Youman Wilder has coached baseball on Manhattan's West Side for 20 years, but during a practice last month, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents showed up.
Wilder told the West Side Rag, a local New York City website, that his group is primarily made up of middle school and high school students, whom he meets at the batting cages.
The publication spoke to Wilder about what happened, and he detailed the federal agents with guns and tasers talking to the children.
"I go over quickly and the agents are asking the kids inappropriate things like where they are from, their country of origin, so I say, ‘whoa, whoa,’ and I tell the officers that their questions are inappropriate, and that I’m going to tell my kids not to answer them," said Wilder.
The officers then claimed that he was obstructing justice, but Wilder made it clear the kids didn't have to speak to them, and as the adult responsible for them in the moment, he urged them not to speak to the ICE agents.
"Then they started to talk about cuffing me, and that if the kids were here legally, what do they have to lose by answering. I told them that they still have their Fifth and Fourth Amendment rights, and that they don’t have to speak to you or help with any investigation," he recalled.
At one point, a small crowd gathered, and agents began telling them "to move back, that they would be arrested for interfering, and not to take pictures."
"It’s all about civics. If you don’t know your rights, they will trample on them," Wilder continued. "Knowing the law and understanding that they had no right to ask anything of these kids, who are American citizens, and don’t have anything to prove to them. The officers were saying we don’t know if they are American citizens, but I said, it doesn’t matter if they are American citizens or not, they still have constitutional rights, you still violate their Fourth, Fifth, or 14th amendment rights."
The worst thing, he said, is that the six or seven people who gathered did what ICE instructed them to do.
Wilder said that all the children were American-born, but they had family members from all over the world.
Wilder obtained his law degree from Grand Canyon University, and he stated that he was aware ICE could arrest him, but he was confident they couldn't keep him. His biggest concern at that point was making sure the kids got home safely.
"I never raised my voice. I just talked about the law. And I was just focused on how can I get these kids to where they need to go, when they are in my care," said Wilder.
He said the children's families are now scared to send them back to that area of the park.
The outlet emailed ICE to confirm if agents had been on hand in Riverside Park that day. On July 7, they received a call from the agency spokesperson who couldn't confirm anything. They were told ICE would send out a statement, which hasn't happened.
The report noted that there are multiple cases of ICE impersonations, a phenomenon that The American Prospect detailed last month.
Read the full interview and report here.
