Fifty college students stood in entrance of the White Home, with its manicured garden and billowing American flag. They hailed from international locations like Ecuador, Nicaragua, Senegal, and Mali. They spoke Spanish, French, Pulaar, and English. Some wore hijabs.
Like different vacationers on that April day, the scholars on a discipline journey with their Bronx highschool posed for a bunch picture.
A number of requested if President Donald Trump was inside. One had advised an English trainer earlier than the journey that he needed to ask Trump why he was so anti-immigrant. Others joked, “Trump is gonna get you,” not figuring out the president’s mass deportation marketing campaign would quickly sweep up certainly one of their classmates.
College students from ELLIS take a look at the Capitol on a tour of Washington, D.C., April 30, 2025. Credit score: Wendy Correa for Chalkbeat
Within the months since Trump took workplace, Norma Vega, the principal of ELLIS Preparatory Academy, had vowed to stay to the identical practices that for years had helped her college elevate immigrant college students into school and out of poverty — whilst fears grew. That meant forging forward with the journey to Washington, D.C., an ELLIS custom that strengthened first-year college students’ connection to the varsity and uncovered them to U.S. historical past exterior the classroom.
“We can’t function out of fear,” Vega stated earlier than the journey. “We just can’t.”
The journey was notably significant for 18-year-old Bridget, an undocumented first-year ELLIS scholar from Ecuador who nearly stayed behind as a result of her mother, Marta, was fearful of spending two days aside. She marveled on the dimension and fantastic thing about the White Home and the clear streets and white limestone structure of the town. The free night time in a Vacation Inn Specific and resort breakfast the subsequent day felt like an escape from the hardship and worry that marked her life in New York Metropolis.
“It’s very beautiful. It’s like a vacation,” she stated in Spanish.
However for each college students and employees, the glow of the journey was short-lived. Three weeks after they returned, their classmate, Dylan Lopez Contreras, was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.
Dylan’s arrest marked an aggressive new part of immigration enforcement and a turning level for ELLIS. Federal coverage reached into the varsity as by no means earlier than, threatening ELLIS’ potential to recruit new college students, retain its present ones, and ship its graduates to school. At the same time as Vega and different ELLIS staffers clung to the method that had lengthy made the varsity profitable, they started to worry their mannequin of schooling could not survive the Trump administration.
Nowhere was the problem dealing with ELLIS extra obvious than within the college’s makes an attempt to maintain Bridget on observe.
Bridget gazes on the Lincoln Memorial on a discipline journey to Washington, D.C., April 2025. Credit score: Wendy Correa for Chalkbeat
Bridget had a number of key components for achievement at ELLIS: a deep relationship with staffers like counselor Hedin Bernard, a agency grasp on math and English, and a craving to make it to school.
ELLIS stepped up its help in response. Bernard linked Bridget with a therapist, helped her apply for housing, referred her to a lawyer to assist with a court docket listening to arising in late June and an ICE check-in a month later, and enrolled her in July lessons to maintain her engaged after the varsity yr ended. However as a pivotal summer season approached, he wasn’t certain it might be sufficient.
His work with Bridget felt like being caught in a riptide. “You can see the shore,” he stated. However “you can’t move anywhere.”
Bridget and ELLIS Prep wrestle with doubts after Dylan’s arrest
When Bridget discovered about Dylan’s arrest, she couldn’t cease picturing him in an orange jumpsuit with cuffs round his fingers and toes. That was the uniform Bridget’s eldest sister had worn when she was detained by U.S. border brokers a yr earlier.
Bridget determined to not inform Marta that the lanky, purple-haired Venezuelan who’d made some extent to shake her hand on a go to to ELLIS earlier that yr was now in ICE detention.
“She would be very scared that they could deport us at any moment,” stated Bridget, who, like her mom, requested to make use of a pseudonym, fearing immigration enforcement.
