Juan grew up watching the Dodgers from his living room, a child of Guatemalan immigrants who adopted the team as his own. He got a tattoo with the logo on his left forearm. But last year, ICE agents plucked his father off the street and deported him after nearly three decades in the country. Everything changed after that.
Now, as the World Series-winning Dodgers prepare to visit the White House on Thursday, Juan finds himself caught between two worlds. He wants to celebrate a team that has long symbolized integration and belonging for immigrants in Los Angeles. But he cannot shake the feeling that the franchise has turned its back on people like him at a moment when they needed it most.
The conflict runs deeper than the optics of visiting a president who has called Los Angeles a trash heap controlled by "illegal aliens" and ordered aggressive immigration enforcement that has spread fear across a city nearly 50 percent Latino. While his father was detained, Juan's family was charged shocking markups by the Geo Group, the private prison operator running the facility: fifty dollars to open a phone account, eighty dollars for a basic long-sleeve shirt, more for items from the commissary. The Los Angeles Times recently reported that Guggenheim Partners, which owns the Dodgers, held a stake in Geo Group.
"I don't think I've watched a full Dodger game since," Juan said. "For anyone who has been truly affected, it's kind of hard. I don't want to give my money to an ownership that was profiting off me during a terrible time."
The timing of the White House visit has amplified the tension. In recent months, ICE conducted heavy-handed raids across Los Angeles and attempted to use an area outside Dodger Stadium as a staging ground for operations. Two of the city's soccer teams issued statements of solidarity with immigrant families. The Dodgers did not. Only after significant public pressure did the team tell ICE to stay away, pledge 1.1 million dollars to community support groups, and divest from their stake in Geo Group.
The move has not satisfied activists and clergy who work with affected families. Father Brendan Busse, pastor at Dolores Mission in downtown Los Angeles, sees the moment as a fundamental test of the franchise's values. He recalled how the team released a video supporting Black Lives Matter in 2020, with then-pitcher Clayton Kershaw saying silence was no longer an option. Why not apply that same principle now, he asked.
"Are we here to make money off one another, or as a loving community?" Busse said. "Can the Dodgers treat people with dignity and respect?"
The question carries historical weight in Los Angeles. The Dodgers arrived in the city on land seized from Latino families in a brutal eviction campaign. The franchise has built its brand on family and community, yet that legacy has always been shadowed by contradiction.
Some players are making their own choices. Kike Hernandez, a Puerto Rican fan favorite, announced he would skip the visit, saying he could not stomach watching "our community being violated, profiled, abused and ripped apart." Mookie Betts, who also skipped a Trump White House ceremony in 2019 when he played for Boston, said he would use the day off to spend time with his wife and baby. Both men attended last year's White House visit and faced criticism for it in the wake of the immigration crackdown.
Manager Dave Roberts sidestepped the politics, saying individual players could decide for themselves whether to attend. Going to the White House has been a decades-long tradition for championship teams, he noted, and he expected strong participation. "My personal line, my company line, is I hope we get this invitation every year because that's the goal, to win a championship," he said.
Natalia Molina, a professor of American studies and ethnicity at USC, sees the deeper tension. The Dodgers lineup of Japanese superstars, Latinos, and Americans of different backgrounds sends a powerful message about cultural pluralism, she said. But how can that message coexist with smiling for a camera alongside someone whose policies target the communities those players represent?
"At the end of the day, it's jarring to see players smiling with a person who harbors hatred toward our community," Molina said. "How do you reconcile that?"
Some community organizers hope the team might use the visit as an opportunity to send a message. Joe Kelly made headlines in 2021 by wearing a Mexican mariachi jacket to a White House ceremony. Others have suggested the team could make symbolic gestures, wearing numbers or colors that celebrate Latino heritage. But Molina worries that even such acts would be perceived as confrontational and questioned whether players would feel comfortable engaging in quiet resistance.
"There's a question, even, whether the Spanish-language players can speak Spanish in the halls of the White House," she said. "Can you bring your whole self, or do you need to police even that? Once you are in the zone of self-policing, I don't know how much the visit is about celebration."
Juan remains conflicted. He wants to believe in the team he loved as a child. But the competing loyalties have proven too heavy to carry. "It was never controversial to go to the White House until Trump came into office," he said. "I'm very conflicted."
Author James Rodriguez: "The Dodgers have a chance to prove whether they're willing to stand for the city that has given them everything, but so far the gestures ring hollow against the weight of deportation and detention fees."
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