The 50 students filed into a Bronx auditorium, chatting excitedly and snapping selfies while fixing the colorful sashes adorned with flags from 17 countries, forming a mosaic of nationalities: Dominican Republic, Honduras, Gambia, Senegal, Mali.
Spanish and French filled the air as teary-eyed parents held balloons and watched their children, all of whom had migrated to the United States about four years ago, many not knowing a word of English back then.
Out of the hundreds of graduations this month at New York City public schools, the one held by the Ellis Preparatory Academy was different. The Bronx high school of about 250 students is one of the few dedicated exclusively to recently arrived immigrants, many of whom may be undocumented or have tenuous legal status.
But before they could get their diplomas, the school’s principal felt compelled to interrupt the celebratory mood: She had to pay tribute to a Venezuelan student who was sitting in an immigration detention center about 275 miles away in Pennsylvania.
“One of our own was taken,” Norma Vega, the principal who founded the school in 2008, said on Tuesday. “We want to make sure that no matter where we are, no matter where we go, that we always keep him in front and center.”
The high school was thrust into the spotlight last month when one of its students, Dylan Lopez Contreras, was detained by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, making him the first public school student in the city to be arrested during President Trump’s second term.
Federal agents arrested him when he showed up for a routine hearing at an immigration court in Manhattan on May 21, drawing outrage from school and city officials, with Mayor Eric Adams joining a legal effort seeking to get him released. They cast Mr. Lopez Contreras as one of many immigrants without criminal records who entered the country under Biden-era legal programs but were getting swept up in Mr. Trump’s immigration dragnet.
His lawyers have said he came to the United States using a mobile app that allowed millions of immigrants to lawfully enter the country to claim asylum, but the Department of Homeland Security has claimed that he “illegally entered” the country. The agency moved to place him in an expedited deportation process without hearings.
His arrest 35 days ago rocked Ellis Prep, a close-knit school with 16 teachers. The students are considered too old to start at a traditional high school. Mr. Lopez Contreras, 20, had enrolled after leaving Venezuela in 2024 with his family and was admired for balancing school with a job as a delivery driver that helped support his family.
While Mr. Lopez Contreras was a freshman and was not expected at the graduation on Tuesday, his detention manifested many of the students’ worst fears and cast a somber if brief shadow over the ceremony.
“Some people may see Ellis as students who undoubtedly will be behind the rest, but who nevertheless were forced to speak for themselves,” Luis Rodriguez, a graduating 21-year-old from the Dominican Republic, told his classmates in a speech. “It is tough to start again. A new country, new language, new surroundings.”
Mr. Rodriguez, who migrated to the United States with his family on a visa in 2022 and graduated a year early, is starting veterinary studies this summer at Le Moyne College, a private Jesuit school in Syracuse.
Most of the graduating students had received generous financial aid packages to attend private colleges as well as city and state public universities. Others were going to trade schools focused on carpentry, plumbing and solar panel installations.
“Our students come from their home country, and they don’t see themselves as college material,” said Jackie Peña, the college and career counselor at Ellis. “By the time that they graduate, not only have they mastered the English language, they’ve had experience through internships, and they feel more confident and excited about the opportunity of going to college.”
Students can enroll at Ellis — a name that refers to Ellis Island and that is also an acronym for English Language Learners and International Support — if they have arrived to the United States within six months of starting.
The school draws students who are up to 21 years old — older than the average high schooler.
Their education may have been disrupted in their home countries, if they received any. Many juggle jobs and are starting over their high school education to get ready for a U.S. college education, which Ellis strongly encourages through a robust counseling program.
While Ellis opened 17 years ago, enrolling waves of immigrants settling across the city, it and a handful of others played an outsize role when thousands of migrants began arriving in New York City from the southern border in 2022.
Enrollment at Ellis — and the school system more broadly — grew as the classroom became a prism for the diverse influx of people into the city: More students from Venezuela, Colombia and Central America signed up, followed by a large number of teenagers from West Africa.
This year, the school’s mission has run counter to objectives of the Trump administration, which has targeted benefits given to undocumented students and has given more leeway to ICE agents to make arrests at schools, though those remain rare.
On Tuesday, the graduating class — which began as freshmen in 2021, the year students returned to classrooms after the pandemic — gathered at an auditorium at the University of Mount Saint Vincent in the Bronx. Many had family members in attendance, but a few had entered the country as unaccompanied minors and have no relatives in the United States.
Wearing heels and sneakers beneath their white and blue robes, the students listened intently to Ms. Vega, the principal, who named-checked some students and called them “my children,” as she celebrated them for beating the odds and offered measured words of advice.
“Everything that you do from this point forward is going to be watched,” she said. “People want to see, how does this kid do?
“They’re going to watch you, and you know what they’re going to see? Greatness, because every student who walks through our school and those doors, that’s what I see. Greatness.”
Aboubacar Souare, 20, was born in Ivory Coast, grew up in Guinea and arrived in the United States in 2021 at 16, enrolling at Ellis the following year.
“It was not easy,” Mr. Souare said in an interview. “I just knew how to say ‘good morning’ in English.”
The ceremony was poignant for Mr. Souare. He said his father died two weeks ago, and his mother is in Africa. Next week, he is starting at Clarkson University in upstate New York to pursue a degree in business and data analytics and to join a military training program.
“It’s proof of all the work that I achieved,” he said, surrounded by his aunt and uncles. “It is proof that I can do more than a high school diploma.”
For her part, Ms. Vega, the principal, said she was singularly focused on getting ICE to release Mr. Lopez Contreras. The school faculty helped his mother connect with legal resources, and a GoFundMe campaign has raised more than $40,000 to support his family.
“He might be still in detention, but he hasn’t been removed” from the country, she said. “And this entire summer, and as we move on, all of us will make sure that this young man is not forgotten, because he cannot be forgotten.”
Luis Ferré-Sadurní is a Times reporter covering immigration, focused on the influx of migrants arriving in the New York region.
Todd Heisler is a Times photographer based in New York. He has been a photojournalist for more than 25 years.
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