Bridget stands for a portrait in Manhattan’s Madison Sq. Park. Credit score: José A. Alvarado Jr. for Chalkbeat
Bridget had tried for months to maintain her personal rising deportation fears at bay and keep robust for her mother. However after Dylan’s arrest, that grew tougher. She began watching extra TikTok movies about immigration raids and didn’t go away her midtown Manhattan shelter apart from her journeys to high school and again.
ICE brokers, dealing with strain to satisfy stringent arrest quotas, had begun detaining immigrants after routine court docket dates and ICE check-ins, resulting in a surge in arrests. Federal brokers arrested roughly seven occasions as many immigrants in New York Metropolis throughout the first a part of June in comparison with the identical interval final yr. Almost three-quarters of these arrests have been of people that, like Dylan, had no legal convictions or fees.
Dylan Lopez Contreras and his mom, Raiza. Credit score: Courtesy of Raiza
College students crammed Bernard’s workplace to speak via questions on their immigration circumstances, and the stress crept into his residence life. His personal middle-school-aged youngsters knew the main points of Dylan’s case, and he usually needed to excuse himself from time along with his household to take cellphone calls.
However the stakes felt too excessive to dial again his work. Usually, within the closing month of college, college students have been apprehensive about transferring to the subsequent grade or graduating. This yr, he stated they questioned: “Is a masked person going to grab me off the street?”
Vega mapped out the varsity’s response to Dylan’s arrest from her cavernous workplace adorned with scholar art work and overlooking the varsity’s soccer discipline and the Harlem River.
As ICE shuttled Dylan from New Jersey, to Texas, to Louisiana, making it unimaginable for his legal professionals to contact him, Vega grew indignant.
“This situation makes it really, really real,” she advised a room filled with principally quiet staffers throughout a gathering in a science classroom. “One of our kids was taken.”
The varsity helped launch a fundraiser that collected $43,000 for Dylan’s household, organized a schoolwide letter-writing marketing campaign, and redoubled its efforts to attach college students with legal professionals.
As Dylan’s arrest sparked nationwide headlines and native protests, even Mayor Eric Adams voiced his help, regardless of initially refraining from weighing in. Town’s Regulation Division filed a buddy of the court docket temporary in Dylan’s authorized case, arguing ICE’s ways would stop undocumented New Yorkers from utilizing metropolis companies.
Within the days after Dylan’s arrest, Vega by no means wavered from the chorus she’d repeated since Trump took workplace in January.
“There’s nothing — nothing — that we are to say, or behave, that’s going to send a message other than: ‘You are going to college. You are going to graduate and have a future,’” she stated on the employees assembly. “Our kids need to have a hope.”
Principal Norma Vega participates in a digital assembly in her workplace at ELLIS within the Bronx. Credit score: José A. Alvarado Jr. for Chalkbeat
Within the weeks to return, although, Vega wrestled privately together with her personal doubts about whether or not the playbook she’d lengthy relied on nonetheless labored. A lot of her college students went to personal schools in upstate New York as a result of these faculties had a relationship with ELLIS and supplied vital scholarships. However ELLIS college students have been usually among the many few immigrants of their lessons. Would that make them greater targets for immigration enforcement?
And the Trump administration was attempting to make it tougher for undocumented college students to entry school in any respect. Trump issued an govt order searching for to curtail undocumented college students’ entry to in-state tuition at public schools, a key profit that enables some ELLIS college students to pursue increased schooling.
Vega had at all times believed {that a} school schooling was the “great equalizer” for ELLIS college students. “I feel like that comes into question right now,” Vega stated in June. “Is it?”
Housing uncertainty and hardship result in powerful decisions for an undocumented teen
On a Friday morning in late Could, per week after Dylan’s arrest, Bernard obtained a name he’d been ready weeks for. With Bridget and Marta’s permission, he had utilized on Bridget’s behalf to a shelter for unaccompanied youth that might present long-term housing together with further help.
