As Trump Shuts out Migrants, Spain Opens Its Doors and Fuels Economic Growth
MADRID – When night falls on the other side of the Atlantic, her 32-year-old cousin, a house cleaner in New York, huddles inside a dim basement apartment, terrified of ICE raids. But in a burgeoning quarter of the Spanish capital, where immigrant-staffed restaurants tempt newcomers with Dominican chicharrones and Venezuelan empanadas, Edith Chimbo sat in the sunlight, musing about the Spanish Dream.
'My cousin told me, 'Go to Spain'' said Chimbo, 22, who landed in Madrid earlier this year from the Ecuadorian highlands. Armed with a college degree but no work permit, she's cleaning houses under the table, just like her cousin in the United States. Yet she is counting on something in the weeks ahead that her kin almost certainly cannot: legalization.
'Here,' she said, 'we have hope.'
As the Trump administration's crackdown on immigrants and asylum seekers brings tear gas, protests and raids to the streets of the United States, Spain is positioning itself as a counterpoint: a new land of opportunity.
In this nation of 48 million with long colonial links to the New World, an influx of predominantly Latin American immigrants is helping fuel one of the fastest-growing economies in Europe. The Spanish economic transformation is unfolding as the center-left government of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has streamlined immigration rules while offering legal status to roughly 700,000 irregular migrants since 2021.
A landmark bill now being negotiated in the Congress of Deputies could grant legal amnesty to hundreds of thousands more – most of them Spanish-speakers from predominantly Catholic countries in Latin America. Those newcomers often enjoy visa-free travel to Spain, even as Madrid controversially works with Morocco, Mauritania and other countries to block irregular arrivals from the African coast, though Sánchez has also called for tolerance toward migrants fleeing poverty and violence in Africa.
Spain's approach is attracting at least some migrants rejected or barred from the United States, including Venezuelans who are now subject to President Donald Trump's travel ban.
The number of Venezuelans applying for humanitarian protection in Spain surged to 36,923 between January and May, a 36.4 percent spike from the same period last year. With no visa requirements, all Venezuelans need is a valid passport and a plane ticket. In May, the most recent period available, applicants enjoyed a 98.6 percent acceptance rate.
'My hopes and plans for the United States ended overnight,' said Alexander Salazar, 34, a Venezuelan living in Peru who found out in February that his U.S. visa, on humanitarian grounds as an LGBTQ+ migrant, had been suspended. His plan now is to join other family and friends who have already left for Spain.
'That's where my road leads,' he said by telephone from Lima.
Sira Rego, a minister in Sánchez's government, said she was glad to see immigrants choosing Spain. 'It makes me feel a certain pride because it represents the kind of country we want to build: a welcoming country with rights.'
Sánchez now finds his party embroiled in a political corruption scandal that has sparked calls for new elections.
Still, Spanish lawmakers across the political spectrum have adopted a less demonizing approach toward immigration – at least from some countries – than many of their American and European counterparts. Even the far-right Vox party has appeared moderately welcoming of some Spanish-speaking, culturally similar immigrants from Latin America.
Spain, which like most European countries has an aging population, for decades was more a source of outward emigration than a destination for immigrants. It first emerged as a tempting target for foreign job seekers during its economic boom in 2000s. More recently, it has experienced a historic post-pandemic surge, with 2.67 million people born outside the European Union arriving between 2021 and 2023 – an 85 percent increase compared with the previous three year period.
Many of its immigrants, particularly from Latin America, arrive legally, either with work or student permits or as tourists, and later seek to change their status. Yet the country still harbors a hidden mass of migrants without legal permission to work. The government has no official figure of how many could be legalized under the new bill, but estimates suggest anywhere from 600,000 to 1 million.
Critics point to Spain's unemployment rate – over 10 percent, the highest in the European Union, though less than half what it was a decade ago – as evidence that welcoming migrants is wrongheaded. They argue it suppresses wage growth, increases competition for Spanish workers and threatens Spanish identity. Some opinion polls also show a hardening public stance on migration.
Yet the legislative amnesty push came not from a government plan but a grassroots effort backed by civil actors including small-town mayors, companies, migrant advocates and the Catholic church. Spain also has a history of normalizing irregular migrants who can prove steady work, with the last large-scale amnesty under the center-left government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero in 2005.
