone said, “Where's Nancy? I can't find my sister.”
What’s your biggest takeaway from this experience?
A: I feel like it changed me. This is the work that needs to be done. I was so impressed by how resilient they were. Someone said, ‘Fear doesn't exist, it can’t. We just have to keep going.’ Once they realized that they were in a safe place, you’d see the kids start to laugh again and then the parents starting to relax a little bit. It's important to see those things. Humans are very resilient. Even when you've got the worst of situations, somehow, you keep pushing forward.
What are your major career goals?
A: I want to be a psychologist in a space that goes outside of the box to get to the folks who aren't getting care. [I want to offer] culturally and linguistically inclusive therapy. A lot of times we use what we know to treat people but we don't know what we don't know. I want to be aware of that and create a collaborative care environment that asks, What works for you? What does mental illness look like to you in your language and in your country?
I'd like to start changing the narrative. We're in the midst of a paradigm shift. It’s just about continuing the fight because it is a fight. Especially now. I really think we're headed in a good direction. It just takes a lot of motivation, compassion, and really hard work. I want to figure out a system that is sustainable, for both the provider and the patient.
If you’re interested in volunteering to help out at the border or to make donations to those detained at the border, you can contact Alex at alexandra.olson@chatham.edu. To learn more about Chatham’s Doctor of Psychology (PsyD) in Counseling Psychology program, visit our webpage.