He knew stability was vital for Bridget. She had stayed in household and pals’ spare rooms in latest months and was uninterested in not having a spot to name her personal. Some nights, she curled up on the ground whereas her mother shared a mattress with different kinfolk, sleeping just a few fitful hours.
Shortly after Bernard utilized, Bridget and Marta have been supplied spots in a city-run homeless shelter in midtown Manhattan. It supplied free meals and privateness, however it was farther from ELLIS.
On the cellphone, Bernard discovered the youth shelter had an open room and wanted to listen to again by midday that day. However Bridget must stay aside from Marta.
Hedin Bernard, a college counselor at ELLIS, checks on college students in a historical past class on the Bronx public college. Credit score: José A. Alvarado Jr. for Chalkbeat
For Bridget, the youth shelter’s provide was one other reminder that her greatest likelihood at constructing a future on this nation would possibly require leaving her mother behind. Bridget had additionally utilized, with the assistance of a lawyer really useful by Bernard, for Particular Immigrant Juvenile standing, a sort of authorized safety for youth deserted or uncared for by at the least one mum or dad. Bridget knew it was her greatest likelihood at authorized safety, however it wouldn’t cowl Marta.
Sitting in school that morning, Bridget may barely focus. She turned Bernard’s provide over in her head. In her English class, she stared on the pages of an autobiography she’d been engaged on for weeks.
On a web page entitled “important people,” Bridget had written: “First my mom.” Marta had labored arduous to make Bridget a “good person” and provides her “a good future,” she wrote in neat handwriting.
Bridget turned down the spot within the youth shelter.
“Mama was alone. All she has is me,” she later stated.
Whether or not they stayed within the U.S. or left, Marta and Bridget have been going to do it collectively. More and more, they thought of returning to Ecuador.
Bridget missed her eldest sister, the odor of Ecuadorian avenue meals, like caramelized apples, and sitting exterior her home together with her household, sipping on soda or juice as youngsters performed close by.
On a heat morning in mid-June, as Bernard ready for a gathering with mother and father to share authorized assets, he obtained a WhatsApp message from Bridget that stopped him in his tracks.
“Mr Hedin good morning my mom is very frightened with everything and so am I,” she started. “To tell the truth I don’t feel good about all of this and we haven’t left the shelter at all, I know things are going to get worse and I think it would be best to go back to Ecuador.”
She requested if he knew how “voluntary removal” labored. For months, the Trump administration had been providing to pay for the flights of immigrants who agreed to “self-deport.” However few ELLIS households knew the main points of the provide, or trusted the Trump administration sufficient to take them up on it, Bernard stated.
Bernard shortly despatched Bridget a voice memo asking her to not “make any decisions before talking to me.”
After they met in individual the subsequent day, Bernard urged her to remain in class whereas her authorized case performed out. Her court docket listening to was in a number of weeks, on June 25, and the ICE check-in was a few month later.
He inspired her to return to July lessons to maintain up her reference to ELLIS and put together for the English Language Arts Regents examination subsequent yr. The varsity had positioned her in a complicated English course beginning within the fall.
Bridget reluctantly agreed. She nonetheless needed to depart, however it was logistically sophisticated. She and Marta didn’t have the cash for aircraft tickets, which might price upwards of $1,000. It might additionally take time to rearrange journey.
And anyway, Bridget had began serving to Marta accumulate bottles and sometimes clear residences. Although their every day earnings have been meager, it was way over they might make in Ecuador.
Bernard had purchased a while, however he wasn’t certain how a lot.
ELLIS’ mission put to the take a look at below Trump’s insurance policies
As ELLIS’ staffers entered the summer season, they confronted two challenges: maintaining a reference to present college students and determining how the varsity would wish to adapt over the yr forward.
ELLIS expanded its summer season college final yr to maintain college students engaged and on observe to graduate. However the accelerating mass deportation marketing campaign had made that harder, and it confirmed no indicators of abating.
