Harlem Baseball Hitting Academy founder Yeoman Wilder was coaching middle and high school students there on July 3, when he says six ICE officers walked through the Upper West Side park past the basketball courts.
"But I didn't really think too much about it. I just thought, eh, they're ICE officers, because I'd seen them in Washington Heights before," Wilder said.
But then, he says they approached the kids and started asking questions.
"Where they're from, who are their parents, and I just thought, 'whoa, whoa, this is... this is not good,'" Wilder said.
Wilder has a masters degree in law, and told them they didn't need to answer those questions.
"I told my kids to walk to the back of the cages, right here, and I said they're going to invoke their fifth amendment rights, they're not going to say anything," Wilder said.
He says one of the officers raised his voice.
"That's when I was called a YouTube lawyer, and I said, 'No, I just know how the Constitution works,'" Wilder said.
All of the kids, he says, are American citizens.
"Their parents are from the Dominican Republic, South America, Mexican, Africa, but their kids were born here," Wilder said. "They have a 14th amendment entitlement to live here."
Eyewitness News reached out to Homeland Security to verify that ICE officers were there but have yet to get a response.
Wilder says they were armed, in uniform, with clearly labeled vests.
"They looked like the real thing," Wilder said. "From what I've seen in Washington Heights and what I saw that day."
He's reached out to local elected officials, like Assemblymember Linda Rosenthal, who says he was right to advise the kids of their rights.
"No one has the right to take you away or to get any of your information," she said.
"I've never in my life thought this was going to happen on the Upper West Side, in New York City," Wilder said. "That whole thing, until it happens to you, you're not aware. And it happened to us."
Since the incident last week, the coach says, he changed their practice time, but the kids and their parents are so worried, that only two of them have been back.
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