The announced visit of the Los Angeles Dodgers to the White House, scheduled to take place on July 23, constitutes an infamy and a crude insult to their fans of Latin origin and especially to their immigrant bases.

The Los Angeles team should not overlook the wave of terror unleashed by the raids by violent ICE agents in Southern California since June of last year. We cannot forget the countless disastrous actions that our community experienced and suffered at the hands of these agents not of order but of disorder.

In Southern California alone, these raids claimed the lives of Jaime Alanis and Roberto Carlos Gonzalez. The first worked at a produce warehouse in Ventura County (Glass House) while Mr. Gonzalez lost his life in the City of Monrovia while trying to flee an immigration raid that took place at a Home Depot.

Since these unfortunate and deadly events occurred, instead of moderating their actions and fulfilling their obligations in strict accordance with the law, ICE agents have become increasingly violent.

Using their service weapons, ICE agents have shot suspected undocumented immigrants more than 20 times. As a consequence of this violence, as of July 14, 8 undocumented workers and 3 US citizens had lost their lives.

In the last week alone, 4 undocumented workers died, 2 of them riddled with bullets in the states of Texas and Maine, another trying to escape from ICE in Florida and Jesús Manuel Arenas-Silva, a 45-year-old Venezuelan citizen, while being transferred from a detention center to a hospital in the state of Georgia.

But this is not all. Since Donald Trump assumed his second term as President of the United States, 53 workers detained and imprisoned in immigration detention centers have also lost their lives.

Between US citizens and undocumented workers we have the chilling number of 63 people who were shot by ICE agents or while under the custody and responsibility of the federal government lost their lives.

For our community as well as for those of us who believe in justice, this number does not represent an abstraction but rather an average of almost 4 lives lost and taken per month from our communities and from each of the unfortunate families affected. These families are now heartbroken and devastated by the loss of their loved ones and by the reckless daring of the dead to risk everything to come in search of the American dream to this great nation built by immigrants from all over the world.

In no way do I wish to even insinuate any responsibility to the Dodgers team for the terror and death that the tenant of the White House unleashed in Los Angeles and other major cities in the country. I do not harbor the slightest desire to tarnish the good name of the Dodgers franchise.

However, I believe that Mark Walter, who is the main owner of the consortium that bought the team 12 years ago, as well as Irving “Magic” Johnson, the public face of the team's owners, and the great Billie Jean King among others, have the obligation to rigorously observe their corporate responsibility towards all their fans.

According to data from experts in the field, Latin fans make up between 40 and 50% of the fans who attend the stadium. Next come the Anglos who represent 30 to 40% while the Asian and African American bases represent between 13 and 8% respectively.

This great support for the Dodgers team among this incredible multi-ethnic and racial community has propelled the team not only to win the world series, break and establish new records for attendance as well as income from ticket sales and the increase in sponsors, but also the value of the franchise is now estimated at the astonishing sum of $7.8 billion.

When the team attended the White House in April of last year, the national campaign of arrests and deportations ordered by President Donald Trump had not yet acquired the characteristics of violence, terror and death that we now all recognize but do not accept.

For these reasons, we demand that the Los Angeles Dodgers—the franchise of Jackie Robinson, who desegregated American baseball—a team that represents a city of immigrants, reconsider their previous decision and not attend the White House.

If the legendary Roy Campanella, Jackie Robinson and Fernando Valenzuela could be resurrected, I have no doubt that they would advise Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts, Freddy Freeman, Andy Pages, and other Dodgers stars as well as Dave Roberts himself (the team's manager) to refrain from desecrating the incalculable value associated with their names, memory and reputation.

A true champion, such as the Dodgers, has no need to attend what in fact will constitute neither more nor less than a ceremonial approval of white supremacy, the demolition of civil rights and the imminent threat that this fascist regime represents to the population of the country.

Luis A. Carrillo is a renowned civil rights attorney, and Juan Jose Gutiérrez is a member of the Autonomous Social Action Committee (CASA-HGT) and the Coordinator of the Full Rights for Immigrants Coalition.

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