Should Sánchez survive the corruption crisis – and Spain's economy continue to thrive – his policies could set up this nation as the antithesis of Trump's America: a migrant-friendly progressive paradise.
Under Sánchez, Spain has leaned in as few other nations to diversity, equity and inclusion. A new government rule effective May 1 compels companies with more than 50 employees to enact antidiscrimination policies protecting LGBTQ+ workers. The government is also forging a close economic relationship with Beijing, generating large-scale investment including Chinese auto giant Chery's first factory in Europe.
No policy has been as transformative to Spanish society as the stance on immigration, which officials and economists say is helping to reverse population decline and boost social welfare funding at a moment when baby boomers are retiring. Immigration is also helping drive the strongest period of economic growth since Spain's construction boom in the mid-2000s. Between 2022 and 2024, average GDP per capita increased 2.9 percent – the strongest of the E.U.'s four largest economies. A report published this year by the Bank of Spain estimates that up to 25 percent of that growth was linked to the influx of foreign workers paying taxes, filling jobs, renting homes and purchasing goods and services.
'Spain is a complete anomaly, a country where the government is easing the arrival of migrants, and migrants have been absolutely existential to the dynamism of the economy,' said Gonzalo Fanjul, co-founder at porCausa Foundation, a research group on migrant issues.
Experts and officials say the arrival of large numbers of Latin American immigrants, who speak Spanish and are overwhelmingly Catholic, has led to fewer societal divisions over assimilation than in countries like Sweden or Germany, which have experienced a large influx of Muslims.
'I really doubt that there is any other country in the world where migration is playing as much a role in economic growth right now as it is in Spain,' said Juan Cerruti, an Argentine émigré to Spain and now the global chief economist at Madrid-based Banco Santander.
Immigrants are filling labor gaps not only in Spain's lower-wage tourism, construction and agricultural sectors, but also in the more highly skilled tech and medical sectors. In an office park on the edge of Valencia, companies such as Avantio, a digital services and software provider for the tourism industry, have leveraged Spain's streamlined immigration rules to employ foreigners and grow business.
Company officials say they have turned to foreign labor for positions that otherwise might take up to a year to fill. Almost 73 percent of the company's hires in 2024 were born outside Spain, mostly in Latin America.
'We hire people from outside because we need them, we don't differentiate' based on where they are from, said Rebeca Jorge, Avantio's director of human resources.
Spain has also changed its rules to help legalize the status of migrants with proof of long-term work, to ease access to work visas for new immigrants, to loosen work restrictions on student visa-holders and to simplify family reunification rules.
Those simplified rules could aide Chimbo, whose mother immigrated from Ecuador to Spain a decade ago and became a citizen. Chimbo arrived on a three-month visa in April and is now applying for long-term legal status and the right to work through family reunification. She said she is confident that if that fails, the amnesty legislation could aid her.
Before arriving, she considered following her cousin to the United States – a path Chimbo's father tried before being detained and deported from Texas last year. Speaking on a video phone from her dark basement apartment in a New York City suburb, her cousin Cristina said she warned Chimbo away from the United States.
'I'm afraid all the time now … whenever I'm outside, taking the bus to work … I'm afraid,' said Cristina, who is trying to apply for asylum but frets about her chances.
'I've seen the videos. I've seen what they're doing to migrants in the U.S.,' Chimbo said. 'Here, my biggest fear is Mondays, when I have to go to work.'
Two hundred and twenty-five miles east of Madrid, in the orange blossom-tinged air of Valencia, men from Colombia, Ecuador, Morocco, Senegal and a host of other countries labored on crews rebuilding infrastructure and erecting new apartments following the devastating floods that hit the region in October.
This year, Spain offered legal status to more than 22,000 irregular migrants in the affected area – helping populate an army of construction workers and filling other key jobs in the rebuilding effort. It was a decision driven by humanitarian concern for migrants unable to access government aid following the disaster. But it was also driven by pragmatism.
'I asked the Spanish government for this,' said José Vicente Morata, president of the Valencia Chamber of Commerce. 'We needed these people to have an identification number, the number to be able to exist in Spain. There was a bottleneck in the procedures, [and] we needed workers.'
