On the same day that Trump’s Homeland Security chief Kristi Noem led an ICE raid in the Bronx earlier this year, I was blocks away preparing the application for Beyond Rising, the Olayte Group’s paid internship program for undocumented young people. We just wrapped our fourth year of this summer program geared toward 16- to 21-year-olds for whom such opportunities are very limited.
Working through crises is part of the job at community-based organizations like ours. We’re often on the front lines of public health emergencies and major news events. Today, we face frequent immigration arrests and a flurry of executive orders dismantling structures that help support the most vulnerable populations.
Times of crisis are overwhelming for everyone, and for the young people we work with, I’ve observed fear manifesting in troubling ways.
As an educator, organizer, and nonprofit administrator for over 20 years, the burning question that is always at the back of my mind is, “Will we be able to keep our young people safe?” The answer to that question for me right now is no. I can never fully guarantee that the spaces we share together will always be safe.
For undocumented young people like those in our Beyond Rising internship program, the scare tactics and threats of ICE arrests are exacerbating widespread teen isolation. Such threats are so effective that many of the young people I work with are worried about leaving their homes, whether to go to school or an extracurricular activity.
As the start of the school year nears in New York City and the threats of immigration arrests intensify, I fear that students will stay home altogether. We need to do a better job of changing the narrative so that our young people and their families can continue to live their lives as our neighbors, coworkers, teachers, and students without fear.
Within Beyond Rising, we see a side of undocumented young people that is not represented in the news headlines. Our program places students in competitive internships across the city in MakerLABs, in policy institutes, at career development offices, and in public health initiatives.
We receive over 1,000 applications for 50 summer spots, so the need for programs like this far exceeds capacity. On Fridays throughout the summer, we meet with Beyond Rising interns to build relationships and strengthen college and career skills. Our workshops are hands-on, interactive, and often arts-based.
With the combination of work experience and Friday workshops, we see interns coming out of their shells and revealing their full personalities. We see young people like Sylvia, whose name has been changed to protect her privacy; she interned in the scholarships office at CUNY’s Hostos Community College, where her job involved gathering information about student scholarships. Through that work, she also learned about the Dream Scholarship, which she received for her first semester of college this fall. We see hopeful moments like this frequently at Beyond Rising.
We also see them helping their families make rent, considering college, and dreaming about future job opportunities. They are leaders in student organizations and on sports teams. They are poets aspiring to study law, first-year nursing students working to conquer their fear of public speaking, and high school seniors who plan to study pre-med despite knowing that barriers to medical school and residencies for undocumented students make their training nearly impossible to finish.
Why don’t we hear more of these stories? Stories of undocumented young people striving to do well for themselves, their families, and their communities. I’m angry that so much of the attention is focused on the prejudiced lie that undocumented immigrants are criminals and not on how much they lift up this country and this city. Study after study shows that undocumented immigrants commit fewer crimes than U.S. citizens; in fact, immigration is tied to lower crime rates.
We owe it to the impressive young people I work with at Beyond Rising to keep our promise of sanctuary, to protect whatever might be left of the “American Dream,” to be brave in the spaces we occupy, and to offer our money and our talents in support when we can.
My passion and determination to continue this work come from knowing that even if we can’t have safe spaces in this fragile and unpredictable world, we can work to build brave spaces together that reflect what we want to see in the world. Immigration lawyers, mental health practitioners, artists, and teachers — and all of us, really — have a role to play.
I often refer to the poem “An Invitation to a Brave Space” by Micky Scottbey Jones to illustrate this point: “Together we will create brave space / Because there is no such thing as a ‘safe space’ / We exist in the real world … It will not always be what we wish it to be / But / It will be our brave space together.”
Augustina Warton is the director of programs at Oyate Group and a first-generation Peruvian American with a passion for driving social change through education and the arts. She creates and oversees youth development programs that blend career readiness, leadership, art, mentorship, and other resources that uplift the next generation of New Yorkers. Warton also serves as an adjunct professor, teaching a range of subjects at the City College of New York.