Who Will Care for Your Children?

July 17, 2025

The war on immigrants will hit millions of homes ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌

July 17, 2025

Greetings, Meteor readers,

Ya girl has had a particularly difficult week, but it’s all going to turn around because tomorrow I am getting sushi and pie with my bestie. That may not sound like a classic mix, but trust me, they go together like ramma-lamma-lamma-ka-dingity-da-dinga-dong. (Name that musical!)

In today’s newsletter, we’re connecting the dots on childcare and immigration policy. Plus, remembering John Lewis, and your weekend reading list.

Did you guess correctly,

Shannon Melero

WHAT’S GOING ON

If ICE comes knocking, will you still have childcare?: In 2015, when our now-president was campaigning on the promise that he would remove “illegal aliens” from the United States, daytime talk show host Kelly Osbourne asked, “If you kick every Latino out of this country, then who is going to be cleaning your toilets, Donald Trump?” The rebuke was swift for Osbourne’s offensive wording, but there was a larger point buried under the casual racism. And in the era of Trump 2.0, with its brutal immigration policies, the question is: Who will be left to care for our children?

The United States has a long history of outsourcing childcare, dating back to enslavement, and continuing through Reconstruction and into the 21st century. As Angela Garbes explained to The Meteor in 2022, the survival of American capitalism is dependent on “ignored” domestic labor. That labor is now largely being performed by immigrants, and if they’re removed from the country, “our care infrastructure will crumble,” warns the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC). Research shows that immigrants comprise up to 26 percent of not just the daycare but also the early-education workforce. In cities like New York and Los Angeles, nearly half of all female educators are immigrants.

But with ICE raids expanding in immigrant communities, and the administration allowing agents to enter child-care centers for the first time since 2011, immigrant providers are under heavy threat. Their livelihoods, already tenuous, are being undermined in other ways, too: The administration is now barring undocumented immigrants from putting their children in Head Start programs—which have long served as a crucial support for the families of care workers—and recent changes to Medicare, SNAP, and child tax credits all make it harder for immigrant workers to make ends meet.

And when child-care workers suffer, everyone suffers. Take the case of Nicolle Orozco Forero, a Colombian immigrant in Washington state who cared for children with disabilities. In June, after a routine monthly immigration meeting, she was detained by ICE and eventually deported. (Her young children, one of whom is gravely ill, were also deported.) The 19th’s Chabeli Carrazana spoke to the families who relied on Orozco Forero for care and writes that they “are now in a free fall…[Nicolle] was the connective tissue that kept families employed. Her loss has rippled across industries.” One mother was forced to quit her job after Orozco Forero was detained because she couldn’t find anyone else to care for her daughter, who has autism and is non-verbal.

Meanwhile, the administration is patting itself on the back for being “pro-family.” After all, it increased both the child tax credit and the child care tax credit via the Big Beautiful Bill; what more could anyone want? A lot: As we’ve written, the BBB does more harm than good to the limited social safety net in America, especially for lower-income families. As Andrea Palus of Child Care for Every Family Network put it to USA Today, “I think the reconciliation bill did almost nothing for child care. And for sure, almost nothing related to the scale of the need.”

There is almost nothing in this country that exists that wasn’t molded by immigrant hands, and that includes our children. And many Americans who assume that their citizenship will shield them from the fallout of anti-immigrant policies may be about to find out that the impact is as close to home as it gets.

AND:

Today marked the fifth anniversary of the passing of John Lewis, the iconic activist who gave decade after decade of his life to securing Americans’ most basic rights. Born in Alabama, where, he later wrote, “unchecked, unrestrained violence and government-sanctioned terror had the power to turn a simple stroll to the store for some Skittles…into a nightmare,” he became one of the original Freedom Riders in 1961—and was beaten and jailed as a result. In 1965, he led marchers over the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, for voting rights—and had his skull fractured in the process. And then he entered politics, ultimately serving as a U.S. Representative from Georgia for three decades. He used that platform to inveigh against war and for equality, and always, always for the “almost sacred” right to vote. The John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would restore crucial voting-rights protections that have been hollowed out by right-wing legislators, remains stalled in Congress, but you can urge your rep to live up to Lewis’s example and support it already.

LEWIS IN 1964 AT A PROTEST WHEN HE WAS NATIONAL CHAIRMAN OF THE STUDENT NON-VIOLENT COORDINATING COMMITTEE. (VIA GETTY IMAGES)

Last year, Brett Hankinson was convicted of violating Breonna Taylor’s civil rights when he used excessive force and fired several shots into her Louisville, Kentucky home in 2020. He will be sentenced next week and is facing a maximum of life.—but today, in an unconscionable move, the Justice Department has asked that Hankinson only be sentenced to one day in jail.
In this week’s edition of Bullshit the GOP Wants You to Believe, we have a doozy: there are fetal remains in the water supply. To be clear: There’s no evidence of that! But that’s the implication of a bill introduced in Congress last month that would criminalize abortion providers for disposing of fetal remains via a “publicly owned water system” or, as writer Jessica Valenti so aptly called it, “flushing abortions.” Please note that if you are suffering from a spontaneous miscarriage at home and are unsure whether you can legally flush your own uterine lining down your own toilet (!), most doctors recommend calling 911for help. If you are self-managing an abortion, check here or speak directly to your provider for guidance.
In a difficult year for journalists, an especially hearty congratulations to this year’s winners of the International Women’s Media Foundation’s Courage in Journalism Awards, Yousra Elbagir, Maritza L. Félix, Juliana Dal Piva and Sana Atef (a reporter who writes under a pseudonym for Afghanistan’s Zan Times).
The Portland Fire have returned (almost).

A FAN TAKES IN THE VIEW WITH A SICK T-SHIRT DURING THIS MONTH’S PORTLAND FIRE LAUNCH EVENT IN OREGON. (VIA GETTY IMAGES)

If all the news of the day has you stressed, here’s a little something to smooth the wrinkles of your brain, courtesy of Queen Papaya.

WEEKEND READING 📚

On island life: Huda has spoken. (Call Her Daddy)

On being eternally hot: Millennials are redefining what it looks like to enter midlife. Spoiler: we’re making midlife sexy again. (Elle)

On centering victims: It’s been a long week of Epstein news, but Julie K. Brown, who broke many of the big Epstein stories, is keeping her focus on what matters: the women at the heart of the case. (Radio Atlantic; listen to the very end)