The region has now evolved into a mini-test case of Spain's legalization efforts. After the floods, Gerardo López Mateu, mayor of the nearby village of Real, struggled to find workers willing to work in the town's ongoing cleanup effort. He had four positions open – three of them now filled by migrants.
'We still can't fill the fourth job,' he said. There are some jobs that 'Spaniards just don't want to do.'
One of his workers is Ibra Bayane, a 24-year-old Senegalese who arrived in Spain by sea in 2021, living ever since off the precariously shadow economy. He'd pick oranges or deliver food. At best, he said, he'd earn the equivalent of $35 a day.
As a documented migrant, he has been able to get a driver's license for the first time and access basic medical care. Now, he can also travel back to Senegal to visit family without risk. His salary is no fortune – 60 euros a day – about $70 – for cleanup work in the hot southern Spanish sun.
But it's twice what he was earning before – and enough to afford a small room with a vase of fresh flowers on a desk, and a large window that brings a cooling breeze.
'My life is better now,' he said. 'I can live.'
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The Mainichi
4 hours ago
- The Mainichi
Many Americans are witnessing immigration arrests for the first time and reacting
SAN DIEGO (AP) -- Adam Greenfield was home nursing a cold when his girlfriend raced in to tell him Immigration and Customs Enforcement vehicles were pulling up in their trendy San Diego neighborhood. The author and podcast producer grabbed his iPhone and bolted out the door barefoot, joining a handful of neighbors recording masked agents raiding a popular Italian restaurant nearby, as they yelled at the officers to leave. An hour later, the crowd had grown to nearly 75 people, with many in front of the agents' vehicles. "I couldn't stay silent," Greenfield said. "It was literally outside of my front door." More Americans are witnessing people being hauled off as they shop, exercise at the gym, dine out and otherwise go about their daily lives as President Donald Trump's administration aggressively works to increase immigration arrests. As the raids touch the lives of people who aren't immigrants themselves, many Americans who rarely, if ever, participated in civil disobedience are rushing out to record the actions on their phones and launch impromptu protests. Arrests are being made outside gyms, busy restaurants Greenfield said on the evening of the May 30 raid, the crowd included grandparents, retired military members, hippies, and restaurant patrons arriving for date night. Authorities threw flash bangs to force the crowd back and then drove off with four detained workers, he said. "To do this, at 5 o'clock, right at the dinner rush, right on a busy intersection with multiple restaurants, they were trying to make a statement," Greenfield said. "But I don't know if their intended point is getting across the way they want it to. I think it is sparking more backlash." Previously, many arrests happened late at night or in the pre-dawn hours by agents waiting outside people's homes as they left for work or outside their work sites when they finished their day. When ICE raided another popular restaurant in San Diego in 2008, agents did it in the early morning without incident. White House border czar Tom Homan has said agents are being forced to make more arrests in communities because of sanctuary policies that limit cooperation with ICE in certain cities and states. ICE enforces immigration laws nationwide but seeks state and local help in alerting federal authorities of immigrants wanted for deportation and holding that person until federal officers take custody. Vice President JD Vance, during a visit to Los Angeles on Friday, said those policies have given agents "a bit of a morale problem because they've had the local government in this community tell them that they're not allowed to do their job." "When that Border Patrol agent goes out to do their job, they said within 15 minutes they have protesters, sometimes violent protesters who are in their face obstructing them," he said. 'It was like a scene out of a movie' Melyssa Rivas had just arrived at her office in the Los Angeles suburb of Downey, California one morning last week when she heard the frightened screams of young women. She went outside to find the women confronting nearly a dozen masked federal agents who had surrounded a man kneeling on the pavement. "It was like a scene out of a movie," Rivas said. "They all had their faces covered and were standing over this man who was clearly traumatized. And there are these young girls screaming at the top of their lungs." As Rivas began recording the interaction, a growing group of neighbors shouted at the agents to leave the man alone. They eventually drove off in vehicles, without detaining him, video shows. Rivas spoke to the man afterward, who told her the agents had arrived at the car wash where he worked that morning, then pursued him as he fled on his bicycle. It was one of several recent workplace raids in the majority-Latino city. The same day, federal agents were seen at a Home Depot, a construction