NEW YORK — Some students who attend a Queens middle school say they’re being bullied and beaten simply because they’re migrants.
City school officials are now looking into whether the incidents are isolated or if it’s another battle for some of the city’s youngest migrants.
“It’s very difficult,” says 13-year-old Odilys Torres, in tears. She started to attend J.H.S. 226 in Queens in September, a few months after her family arrived in New York from Venezuela.
Sitting beside her mother, she told CBS New York that earlier this month, she was bullied and beaten on a bus on her way home from school.
“They grabbed my hair, they punched me in the head, kicked me in the stomach,” she said in Spanish, “and they did tell me to get out of this country and leave this bus.”
Her family attends HopeNYC, a church that has been a safe haven for them. It’s blocks away from the shelter the city placed them into after their long and scary journey.