Lizandro Claros Saravia, a 19-year-old who fled violence in Central America, should be on top of the world after winning a scholarship to play college soccer in North Carolina. Instead, he and his brother are sitting in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention and are facing imminent deportation to their native El Salvador. Both entered as minors in 2009, and while recent applications for stays were denied, they were allowed to stay so long as they kept checking in with ICE. During one of those visits last week, both young brothers were arrested:
“He’s one of the hardest-working people on our team,” Matt Di Rosa said at the protest, which drew about 50 people, including family, teammates and immigration advocates. “He has a bright future, and that’s something he actively sought.”
Diego Claros Saravia, 22, graduated from high school a few years ago and works in a car repair shop.
Neither brother has a criminal record, said Nick Katz, senior manager of legal services at the immigration advocacy organization CASA de Maryland, who is representing the pair.
They would not have been priorities for deportation under the Obama administration, according to a spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. But President Trump’s administration has made clear that any undocumented immigrant is vulnerable to deportation, and there has been a steady increase in the number of people detained after otherwise routine check-ins, advocates say.
“It doesn’t make any sense,” Katz said. “These are the kids who we want to stay.”
Trump’s recent, racist fear-mongering is trying to convince you he’s targeting only gang members for arrest. Wrong. Under Donald Trump and former Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly’s ICE, the arrests of undocumented immigrants with no criminal record, like Lizandro and Diego, have surged more than 150 percent compared with this time last year. And now that many of the Central American minors who fled to our southern border for their lives are turning 18, the Trump administration is actively hunting them down in order to tear them from their homes, neighborhoods, and schools and deport them back to danger:
Fatima Claros Saravia, 25, cried as she held up a sign she had made for her brothers. “Stop separating families,” she wrote under photos of Lizandro playing soccer. “Let my brothers live their American dream.”
“They wanted to study and to work,” she said. “We are heartbroken — this is not fair, and it is not right.”
Matt Ney, who coached Lizandro in his first two years at the Bethesda Soccer Club, said the young man was one of the top 50 players his age in the D.C. metropolitan region.
“He didn’t always have access to a car, but he was at every training session, whether he had to take the bus or walk,” Ney said. “He would show up no matter what.”
Neither of the young men have criminal records. Neither are national security threats. Instead, they were arrested after just trying to follow ICE’s rules by checking in. None of this makes us safer, yet grave injustices are being committed in our name, with our tax dollars, against the most vulnerable among us.