Summer camp lets kids be kids as vilifying immigration debate roils at home

HOLMES, N.Y. − Among doodles of purple butterflies and pink flowers on a wrinkled white T-shirt, Yaritza Fernandez penned three thin, neatly lettered words in turquoise: Hope, Justice, Empowerment. It was the first full day at the summer camp in upstate New York the 14-year-old has attended for years. Fernandez’s three younger siblings were with her now, and she exuded the quiet confidence of a veteran.

Like other returning campers, she knew the names of the three groups at Rural & Migrant Ministry’s overnight leadership camp: Hope, Justice, Empowerment. Fernandez and others in the program are children of recent and not-so-recent immigrants, farmworkers, construction workers and manual laborers. 

At the end of summer, they board vans in rural areas or small cities and travel down winding roads to escape the burdens of home – worrying about their families' rent hikes, caring for younger siblings, and navigating their parents’ immigration status. They get to see friends who can relate to these experiences. For many, it’s a chance to just be kids and, along the way, gain the confidence to use their voices, in speeches or on stage.

It's a relief to be in the woods, away from it all.

“I feel tiny,” said Fernandez, who has long black hair and braces, as she quietly instructed other campers to clean up their lunch table. “I feel like a little kid.” 

In a tense election year with escalating threats from leaders to crack down on immigration and round up undocumented people, the camp offers a refuge for children of immigrants and recently arrived migrants over campfires, art projects and manicures.

Fernandez traveled five hours south with her three siblings from the hamlet of Albion, near Rochester, where their parents are apple pickers. She felt ready to speak up among the 75 kids at camp, many of whom are keenly aware of the differing outcomes that U.S. policies could bring for them and their families.

"It's definitely hard on kids because we're so young," Fernandez said. "And just ripping apart families – it's just wrong."

'I’m not the only one who went through this'

Maria Christina Martinez, 29, is among many former campers who have returned to teach at camp. Over a decade ago, on April 8, 2013, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents showed up at her family's home in Newburgh, a city about 30 minutes away on the Hudson River. Her father was undocumented and had a decades-old DUI conviction. Agents asked her mom if she was a citizen. She told them she wasn't and they took her, too. Martinez, who was then 18, didn’t hear from her parents for two weeks.

Her first call was to the camp's director, the Rev. Richard Witt. Together, they organized demonstrations, press conferences and calls to elected officials who urged ICE to release her parents. Her parents ultimately came home. But four years later, ICE detained and eventually deported her father, who died in Mexico, where her mother now lives.

The saga of ICE agents showing up at her parents’ home has continued through multiple presidencies − through tough immigration enforcement under Barack Obama, dubbed by progressive critics "deporter-in-chief," and through Donald Trump's promise to deport millions, especially Mexican families like the Martinezes. Immigration policy became a cornerstone of her career. She worked on Elizabeth Warren’s 2020 presidential campaign and later for the Democratic Party. The work made her want to return to camp, where she said the stakes for children are higher today.

“I’m not the only one who went through this,” Martinez told USA TODAY in a sun-filled room on the camp's grounds. “All these kids out here, they have gone through similar situations – and much younger than I was.”  

Witt, the longtime leader of the Rural & Migrant Ministry, regularly witnesses this stress at the nonprofit's four worker centers from Long Island to Western New York. Children have lived with increasing social and political pressure in the U.S. and their native countries, he said.

At camp, Witt spends the days shuffling between groups. He acts goofy with the children, cracking jokes about SpongeBob SquarePants or telling a never-ending campfire story that includes Shakira. By midweek, his wife said, he has usually lost his voice.

The camp started in 1989, recruiting its campers from the nonprofit's migrant worker centers, often Mexican or Jamaican children whose parents worked in the fields. It now hosts youth from Central and South America who arrived following instability in their countries.

Witt expects the burden on these kids will not abate since both parties have promised to limit asylum, and Trump has called for mass raids on immigrant families. Witt wants the kids to learn their power, by being themselves, in community with others.

“My fear is that so many of us in our society have gotten caught up in ignorance about one another that we lose sight of each other's humanity," he said.

'Make the law fair'

The camp’s forested grounds give kids an escape. In one cabin, the youngest children learned to drum and perform African dance. “Strong like a warrior,” one instructor told the 8- to 10-year-olds, as they pumped their arms and puffed their chests. Later, they wiggled facing each other. “¡Uno más!” she yelled. At the end of camp, children perform what they've worked on in front of an audience. 

