Name: Beyond Policy: How Immigrant Status Impacts Mental Health
Start: 2026-06-23T12:00:00-04:00
End: 2026-06-23T13:00:00-04:00
Location: Virtual – Zoom

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Since January 2025, suicides have accounted for nearly 20% of all deaths in ICE custody, and nearly 80% of likely undocumented immigrants have reported negative health impacts due to immigration-related stress (KFF/NYT 2025 Survey of Immigrants). Navigating life in a new country is hard enough, but when state-sanctioned fear is used as a weapon, communities are paying the price with their mental health, their safety, and their lives.

As mental health care providers, community workers, and neighbors, we cannot look away. Join Samaritans and a panel of experts for an honest conversation about the trauma and chronic stress immigrants in the U.S. face, and how to support them. This webinar will:

Identify how the US immigration system impacts mental health through fear, hypervigilance, and dehumanization.
Discuss why those at most risk are often the least able to access suicide prevention resources, and how distrust of systems, language barriers, and immigration-related fears keep people from seeking help.
Explore the power of empathy in allyship to better protect vulnerable individuals. Suicide prevention must include everyone, and that means confronting unjust policies and conditions. We all play a role in protecting our neighbors.

Alberto Vasallo, III

Alberto Vasallo, III is President and CEO of El Mundo Boston, an iconic Latino multimedia company that has been in the publishing, broadcasting and large-scale event business for the past 53 years in Boston. He has received numerous awards for his work in the community as well as for his groundbreaking events and exclusive and in-depth coverage of the Latino community through his various media platforms. He is part of a family that has become synonymous with Boston, as El Mundo Boston remains a family business. His father Alberto Vasallo, Jr. was born in Havana, Cuba and his mother, Flor, is a native of Ecuador, South America. Born and raised in Boston, Alberto is a graduate of Boston College High School (’85) and Boston College (’89) and in 2018 he received an honorary doctorate from his alma-mater Boston College, making him a Triple Eagle.

Heather Yountz

Heather Yountz is a Senior Immigration Attorney at the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute. Listed as one of Boston Magazine’s Top Lawyers of 2022-24 and a 2018 Top Women of Law by Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly, Heather received the 2023 Boston Bar Association’s President’s Award as part of a cohort of attorneys who worked on the Martha’s Vineyard Migrant’s Case. She also accepted the 2017 AILA New England Pro Bono Champion award after successfully challenging the Muslim Ban. Heather provided pro bono legal advice to Afghan parolees in U.S. military barracks, and she traveled to Tijuana to volunteer with asylum-seekers at the border.

Kiara Hernandez-De Assis

Kiara Hernandez-De Assis (she/her/hers) serves as the Manager of Quality Planning and Assurance at Samaritans, Inc. in Boston. She earned her bachelor’s degree in journalism from Suffolk University in 2018. Over the past four years, she has built experience in crisis intervention and suicide prevention, drawing on her lived experience to provide support and foster hope. As a Salvadoran- American and suicide attempt survivor, she recognizes the stigma around mental health within communities of color. She dedicates her work to giving a voice to those suffering in silence and reminding them that they are never alone.

Simona Badger, LCSW

Simona Badger, LCSW is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, Forensic Social Worker, and educator with over 17 years of experience at the intersection of mental health and the legal system. She earned a Bachelor’s degree in Sociology from Herbert H. Lehman College and a Master of Social Work from Fordham University Graduate School of Social Service, specializing in Clinical Social Work and Law. Ms. Badger conducts immigration mental health evaluations for asylum, VAWA, T-Visa, U-Visa, Extreme Hardship, and Cancellation of Removal cases. She has trained hundreds of mental health professionals nationwide and provides expert witness testimony in legal proceedings.