“Not having a home for me and my son made it even harder to get out of survival mode and learn to connect to him.”

Families at a city-sponsored parent engagement event in 2015. (Demetrius Freeman/Mayoral Photography Office)

When I was 18 and became a father, I had no place of my own just to be with my son. 

At the time, I was a youth in foster care. In my life I’d been homeless and slept on benches. I’d lost my mother and my cousin. I’d seen close friends die. As a Black male growing up in poverty, I’d learned that if I showed soft emotions, I would be seen as weak or crazy, so instead I shut down. I was emotionally absent as a father because I was afraid to fail and somehow harm my son without meaning to. 

During those first few years when I was doing everything I could to be a good father on the outside, on the inside I was numb. I felt like I wasn’t even living. Not having a home for me and my son made it even harder to get out of survival mode and learn to connect to him. 

Shortly after my son was born, I found a bed in Covenant House, a residence in Manhattan for homeless youth, even though I also had a place in a foster home on Staten Island. I went to Covenant House because the foster parent wouldn’t give me a house key. If I came home during the day and she wasn’t there, I’d be locked out, often for two or three hours. Now that I was a father, I didn’t want to beg to be treated decently. 

I also went to Covenant House because the time it took me to travel from Staten Island to see my son was crazy. I had to travel around two hours to Manhattan, where I worked all day at Footlocker. After, I’d go to the Bronx to pick up my son, who lived with his mother. Because of all that travel, eventually I started staying at Covenant House full-time. 

But I still had problems seeing my son. After Covenant House helped me get a second job working security, I’d work all night at a crazy stressful job (you’re basically a cop but with no gun or badge), and if the next shift didn’t show, I’d have to keep working, sometimes up to 16 hours. I hardly slept at, because right after work I’d go get my son. 

But the worst part was that I didn’t have a place to be with him. My son’s mother was in a women’s shelter, where men aren’t allowed, and Covenant House and my foster care agency didn’t have any space for young fathers and their children. So for over a year, my only solution was to rent a room in a hotel in the Bronx. The cost was $80 for four hours or $200 for the day. I spent almost all the money I earned just to have a place for me and my son to be together.

I’m tired of young Black men being viewed as problems rather than as the backbone of our families and communities that we could be. 

The city has recently started to pay attention to our struggles. This year, the mayor’s office increased funding for fatherhood programs and made them available for young fathers. (In the past, many programs were only for fathers 18 and older). Plus, for the first time ever, the Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) is creating a fatherhood policy meant to protect fathers’ rights. I believe it’s a question of justice that ACS’s fatherhood policy includes language that removes some of the barriers that young fathers in foster care face—especially the barriers that the system itself creates.

Last year, the Center for the Study of Social Policy published a paper entitled “I Just Want to Be a Father,” which showed that a lot of young fathers in foster care don’t get any real casework or programs to help them grow into their father role. They’re disconnected from any kind of support and from each other. 

Like me, many of them also don’t have a physical place to be a family. There are no group homes where fathers can live with their children full- or part-time or visiting spaces where we can be with our kids or hang out with our co-parents as a family. It’s left to foster parents to decide if they want to let the children of young fathers come over, and lots of times they don’t.

Many young fathers in foster care also have to deal with staff who require them to have background checks before they can visit children living with moms in group homes, and who require friends and relatives to have home visits and background checks before they allow young fathers in foster care to take their children to visit.

These practices basically cut off all options to young fathers in care other than to be out on the street with their kids. They also violate the official policies of New York City’s Administration for Children’s Services, but “I Just Want to Be a Father” found that they’re still common. The ACS fatherhood policy should make clear that these practices should end. 

I began to get a little more connected to support when Court Appointed Special Advocates of New York City (CASA-NYC) assigned me a volunteer. The volunteer wasn’t a Black man or a father, but he texted me for six months before I responded to him, and that made me respect the strength he had not to fold under pressure. He taught me how to put on a tie and to speak up for what’s right. Over time, I learned that even when everybody is sitting down and no one is clapping, you can still stand up for yourself.

Instead of living in survival mode, I started slowing down and living in the present. Instead of going numb, I started accepting my feelings and channeling the pressure into something good. I also started playing more with my two sons. Today, we go outside. We read Dr. Seuss. We do puzzles together, because I want to teach them how to think strategically and look at problems as challenges that need solutions.

My volunteer also encouraged me to start attending CASA-NYC’s monthly group for young parents and its Youth Advisory Board. I was the first father to attend the parenting group.

Eventually I was hired to help run the group and to recruit more young fathers. In my role, I try to feel what other youth feel and create a safe space where no one is judging. 