Allan, 9, was at camp for the first time. He quickly volunteered in dances and even offered support. "I know you," he told a dance instructor who said she was nervous to perform in front of the kids. "You're my friend."

The camp asked to withhold his last name out of concern for his family's safety.

He'd come with friends from Albion and hoped to play soccer at camp and maybe see New York City. Outside of camp, he wanted to learn his family’s Indigenous Guatemalan language, Qʼanjobʼal. When he grows up, he wants to play professional soccer or be a lawyer to “just make the law fair.” 

Seylah, 9, said drumming and dancing made her feel “weird, in a good way.” Her mother, Francely Isodoro, 37, had been a camper decades earlier, as a child of farmworkers. Now, she’s pursuing her bachelor’s degree in informatics at the University at Albany. Isodoro said the camp gives children the confidence to believe in themselves even when others don't. 

“Living in poverty and being someone who migrates to this country, you don’t always see those skills, or you don’t see that at home,” she said. "You don't see confident parents. People who know how to manage their emotions."

Becoming confident at camp

It can be hard for some children to acclimate. Esther, 11, left her native Honduras two years ago and settled in Poughkeepsie. The camp also asked that her last name be withheld for safety. This year was her second summer at camp. Her social worker encouraged her to attend. During most events, she huddled to the side with a girl who arrived from Ecuador just a few months ago.

In Spanish, Esther said she liked camp because she got to have fun, which was difficult at home since her parents were always working. Her favorite activities were drawing and dollhouse making and the scary stories, even though the storytellers were speaking English, making it difficult to follow along. But it helped her learn the language, she said.

When Laura Garcia, 38, attended her first camp 30 years ago, she also didn’t speak English. In school, she learned to hum along to choir music before learning the words. Garcia qualified for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, an Obama administration program that provided temporary relief from deportation for people who arrived in the country at a certain age. Many young children today don't qualify for protections like DACA.

Garcia, a camp counselor whose day job is as a manager for community engagement for the New York Immigration Coalition in the Hudson Valley, said every election is scary for immigrant families fearing deportation. On her phone, she showed pictures from the shirt-making workshop earlier in the day. In the exercise, one child wrote, “Build Bridges Not Walls.” Another sketched: “We all belong in New York.”

A chat with George Washington

Each year, the camp takes the children on a surprise trip. To a Connecticut beach. To Ellis Island, where masses of immigrants, mostly from Europe, arrived a century before. On a recent Wednesday morning, the group visited midtown Manhattan.

The group arrived late and had to scarf down their brown bag lunches in Bryant Park. Then, in a single line spanning a city block, the group traversed the morning rush. They passed vendors selling hats and shirts for Kamala Harris and Trump and crossed Times Square, where Naked Cowboy, the famous street performer and Trump supporter, stood in underwear and boots with a guitar.  

They passed near the spot where hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers arrived on buses from the Mexican border, at the behest of Republican governors and local Democratic officials. On these Manhattan streets, migrant families navigated one of the busiest corridors in the world. Months earlier, New York City police wrongly accused one Venezuelan migrant here of attacking a police officer, and vigilantes attacked another Latino man during a live Fox News segment, suspecting he was a migrant.

Mateo Munoz, a 17-year-old from Long Island, wore a blue Voices of Long Island Youth cap, for a Rural & Migrant Ministry program, with a Colombian flag colored on its side. He spent time earlier in the summer at a science camp learning about DNA and hoped to become a biologist. But he also felt passionate about improving conditions for immigrant communities. His family immigrated from Colombia and Spain, and his mom now works for the Rural & Migrant Ministry. He saw how people who were once lawyers or doctors in their home countries had to start from scratch in New York.

He wanted to help ensure those families could advocate for themselves.  

“If we don’t empower our younger generations, how will we fight for community?” he said as he waited for the walking man to light up at the crosswalk. “How can we fight for a better world?”

The group finally arrived at their destination: Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Broadway show, “Hamilton,” a fictionalization of the founding fathers' story featuring a nonwhite cast. They arrived minutes before the show to listen to Tamar Greene, the actor who plays George Washington. Greene is from Rochester, and his family is from Jamaica. He opened up to the campers about his path to Broadway, referencing the moments as a young person when he felt he didn’t belong.

After a brief talk, Greene headed backstage. The ushers opened the doors for the afternoon performance. The children sat in the mezzanine, waiting for the show to start.