site and an LA Fitness gym. It wasn't immediately clear how many people had been detained. "Everyone is just rattled," said Alex Frayde, an employee at LA Fitness who said he saw the agents outside the gym and stood at the entrance, ready to turn them away as another employee warned customers about the sighting. In the end, the agents never came in. Communities protest around ICE buildings Arrests at immigration courts and other ICE buildings have also prompted emotional scenes as masked agents have turned up to detain people going to routine appointments and hearings. In the city of Spokane in eastern Washington state, hundreds of people rushed to protest outside an ICE building June 11 after former city councilor Ben Stuckart posted on Facebook. Stuckart wrote that he was a legal guardian of a Venezuelan asylum seeker who went to check in at the ICE building, only to be detained. His Venezuelan roommate was also detained. Both men had permission to live and work in the U.S. temporarily under humanitarian parole, Stuckart told The Associated Press. "I am going to sit in front of the bus," Stuckart wrote, referring to the van that was set to transport the two men to an ICE detention center in Tacoma. "The Latino community needs the rest of our community now. Not tonight, not Saturday, but right now!!!!" The city of roughly 230,000 is the seat of Spokane County, where just over half of voters cast ballots for Trump in the 2024 presidential election. Stuckart was touched to see his mother's caregiver among the demonstrators. "She was just like, 'I'm here because I love your mom, and I love you, and if you or your friends need help, then I want to help,'" he said through tears. By evening, the Spokane Police Department sent over 180 officers, with some using pepper balls, to disperse protesters. Over 30 people were arrested, including Stuckart who blocked the transport van with others. He was later released. Aysha Mercer, a stay-at-home mother of three, said she is "not political in any way, shape or form." But many children in her Spokane neighborhood -- who play in her yard and jump on her trampoline -- come from immigrant families, and the thought of them being affected by deportations was "unacceptable," she said. She said she wasn't able to go to Stuckart's protest. But she marched for the first time in her life on June 14, joining millions in "No Kings" protests across the country. "I don't think I've ever felt as strongly as I do right this here second," she said.
Yomiuri Shimbun
9 hours ago
- Yomiuri Shimbun
As Trump Shuts out Migrants, Spain Opens Its Doors and Fuels Economic Growth
MADRID – When night falls on the other side of the Atlantic, her 32-year-old cousin, a house cleaner in New York, huddles inside a dim basement apartment, terrified of ICE raids. But in a burgeoning quarter of the Spanish capital, where immigrant-staffed restaurants tempt newcomers with Dominican chicharrones and Venezuelan empanadas, Edith Chimbo sat in the sunlight, musing about the Spanish Dream. 'My cousin told me, 'Go to Spain'' said Chimbo, 22, who landed in Madrid earlier this year from the Ecuadorian highlands. Armed with a college degree but no work permit, she's cleaning houses under the table, just like her cousin in the United States. Yet she is counting on something in the weeks ahead that her kin almost certainly cannot: legalization. 'Here,' she said, 'we have hope.' As the Trump administration's crackdown on immigrants and asylum seekers brings tear gas, protests and raids to the streets of the United States, Spain is positioning itself as a counterpoint: a new land of opportunity. In this nation of 48 million with long colonial links to the New World, an influx of predominantly Latin American immigrants is helping fuel one of the fastest-growing economies in Europe. The Spanish economic transformation is unfolding as the center-left government of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has streamlined immigration rules while offering legal status to roughly 700,000 irregular migrants since 2021. A landmark bill now being negotiated in the Congress of Deputies could grant legal amnesty to hundreds of thousands more – most of them Spanish-speakers from predominantly Catholic countries in Latin America. Those newcomers often enjoy visa-free travel to Spain, even as Madrid controversially works with Morocco, Mauritania and other countries to block irregular arrivals from the African coast, though Sánchez has also called for tolerance toward migrants fleeing poverty and violence in Africa. Spain's approach is attracting at least some migrants rejected or barred from the United States, including Venezuelans who are now subject to President Donald Trump's travel ban. The number of Venezuelans applying for humanitarian protection in Spain surged to 36,923 between January and May, a 36.4 percent spike from the same period last year. With no visa requirements, all Venezuelans need is a valid passport and a plane ticket. In May, the most recent period available, applicants enjoyed a 98.6 percent acceptance rate. 