ELLIS, a public college for newly arrived immigrants, shares the John F. Kennedy Excessive College campus within the Bronx. Credit score: José A. Alvarado Jr. for Chalkbeat
In the beginning of the summer season, Congress authorized a spending invoice that put aside an unprecedented $170 billion for immigration enforcement. When an undocumented migrant shot a border agent in a Manhattan park simply throughout the river from ELLIS, Border Czar Tom Homan promised to “flood the zone” with ICE brokers, and Legal professional Normal Pam Bondi sued the town over its “sanctuary” insurance policies limiting native legislation enforcement’s cooperation with ICE.
On the final day of the varsity yr, Bernard obtained a name from one other first-year scholar and buddy of Bridget’s: Her mother had been detained by ICE. The lady was devastated. With the arrest, she’d additionally misplaced the first supply of kid look after her personal toddler and the family’s most important wage earner. She advised the varsity she wouldn’t have the ability to make it to summer season college.
Vega supplied to handle the coed’s son within the principal’s workplace whereas she attended class. However the scholar by no means took her up on it, opting to work as a substitute.
ELLIS has at all times had college students balancing work and college. However some staffers noticed the strain to work rising — and beginning sooner than traditional — as deportation fears mounted.
“They feel the urgency to make money now,” stated Maciel Lantigua, an ELLIS alumna and social employee for the Mission Society, a nonprofit that operates out of ELLIS, offering college students with further assets and help. “They don’t have the luxury of that time.”
Vega apprehensive about hanging on to present college students. She was additionally harassed about recruiting new ones.
Playing cards informing college students of their rights sit on Principal Norma Vega’s desk at ELLIS. Credit score: José A. Alvarado Jr. for Chalkbeat
On account of Trump’s insurance policies, the variety of immigrants unlawfully crossing the U.S.-Mexico border sank to the bottom level in a long time in July. The speed of latest migrants coming into New York Metropolis shelters, in the meantime, had dropped to fewer than 100 per week from a excessive of greater than 4,000 weekly two years earlier.
ELLIS staffers observed solely a handful of latest college students registering via the tip of July, in contrast with 20-30 over the identical interval final yr.
The slowdown pressured Vega to contemplate whether or not the 275-student college would wish to regulate its coverage of solely enrolling college students over 16 who’ve been within the nation lower than a yr.
On the similar time, the Trump administration ramped up its efforts to chop off undocumented college students’ entry to public schooling.
In July, Well being and Human Companies Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. introduced that undocumented preschoolers would not qualify for Head Begin, a federally funded free little one care program. Older undocumented college students misplaced entry to federally funded dual-enrollment, profession and technical schooling, and grownup teaching programs. Later that month, the Division of Schooling launched a civil rights investigation into universities offering monetary help to undocumented college students who arrived as younger youngsters within the U.S. and have short-term authorized safety, generally often known as Dreamers.
Norma Vega, principal of ELLIS, poses for a portrait. (José A. Alvarado Jr. for Chalkbeat) Credit score: José A. Alvarado Jr. for Chalkbeat
“The way this second Trump administration is targeting every aspect of life for immigrants makes students’ ability to access education that much harder,” stated Alejandra Vázquez Baur, a fellow on the left-leaning Century Basis and founding father of the Nationwide Newcomer Community. “For that reason, it might be the most intense attack on immigrant students to date.”
At ELLIS, Vega has been elevating cash from exterior donors for years to assist subsidize undocumented college students’ school prices. The varsity raised a document, over $40,000, this yr.
And whereas Vega is dedicated to preserving college students at ELLIS for 4 years, she is aware of the varsity should be nimble about growing versatile schedules for college students feeling strain to earn cash instantly.
She’s hopeful that the tides will ultimately flip.
As People have began to see the results of the administration’s aggressive enforcement marketing campaign, the anti-immigrant sentiment that helped propel Trump into workplace has begun to reverse. The share of People who help curbing immigration dropped from 55% in July 2024 to simply 30% a yr later, in line with a ballot from Gallup.