By sharing our stories with each other, we can think together about how to prevent what happened to us from happening to other youth. We can say to the city that fathers like us matter to our children, and that we and they should have the right to be together as a family. 

Devante Grant is a young father of two, a former youth in foster care, and a youth advocate for CASA-NYC.

The post Opinion: Supporting NYC’s Young Fathers appeared first on City Limits.

By JULIE WATSON, Associated Press

The Trump administration has suspended $584 million in federal grants for the University of California, Los Angeles, nearly double the amount that was previously thought, the school’s chancellor announced Wednesday.

UCLA is the first public university whose federal grants have been targeted by the administration over allegations of civil rights violations related to antisemitism and affirmative action. The Trump administration has frozen or paused federal funding over similar allegations against private colleges.

“If these funds remain suspended, it will be devastating for UCLA and for Americans across the nation,” Chancellor Julio Frenk said Wednesday in a statement, noting the groundbreaking research that has come out of the university.

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The departments affected rely on funding from the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Energy, Frenk said.

The U.S. Department of Education did not immediately respond to an email from The Associated Press requesting comment.

The Trump administration recently announced the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division found UCLA violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 “by acting with deliberate indifference in creating a hostile educational environment for Jewish and Israeli students.”

The announcement came as UCLA reached a $6 million settlement with three Jewish students and a Jewish professor who sued the university, arguing it violated their civil rights by allowing pro-Palestinian protesters in 2024 to block their access to classes and other areas on campus.

The university has said that it is committed to campus safety and inclusivity and will continue to implement recommendations.

The new UC president, James B. Milliken, said in a statement Wednesday that it has agreed to talks with the administration over the allegations against UCLA.

“These cuts do nothing to address antisemitism,” Milliken said. “Moreover, the extensive work that UCLA and the entire University of California have taken to combat antisemitism has apparently been ignored.”

Milliken said the “cuts would be a death knell for innovative work that saves lives, grows our economy, and fortifies our national security. It is in our country’s best interest that funding be restored.”

As part of the lawsuit settlement, UCLA said it will contribute $2.3 million to eight organizations that combat antisemitism and support the university’s Jewish community. It also has created an Office of Campus and Community Safety, instituting new policies to manage protests on campus. Frenk, whose Jewish father and grandparents fled Nazi Germany to Mexico and whose wife is the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, launched an initiative to combat antisemitism and anti-Israeli bias.

Last week, Columbia agreed to pay $200 million as part of a settlement to resolve investigations into the government’s allegations that the school violated federal antidiscrimination laws. The agreement also restores more than $400 million in research grants.

The Trump administration plans to use its deal with Columbia as a template for other universities, with financial penalties that are now seen as an expectation.

The Trump administration’s tactics “discourage people from attending court or from feeling safe in court, where folks are simply seeking to access the process that is accorded to them,” said Bobby Hodgson, assistant legal director of the New York Civil Liberties Union.

Immigration officers outside 26 Federal Plaza in June. (Ayman Siam/Office of NYC Comptroller)

Several New York organizations are suing the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the Executive Office of Immigration Review, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for repeatedly arresting migrants who show up to routine, mandatory check-ins at immigration courts.

The New York Civil Liberties Union, the American Civil Liberties Union, Make the Road New York, and Emery Celli Brinckerhoff Abady Ward & Maazel LLP filed the lawsuit Friday on behalf of The Door and African Communities Together, two local nonprofits that serve New Yorkers and immigrants. 

They say ICE’s courthouse policy, which has recently allowed officers to arrest people after their court hearings, and the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR)’s dismissal policy, which allows Department of Homeland Security (DHS) attorneys to move to dismiss orally in court without a written motion, are unfair and capricious.

The lawsuit seeks to reverse ICE’s policies under the Administrative Procedure Act, a federal law that governs how agencies create and enforce regulations.

The administration’s tactics “discourage people from attending court or from feeling safe in court, where folks are simply seeking to access the process that is accorded to them,” said Bobby Hodgson, assistant legal director of the New York Civil Liberties Union.

Before these measures were put in place, the Trump administration pushed for more arrests of immigrants without legal status, but officials were failing to reach the numbers they expected. 

But arrests increased significantly since May, when these measures were put in place. That same month, Stephen Miller, the president’s top immigration adviser, and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem pressed immigration officials to increase detentions to reach at least 3,000 people a day.

Of the 2,365 immigrants arrested in the New York area since January, more than half had no prior criminal charges or convictions, according to a New York Times analysis of data obtained by the Deportation Data Project. About half of those arrests were people detained at immigration offices or courts. 

“The ability of law enforcement to make arrests of criminal illegal aliens in courthouses is common sense,” an unnamed spokesperson from the DHS press office told City Limits, echoing words that had been used before by DHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin. The Executive Office for Immigration Review referred questions to DHS and declined further comment.

