Trauma-Informed Immigration Evaluations with Caribbean Immigrants

Course overview

Trauma-Informed Immigration Evaluations with Caribbean Immigrants is a continuing education course for mental health professionals who want to conduct ethical, culturally responsive, and clinically sound immigration-related psychosocial evaluations. The course introduces the purpose, structure, and clinical boundaries of immigration evaluations while emphasizing that clinicians provide mental health assessment and documentation, not legal advice. Participants will explore trauma-informed interviewing, informed consent, attorney collaboration, interpreter use, clinical documentation, and report-writing considerations. Special attention is given to Caribbean immigrant communities, including clients impacted by family separation, informal adoption, assumed identity, unresolved immigration status, political or community violence, gender-based violence, acculturation stress, anti-Blackness, language barriers, stigma, and loss of educational or economic opportunity. Through case examples, including a Jamaican-born woman brought to the United States as a child under an assumed name and later discovering she had never been made a permanent resident, participants will examine how immigration-related trauma may affect identity, trust, functioning, symptoms, and future planning. The course provides practical tools for assessing trauma, documenting clinical findings, avoiding legal conclusions, and reducing re-traumatization during the evaluation process. This course is appropriate for clinical social workers, mental health counselors, marriage and family therapists, psychologists, registered interns, and other behavioral health professionals serving immigrant, Caribbean, Black immigrant, and diaspora communities.