ELLIS graduates share stories of resilience, identity and opportunity in the United States

For many Americans, building a life in the United States was not a given, but a hard-fought achievement. While the nation geared up for Independence Day celebrations commemorating 250 years of American sovereignty, two alumni from Marble Hill’s English Language Learners and International Support Preparatory Academy, or ELLIS, reflected on the goals and journeys that led them to the U.S.

Emely Lopez, 27, and Lorens Sanquintin Pena, 22, came to the U.S. as asylum seekers. Both endured years of stalled status with little certainty, but emerged with an education, access to work and an idea of the U.S. that differed from their expectations.

ELLIS is a high school designed for newly arrived immigrants that are overage to enroll in the city’s public schools and are not yet proficient in English. Staff helps develop academic, language and cultural skills to prepare students for college in the U.S.

Lopez is a high school tech instructor who left Honduras for the Bronx a decade ago. At the time, her dad worked long hours, and she was often home alone. Lopez said when she was 16, the neighborhood was dominated by MS-13, a transnational criminal gang, and members started harassing her.

She recalled one member who was a neighbor, and started telling her he liked what she was wearing, the way she styled her hair and calling out other unsolicited, suggestive comments that were not appropriate for a young person to hear, Lopez said.

Lopez had heard stories of what treatment like that led to. At some point, girls being harassed became victims, forced into a romantic and sexual relationship with gang members, Lopez said. Fear started to build. She felt unsafe in her home — there was no fence outside or protection against an intruder, anyone could break in if they wanted, she said. She worried the force of an older man would easily overpower her own strength.

The justice system in Honduras couldn’t help her, Lopez said. To escape these mounting tensions, she and her family immigrated to the U.S., where some other family members had already been living. She hoped to apply for asylum, a status that once granted, allows a non-U.S. citizen to legally live and work in the U.S. if they have been or will be persecuted in their home country.

On her first attempt to make it into the U.S., Lopez said she was detained in Mexico and deported back to Honduras. On the second, she made it to McAllen, Texas. She was held in a processing center there.

Lopez said the treatment at the center was inhumane. She recalled sleeping on the floor with a foil blanket that had already been used by others held there. There was no private space to use the bathroom, she said. She got her period, and said she didn’t have any chance to ask for feminine hygiene products, resorting to paper towels.

“You have to somehow accept it if you want something good at the end,” Lopez told The Press. “You need to go through the hard parts. That’s how I saw it.”

Once she was released, Lopez took a three-day bus trip from Texas to New York, eventually enrolling at ELLIS. She met another student who would become her husband, and last year, after they got married, Lopez qualified for a green card because her husband was in the military.

A green card grants a non-U.S. citizen legal right to live and work in the U.S. as a lawful permanent resident. After five years, green card holders can apply for U.S. citizenship.

Up until 2025 — nine years after Lopez arrived in the U.S. — her application for asylum was still pending. Lopez lives in New Jersey now, and has an associate degree in information technology from City University of New York’s Guttman Community College, and a bachelor’s degree in computer science from State University of New York at Oneonta.

To her, being an immigrant in the U.S. is being someone new and different. It’s powerful to offer a perspective that isn’t the same as everyone else’s, she said.

Things aren’t perfect, but “we are humans and we are not perfect,” Lopez said. She added that it “doesn’t matter where you go, you will find things wrong, but on a different level.”

Like Lopez, Sanquintin Pena came to the U.S. in pursuit of safety.

Sanquintin Pena moved from the Dominican Republic to the Bronx when she was 17. She is non-binary, a term that describes those whose identity is not exclusively male or female. After coming out, Sanquintin Pena said, her family didn’t approve, and there would be no one else in the Dominican Republic to take care of her. The country also doesn’t have laws to protect members of the LGBTQ+ community from discrimination.

With nowhere to turn, Sanquintin Pena applied for asylum status in the U.S. That application wasn’t approved until January 2025, and the years in between were painful, she said. She wasn’t able to find work without the proper documentation, and doubted she would be able to move on to college for the same reason.

Before moving, when she was just visiting family in the U.S., Sanquintin Pena said she saw this country as easy — if someone comes to work, they will be given opportunities.

But the reality was more difficult, and it all came down to a few documents.

“I was frustrated,” Sanquintin Pena said. “I was so angry. Because for me it was just a card. It was just a paper that was going to change my life, that was going to give me all the opportunities that I was looking for … If you don’t have those titles, you are nobody here.”

Sanquintin Pena described it as living in a gray area. As an immigrant, she wanted financial stability, ability to work, to move onto college at the same time as her friends — not the in-between of waiting, wondering if she will be able to make it through.

It’s difficult to “focus on the future when you have a present too hard, too chaotic,” Sanquintin Pena said.

Despite the uncertainty, there were glimpses at a better life as well. Sanquintin Pena said she was finally able to express herself in the U.S. That expression has emerged through her personal style: she has bright, blue-dyed curls and bleached eyebrows. She feels safer, blasting 80s rock music in her headphones while she walks instead of fear of being robbed, she said.

Now, Sanquintin Pena is a student at Guttman Community College, where she studies human services. She also works part time at ELLIS helping other alumni navigate the college application process. Even with the security of asylum status, Sanquintin Pena said she is still living off of scholarships for immigrants, and fears federal rollbacks on aid programs or inability to renew her status.

Sanquintin Pena said being an immigrant in the U.S. means thinking harder. The things that she faced were unimaginable at one time, but she also unlocked a new, deeper version of herself. She described it as being resilient, as being powerful.

“It’s hard, but it’s a beautiful hard,” she said.