The founder of a New York baseball training organization protected some of his players from Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents who questioned them about their birthplace.
Youman Wilder, the creator and coach who launched the nonprofit Harlem Baseball Hitting Academy, felt compelled to intervene in an unexpected police interrogation involving his athletes following a recent practice, according to MSNBC. During an interview with Nicole Wallace, Wilder spoke about how the incident unfolded.
Why did Wilder feel the need to step in and help?
Wilder said practice was finishing up, and he was playing basketball with some of his trainees, who challenged his skills on the court. Despite witnessing ICE agents in other neighborhoods, he never thought he would be involved in an encounter himself until the boys he trains were approached and questioned.
“I just saw these ICE officers walking. And I had seen them in Washington Heights, I had seen them in Dyckman…up where more Dominican kids and South American kids live,” he explained. “When I turned around to get the ball, and I turned around again, and I saw them approaching my kids.”
Wilder mentioned he heard the agents ask the children where they and their parents are from.
“I just stepped in and said, ‘This is very inappropriate to ask these kids anything,’ Wilder told Wallace. “And I said, ‘As a person who’s supervising them, I’ll have them implement their 5th Amendment right and not have them say anything to you.'”
Wilder said the agent’s “wonderful words” to him in response were, “Oh, another YouTube lawyer.”
Following their initial exchange, the agents remained steadfast in wanting to question the children.
“They kept moving the goal post,” Wilder said.
“The whole thing came off like, ‘I don’t care what you say.’ ‘I don’t care what the law says,” he added.
Wilder recalled, “And the only thing I had that day was my uncle, Pete, in my ear, who’s my bishop, my mother in my ear, the Constitution, and prayer. That’s the only thing I had that day.”
He mentioned that attendance has dramatically decreased since the incident.
“We usually carry, you know, between 20 and 25 kids who are playing. And we usually carry, during the summer, between 11 and 15 kids, and we’re having one kid show up at practice right now,” Wilder said.
Embracing resilience, not victimhood, after ICE confrontation
Although the uncomfortable encounter happened, Wilder wanted to reiterate that he and the members of his academy aren’t victims in this situation.
“This academy has been around for 22 years. We’ve graduated 400 kids out of college who walk around with degrees from Stanford, Princeton, and Harvard, all African American and Latino kids,” Wilder said about HBHA. “We’re not going around saying, ‘Poor little us,’ ’cause we do very, very good work.”
He continued, “If this can happen on the Upper West Side of 72nd Street, it can happen to anybody. There’s got to be a better way for the administration to deal with this, and there’s got to be a better way for people to understand their rights.”
Upper West Side Assembly member Linda Rosenthal highlighted the incident in an email, according to I Love The Upper West Side.
“I recently learned that ICE agents approached a group of kids attending baseball practice near the batting cages near West 71st Street in Riverside Park,” Rosenthal wrote. “The only thing that stood between those kids in Riverside Park and a Florida detention center buried deep in the Everglades was a brave coach who knew the law. Each one of us has the power to make a difference right in our own backyards.”