The lawsuit describes how members of two organizations, The Door and African Communities Together, have been affected by arrests and detentions.

The Door works with young people under the age of 24, some of whom are immigrants seeking legal relief, such as asylum or Special Immigrant Juvenile Status (SIJS). This status is available to individuals under the age of 21 who are unmarried and currently living in the United States, among others.

Advocates and attorneys have suggested that people ask to appear virtually in immigration court as a means to avoid ICE agents. 

One of The Door’s clients filed a motion to appear online, according to the lawsuit. However, the court rejected his request, and he had to appear in court in person, where he was arrested. 

The 21-year-old is currently being held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, which officials have decried for its “dangerous, inhumane conditions.”

Thursday morning, Congressmembers Adriano Espaillat, Nydia Velázquez, and Dan Goldman—who filed a lawsuit against ICE last week over being barred access to ICE holding areas—were again denied entry to the Brooklyn facility during an oversight visit.

The Door fears the young man’s SIJS petition will be lost if he is deported; they have not been able to speak with him since his arrest in June.

“We see the fear of our members in a way that I haven’t seen in the past,” said Beth Baltimore, the deputy director of The Door’s Legal Services Center.

Baltimore explained that out of all the motions to appear virtually that they’ve filed on behalf of clients in the last couple of months, only a couple have been approved.

“A lot of people are just losing access to counsel that might be provided in New York and losing access to services at The Door,” said Baltimore about the young people, including migrant youths, who get access to services through the organization. They can’t come to our health center, can’t come to our arts programming, and lunch and dinner every day.”

To reach the reporter behind this story, contact Daniel@citylimits.org. To reach the editor, contact Jeanmarie@citylimits.org

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The post New York Groups Challenge ICE’s Courthouse Arrests appeared first on City Limits.

By Christie D’Zurilla, Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES — Actor Kelley Mack, who played Addy in Season 9 of “The Walking Dead” in addition to doing national commercials and voice-over work, has died at age 33, her family said on social media.

“It is with indelible sadness that we are announcing the passing of our dear Kelley. Such a bright, fervent light has transitioned to the beyond, where we all eventually must go,” the family wrote Tuesday on her Instagram account. She died in Cincinnati after battling glioma of the central nervous system, according to a notice posted on her CaringBridge page.

“Kelley passed peacefully on Saturday evening with her loving mother Kristen and steadfast aunt Karen present. Kelley has already come to many of her loved ones in the form of various butterflies … She will be missed by so many to depths that words cannot express.”

Mack, born Kelley Lynne Klebenow in Cincinnati on July 10, 1992, was raised in towns around Ohio and also in Missouri, Connecticut, North Carolina and Illinois. She moved to Los Angeles after earning a cinematography degree from Chapman University’s Dodge College of Film in Orange in 2014.

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Her commercial work included playing Becky in “Fansville” ads for Dr Pepper and her voice-overs could be heard in spots for the Hyundai Ioniq, Budweiser, Credit Karma and more. Her “Walking Dead” character, Addy, was one of the young residents of Hilltop who had a crush on Henry while he had feelings for Lydia. Addy’s reanimated head wound up on a pike at the border of the Whisperers’ territory along with those of Henry and a handful of others who fought bravely but unsuccessfully after being kidnapped by Alpha.

After experiencing pain last fall in her lower back and legs, Mack was diagnosed in late November with a diffuse midline glioma, a rare type of astrocytoma, a cancer that starts in the central nervous system. “Due to the biopsy surgery on my spinal cord,” she said on Instagram in January, “I have lost the use of my right leg and most of my left leg, so I now get around with a walker and a wheelchair.”

She started proton radiation treatments in Cincinnati in mid-January — “It felt like I was filming an episode of my new TV show, set on a space ship floating somewhere in our infinite galaxy,” she wrote on Instagram — and by March had regained some ability to walk despite continuing pain in her lower body.

“Some days are challenging,” she said in April on CaringBridge, listing all the “healthy” things she was trying to do with aid from caregivers — her family members. “We have our emotional hiccups,” she said, “but we remind each other of our positivity and strength. We continue to feel confident in our path forward, God, and in our love for each other all leading up to overcome.”

By July, however, Mack was receiving respite care, which was described as “the toughest part of her journey.”

She is survived by her mother and father, Kristen and Lindsay Klebenow, sister Katherine, brother Parker, grandparents Lois and Larry Klebenow and her boyfriend, Logan Lanier. A celebration of life will be held Aug. 16 in Glendale, Ohio, and at a future date in Los Angeles.

©2025 Los Angeles Times. Visit at latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.