'My hopes and plans for the United States ended overnight,' said Alexander Salazar, 34, a Venezuelan living in Peru who found out in February that his U.S. visa, on humanitarian grounds as an LGBTQ+ migrant, had been suspended. His plan now is to join other family and friends who have already left for Spain. 'That's where my road leads,' he said by telephone from Lima. Sira Rego, a minister in Sánchez's government, said she was glad to see immigrants choosing Spain. 'It makes me feel a certain pride because it represents the kind of country we want to build: a welcoming country with rights.' Sánchez now finds his party embroiled in a political corruption scandal that has sparked calls for new elections. Still, Spanish lawmakers across the political spectrum have adopted a less demonizing approach toward immigration – at least from some countries – than many of their American and European counterparts. Even the far-right Vox party has appeared moderately welcoming of some Spanish-speaking, culturally similar immigrants from Latin America. Spain, which like most European countries has an aging population, for decades was more a source of outward emigration than a destination for immigrants. It first emerged as a tempting target for foreign job seekers during its economic boom in 2000s. More recently, it has experienced a historic post-pandemic surge, with 2.67 million people born outside the European Union arriving between 2021 and 2023 – an 85 percent increase compared with the previous three year period. Many of its immigrants, particularly from Latin America, arrive legally, either with work or student permits or as tourists, and later seek to change their status. Yet the country still harbors a hidden mass of migrants without legal permission to work. The government has no official figure of how many could be legalized under the new bill, but estimates suggest anywhere from 600,000 to 1 million. Critics point to Spain's unemployment rate – over 10 percent, the highest in the European Union, though less than half what it was a decade ago – as evidence that welcoming migrants is wrongheaded. They argue it suppresses wage growth, increases competition for Spanish workers and threatens Spanish identity. Some opinion polls also show a hardening public stance on migration. Yet the legislative amnesty push came not from a government plan but a grassroots effort backed by civil actors including small-town mayors, companies, migrant advocates and the Catholic church. Spain also has a history of normalizing irregular migrants who can prove steady work, with the last large-scale amnesty under the center-left government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero in 2005. Should Sánchez survive the corruption crisis – and Spain's economy continue to thrive – his policies could set up this nation as the antithesis of Trump's America: a migrant-friendly progressive paradise. Under Sánchez, Spain has leaned in as few other nations to diversity, equity and inclusion. A new government rule effective May 1 compels companies with more than 50 employees to enact antidiscrimination policies protecting LGBTQ+ workers. The government is also forging a close economic relationship with Beijing, generating large-scale investment including Chinese auto giant Chery's first factory in Europe. No policy has been as transformative to Spanish society as the stance on immigration, which officials and economists say is helping to reverse population decline and boost social welfare funding at a moment when baby boomers are retiring. Immigration is also helping drive the strongest period of economic growth since Spain's construction boom in the mid-2000s. Between 2022 and 2024, average GDP per capita increased 2.9 percent – the strongest of the E.U.'s four largest economies. A report published this year by the Bank of Spain estimates that up to 25 percent of that growth was linked to the influx of foreign workers paying taxes, filling jobs, renting homes and purchasing goods and services. 'Spain is a complete anomaly, a country where the government is easing the arrival of migrants, and migrants have been absolutely existential to the dynamism of the economy,' said Gonzalo Fanjul, co-founder at porCausa Foundation, a research group on migrant issues. Experts and officials say the arrival of large numbers of Latin American immigrants, who speak Spanish and are overwhelmingly Catholic, has led to fewer societal divisions over assimilation than in countries like Sweden or Germany, which have experienced a large influx of Muslims. 'I really doubt that there is any other country in the world where migration is playing as much a role in economic growth right now as it is in Spain,' said Juan Cerruti, an Argentine émigré to Spain and now the global chief economist at Madrid-based Banco Santander. Immigrants are filling labor gaps not only in Spain's lower-wage tourism, construction and agricultural sectors, but also in the more highly skilled tech and medical sectors. In an office park on the edge of Valencia, companies such as Avantio, a digital services and software provider for the tourism industry, have leveraged Spain's streamlined immigration rules to employ foreigners and grow business. Company officials say they have turned to foreign labor for positions that otherwise might take up to a year to fill. Almost 73 percent of the company's hires in 2024 were born outside Spain, mostly in Latin America. 