The students at Ellis Prep academy – like most high schoolers – have a lot on their mind right now.
Essay deadlines, college applications, younger siblings and dance rehearsals. But also, the immigration operations across the US and the president’s goal of “mass deportations”.
This small high school in the Bronx is one of the few in New York City that is dedicated exclusively to students who recently arrived in the US.
In May last year, 20-year-old Dylan Lopez Contreras – a senior at Ellis – was detained at a routine immigration court hearing. He was completing his education, which had been disrupted by the arduous journey he had made from Venezuela to the US border. Then suddenly, he disappeared from class. And his name was all over the local and national news. According to his lawyers, he was the first New York public school student detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He has been detained at the Moshannon Valley ICE processing center in Philipsburg, Pennsylvania, ever since.
“It was a shock,” said Roger, one of his friends at Ellis.
In the months since Dylan’s arrest, Roger and other students have tried to process their anger and their grief about what happened while rallying support for their friend. They have also tried to imagine the lives they want to live, and a world they want to live in, after they graduate high school.