That’s why Vega is assured that if she will make it via a number of years of lean enrollment, the varsity’s scenario will enhance.
“The goal is to survive,” she stated. “To still be here post-Trump.”
Can Bridget maintain on to her schooling goals?
Bridget and Marta, who have been nonetheless frightened of being detained by federal immigration brokers, had one stroke of excellent luck: Their June 25 court docket listening to was digital.
Within the weeks main as much as the continuing, the pair discovered a professional bono lawyer to assist them submit purposes for asylum and for Bridget’s particular juvenile standing. The decide scheduled one other listening to for 2027 whereas their claims wound their method via the slow-moving courts.
However they nonetheless had their in-person ICE check-in on July 21. Bridget, who had been watching movies about immigration enforcement, knew ICE brokers have been more and more utilizing the check-ins to detain migrants.
The night time earlier than the appointment, Marta and Bridget barely slept. On the subway station, Marta didn’t find the money for to purchase her personal one-trip move and slipped via the turnstile with Bridget when she tapped her scholar OMNY card — figuring out full properly that getting caught may have devastating penalties.
On the prepare, Bridget, carrying an identical set of pink pants and shirt with the emblem from the Nickelodeon children present “Rugrats,” carried the immigration papers in crisp folders and stared forward.
Wearing a white and blue floral gown, Marta thumbed the small brown stuffed mouse named Mickey, who had traveled together with her from Ecuador, connected by keychain to her fanny pack.
She performed the chances and questions over in her head. Ought to she have introduced a suitcase together with her in case she was deported? Would she be separated from Bridget in the event that they have been detained? Would they ship her again to Ecuador, or to a rustic she’d by no means set foot in?
A few weeks earlier, she’d discovered a stuffed pink rabbit on the road, and he or she clipped it subsequent to Mickey on her keychain.
“If we get out of this, I’ll give it a name,” she stated.
A snaking line wound its method inside to the primary checkpoint at 26 Federal Plaza, an imposing metal and glass federal immigration constructing. On the courthouse wall, trying down on them, was a stern-faced portrait of Trump. Marta leaned her head on Bridget’s shoulder, and Bridget wrapped her arm round her mother.
Bridget and Marta — who nonetheless had a shared immigration case as a result of Bridget entered the nation as a minor — have been referred to a room on the fifth flooring for household circumstances. 5 flooring above them, dozens of not too long ago detained migrants have been being held in a makeshift detention middle, pressured to make use of the bathroom in public and sleep on the ground with solely skinny blankets.
Two hours later, Marta and Bridget emerged, carrying faint smiles and clutching paperwork that listed the date of their subsequent ICE check-in: precisely a yr later.
The ladies have been relieved, however they didn’t really feel like celebrating. Marta needed a espresso, however had no cash to purchase one.
Bridget’s dream of changing into the primary individual in her household to attend school for the second felt just a little extra inside attain — at the least till her subsequent court docket date. She nonetheless thought usually about her buddy Dylan, who stays in detention in Western Pennsylvania.
Bridget and her mom, Marta, maintain Marta’s stuffed animals, a mouse she named Mickey and a rabbit she named Pinky. (José A. Alvarado Jr. for Chalkbeat) Credit score: José A. Alvarado Jr. for Chalkbeat
ELLIS staffers additionally hadn’t given up attempting to reel Bridget in.
One morning in late July, Lantigua, the social employee, noticed Bridget and Marta close to the varsity with a buying cart filled with cans and bottles. Bridget had for weeks been serving to Marta accumulate them within the punishing warmth. Lantigua invited Bridget to go see “Superman,” certainly one of a collection of actions she’d organized for college students to maintain them linked to ELLIS over the summer season.
Bridget didn’t go. However Lantigua tried once more with a visit on Wednesday to the New York Botanical Backyard. She tried a transfer that had labored previously: inviting Bridget and Marta, too.
This time, they each confirmed up.
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