A Manhattan baseball coach is raising alarm after he says a group of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers approached and questioned his young players during a team practice in Riverside Park on July 3.
Yeoman Wilder, founder of the Harlem Baseball Hitting Academy, was coaching a group of middle and high school students when he spotted six ICE agents walking past the nearby basketball courts. At first, he didn’t think much of it.
“I’d seen them in Washington Heights before,” Wilder said. “But then they walked up to the kids and started asking questions — where they’re from, who their parents are. That’s when I thought, ‘Whoa, this isn’t right.’”
Wilder, who holds a master’s degree in law, immediately stepped in. “I told the kids to move to the back of the batting cages and said, ‘You’re invoking your Fifth Amendment rights. You don’t have to say anything,’” he recalled.
When one officer reportedly raised his voice and called Wilder a “YouTube lawyer,” he responded, “No, I just know how the Constitution works.”
According to Wilder, all of the players are U.S. citizens, though many come from immigrant families. “Their parents are from the Dominican Republic, Mexico, South America, Africa — but the kids were born here. They have a 14th Amendment right to be here,” he said.
The coach says the officers were in uniform, visibly armed, and wearing vests clearly marked “ICE.”
“They looked official — exactly like what I’ve seen in Washington Heights before,” he said.
Wilder has since reached out to local lawmakers, including Assembly member Linda Rosenthal, who backed his actions. “No one has the right to take your information or remove you without cause,” she said.
Eyewitness News has contacted the Department of Homeland Security to confirm the presence of ICE officers at the park but has not yet received a response.
Wilder says the experience has shaken both the players and their families. Since the incident, he has moved practice times, but only two players have returned.
“I never thought something like this would happen on the Upper West Side,” he said. “It’s the kind of thing you hear about — until it happens to you.”
