When ICE agents approached a group of his kids during practice last week, Youman Wilder, their baseball coach and the founder of Harlem Baseball Hitting Academy, stepped up in a major way. Via The Root:
In an interview on MSNBC’s “Deadline White House,” Wilder said he instructed his kids not to respond to armed agents who approached them at a park on New York City’s Upper West Side.
“I heard them saying, ‘Where are you from? Where are your parents from?’ And I just stepped in and said, ‘This is very inappropriate to ask these kids anything,'” he told host Nicolle Wallace. “I’m just going to have them implement their Fifth Amendment right and not say anything to you.’”
The coach said he was disappointed that bystanders in the area didn’t do anything to protect the children during their confrontation with ICE agents, calling them “cowards.” But for him, doing nothing was not an option. He told CNN, “I just said to myself, ‘I’m willing to die to make sure you get home.'”
He added, “The only thing I had that day was my Uncle Pete, who’s my bishop, my mother in my ear, the Constitution and prayer.
I hope more people have the courage to step up the way this man did.
