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“For people who come to us needing services, especially those with psychiatric conditions, we often have to refer them elsewhere,” he says. “But where do you send them if they don’t have insurance? Those are the people who need immediate care, and they fall through the cracks.”
In Clarkston, where more than 60 languages are spoken within a single square mile, finding culturally competent providers is another challenge. Smith recalls struggling to find a specialist for a client who needed specific treatment in their native language.
“If this were an American with resources, it would have been an easy referral,” she says. “But I never found someone.”
These challenges are longstanding, though recent policy shifts have intensified them. The second Trump administration has had an immediate impact on this community, where mental health needs are rising even as access to safety net programs contracts. (The administration’s One Big Beautiful Bill slashed funding for refugee benefits such as Medicaid.)
When Canopy Atlanta first spoke with Oriakhil in the fall, she said 2025 had already been the hardest year yet. More recently, as reports spread of ICE detaining legally protected asylum seekers, and following aggressive ICE raids in Minneapolis that left two Americans dead, anxiety has surged even further.
Dr. Adaobi Iheduru, a local clinical psychologist and former CVT staff member, says the current climate of uncertainty has made providing care even more difficult.
“We recently had a client whose employer threatened to call immigration on them,” she says. “Another client’s child was threatened on a school bus with harsh comments about deportation. These ongoing experiences affect our clients’ ability to focus on their well-being and engage in treatment.”
In recent weeks, Oriakhil has encountered pregnant women afraid to attend prenatal appointments or deliver in hospitals, as well as parents reluctant to send their children to school. She says schools have even contacted her organization, asking them to encourage parents not to discuss ICE in front of their children, who then bring those fears into the classroom.
At one recent community session, a man shared that in his home country, he feared leaving his family each day, worried it might be the last time he saw them.
“He said, ‘Finally, we made it here, to the United States, a country where we dreamed of building a life and a future for our children. But now I have the same fear again,’” Oriakhil recalls. “It is hard to hear stories like that and see people losing hope—feeling like their dignity is in question.”
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