Editorial/Opinion ....................Pages 12,13 Education

NYC celebrates DREAMers, 10th anniversary of DACA program

By ARIAMA C. LONG

Amsterdam News Staff, Report for America Corps Member

New York City is quite literally a city built by immigrants, and proudly so as it celebrated the 10th anniversary of former President Barack Obama’s historic Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

Mayor Eric Adams and Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs Commissioner Manuel Castro held a meeting at City Hall with a group of ‘DREAMers’ or DACA recipients. Adams said that clearly New York City will continue to support DREAMers and their families, regardless of their immigration status. He called on President Joe Biden to finally pass the American Dream and Promise Act, which would create a pathway to citizenship for DREAMers.

“I’m proud to be the first DREAMer-appointed commissioner for the City of New York and to continue fighting for my community,” said Castro.

In March 2020, there were an estimated 643,560 active DACA recipients in the country, according to United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) numbers. There are over 150,000 DREAMers living and working in New York City currently, said Adams. “These young people contribute to our society, day after day, and many times take on the jobs others are unwilling to tackle,” said Adams.

DACA was created back in 2012, “in light of congressional inaction” as a temporary solution to allow hundreds of thousands of young, undocumented immigrants to remain in the U.S. with protection from deportation, access to work permits, health insurance, free photo identification, and education, said the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs (MOIA).

U.S. Rep Adriano Espaillat (D-Harlem) said, in a separate conference, that DACA has been transformative to the lives of young immigrants, but “the program falls short of a pathway to citizenship” and “is by no means a substitute for fixing our broken immigration system.”

Former Pres. Donald Trump had threatened to end the program on Sept. 5, 2017 in his crusade to toughen immigration laws. This decision eventually reached the Supreme Court. Ending DACA was overturned during the onslaught of the pandemic in June of 2020 as a violation of federal law, said MOIA.

Yaritza Mendez is co-director of organizing at Make the Road New York, the largest progressive grassroots immigrant-led organization in New York State with more than 25,000 members. “A decade ago, we won DACA through the fierce and relentless organizing by undocumented youth who bravely put their bodies on the line. As we remember this historic day, it also marks a decade of inaction by Congress to deliver on their promises of permanent protections for our communities,” said Mendez in a statement.

In a separate case in a Texas federal court also challenging DACA, the program was ruled “unlawful” in July 2021. Under this court’s ruling immigration services can no longer process or grant first-time applications for DACA recipients, but renewals and advance parole options are open.

Make the Road New York member Johana Larios is in the courts as a DACA first-time applicant whose case has stalled since the ruling last year. Her case is the Batalla Vidal v. Wolf lawsuit.

“For the past four years, I have been denied the opportunity to apply for DACA. I have been living in limbo, waiting for court decision after court decision with enormous uncertainty, fearing that I could be separated from my children,” said Larios. “We cannot continue to live with this instability.”

Larios called for Biden and Congress to deliver on their promises and pass pathway to citizenship. “We cannot wait any longer,” said Larios.

“Today, DACA continues to be under attack, with 80,000 new DACA applications currently stalled, leaving thousands who have not been able to have their applications processed in limbo,” said Mendez. “In less than a month, the case will be back in court and heard in the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals.”

There’s still time for the current DACA ruling to be changed by a higher court or appealed by Biden, said MOIA.

Make the Road New York member Johana Larios is in the courts as a DACA firsttime applicant. Pictured here with her two kids. (Contributed photo from Make The Road New York)

Ariama C. Long is a Report for America corps member and writes about culture and politics in New York City for The Amsterdam News. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep her writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting: https://tinyurl.com/fcszwj8w

Eagle Academy Foundation welcomes Donald Ruff as new president/CEO

By ZOË ROSE

Special to the AmNews

The Eagle Academy Foundation is a nonprofit organization that aims to empower young Black and Brown men while improving students’ educational career paths and future. The foundation has six collegepreparatory schools located throughout the five boroughs of New York City and Newark, N.J. Donald Ruff was recently welcomed as the foundation’s new president and CEO and shares his goals and visions for the future. Ruff has been with the Eagle Academy for 16 years, where he began as the founding director of college counseling and strategic partnerships. His dedication to education has led him to many of his accomplishments within the field, for there is no doubt that he is the perfect contender for his newly appointed position.

Ruff explains how the fuel that pushes him to do the work he does today is rooted in how he grew up. After being exposed to a private school setting and seeing how that differed from his previous public school setting, it ultimately opened his eyes to the inequalities of education. “I saw early in my life that there were some inequalities when it came to education—as a matter of fact I didn’t even know I was considered poor or low income until I went to private school,” stated Ruff. He then went on to explain that “success shouldn’t be a lottery” when expressing how everyone should be offered equal opportunities of education regardless of wealth.

The Eagle Academy works to advocate for Black and Brown youth in both school settings and beyond the classroom. Ruff explains, “It’s not just about graduating our guys, it’s about who they become in the world, and so much of that has really shaped our expanded vision at the academy.” The Eagle Academy prides itself on setting young men up for success, and also teaching them what to do with that success. Ruff explains how financial literacy and workforce readiness are essential tools the Eagle Academy pushes for, in order to ensure these young men are economically empowered even post-grad.

“Financial literacy is something that is sorely missing in so many low-income communities and we want to be able to empower our young men in that fashion and create that ecosystem for them to be successful,” says Ruff.

The Eagle Academy has effectively highlighted the graduation and post-graduation rates and used that to centralize their curriculum to best benefit students’ future success. Ruff explains how these real-life scenarios will provide them with the tools to succeed. By not only teaching students fundamental skills but also preparing them to implement that in the workforce, “We want students to be able to graduate with an employable skillset and understanding how money works.”

Ruff’s hope now that he is president and CEO of the Eagle Academy is to create an ecosystem where Black and Brown boys can be successful not just within the network of the Academy, but throughout the city and the world.

“My greatest dream is to be able to coalition build and bring these entities together and create that environment where Black and Brown boys and men can be successful in life.”

As an organizer and activist, I rarely engage with people that have already chosen to erase me, my daughter, my people. I believe our power comes when we start our own institutions, create interventions, and uplift even more Afro/ Black Latinx young folks that seek to disrupt the normalized notions of what a Latina, Latino, or Latinx person looks like in this country. We must also support institutions like the Caribbean Cultural Center/African Diaspora Institute in New York City and the Creative Justice Initiative* founded by Dr. Marta Moreno Vega. I also encourage folks to check out the Museum J.E.D.I.(Justice, Equity, Diversity, Inclusion) podcast created by Omar Eaton-Martinez, which hosts discussions on the intersections of museums and social justice.

Afro/Black Latinx people are here. We are growing in number. We exist. We can write our own narratives, and we will not be erased.

This opinion piece was originally published online by Latino Rebels on June 1, 2022.

Editor’s Note: On Thursday, June 2, the Smithsonian reached out to Latino Rebels to note that “the Friends of the National Museum of the American Latino is not affiliated with the Smithsonian or the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Latino.” It also asked us to provide a link to the official museum website.

Rosa Clemente is a Ph.D. candidate at UMass-Amherst and a leading scholar and activist in Afro/Black Latinx identity, culture, and politics. She is an organizer and independent journalist and was an associate producer on the two-time Oscar-winning movie, “Judas and the Black Messiah.” Twitter: @rosaclemente *Disclosure: I am a board member of the Creative Justice Initiative.