'We hire people from outside because we need them, we don't differentiate' based on where they are from, said Rebeca Jorge, Avantio's director of human resources. Spain has also changed its rules to help legalize the status of migrants with proof of long-term work, to ease access to work visas for new immigrants, to loosen work restrictions on student visa-holders and to simplify family reunification rules. Those simplified rules could aide Chimbo, whose mother immigrated from Ecuador to Spain a decade ago and became a citizen. Chimbo arrived on a three-month visa in April and is now applying for long-term legal status and the right to work through family reunification. She said she is confident that if that fails, the amnesty legislation could aid her. Before arriving, she considered following her cousin to the United States – a path Chimbo's father tried before being detained and deported from Texas last year. Speaking on a video phone from her dark basement apartment in a New York City suburb, her cousin Cristina said she warned Chimbo away from the United States. 'I'm afraid all the time now … whenever I'm outside, taking the bus to work … I'm afraid,' said Cristina, who is trying to apply for asylum but frets about her chances. 'I've seen the videos. I've seen what they're doing to migrants in the U.S.,' Chimbo said. 'Here, my biggest fear is Mondays, when I have to go to work.' Two hundred and twenty-five miles east of Madrid, in the orange blossom-tinged air of Valencia, men from Colombia, Ecuador, Morocco, Senegal and a host of other countries labored on crews rebuilding infrastructure and erecting new apartments following the devastating floods that hit the region in October. This year, Spain offered legal status to more than 22,000 irregular migrants in the affected area – helping populate an army of construction workers and filling other key jobs in the rebuilding effort. It was a decision driven by humanitarian concern for migrants unable to access government aid following the disaster. But it was also driven by pragmatism. 'I asked the Spanish government for this,' said José Vicente Morata, president of the Valencia Chamber of Commerce. 'We needed these people to have an identification number, the number to be able to exist in Spain. There was a bottleneck in the procedures, [and] we needed workers.' The region has now evolved into a mini-test case of Spain's legalization efforts. After the floods, Gerardo López Mateu, mayor of the nearby village of Real, struggled to find workers willing to work in the town's ongoing cleanup effort. He had four positions open – three of them now filled by migrants. 'We still can't fill the fourth job,' he said. There are some jobs that 'Spaniards just don't want to do.' One of his workers is Ibra Bayane, a 24-year-old Senegalese who arrived in Spain by sea in 2021, living ever since off the precariously shadow economy. He'd pick oranges or deliver food. At best, he said, he'd earn the equivalent of $35 a day. As a documented migrant, he has been able to get a driver's license for the first time and access basic medical care. Now, he can also travel back to Senegal to visit family without risk. His salary is no fortune – 60 euros a day – about $70 – for cleanup work in the hot southern Spanish sun. But it's twice what he was earning before – and enough to afford a small room with a vase of fresh flowers on a desk, and a large window that brings a cooling breeze. 'My life is better now,' he said. 'I can live.'
Japan Times
2 days ago
- Japan Times
Dodgers say team kept U.S. immigration agents from accessing Dodger Stadium
The Los Angeles Dodgers said Thursday that the club barred federal immigration agents from the Dodger Stadium parking lot as a fresh wave of raids continued across the United States' second-biggest city. The Dodgers, who have been criticized for their failure to publicly comment on the U.S. government's immigration crackdown in Los Angeles, said in a statement that the team denied access to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents who "requested permission to access the parking lots." "They were denied entry to the grounds by the organization," the statement said, adding that the team's game later Thursday would go ahead as scheduled. Images and video shared on social media showed a line of unmarked trucks and masked agents at one Dodger Stadium entrance while protesters nearby chanted "ICE out of LA." The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) later said the agents at the venue were from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), not ICE. "This had nothing to do with the Dodgers," DHS said in a statement. "CBP vehicles were in the stadium parking lot very briefly, unrelated to any operation or enforcement." The incident comes against a backdrop of heightened tensions in Los Angeles, which has become ground zero of President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown across the United States. The city has seen scattered violence but mostly peaceful protests in recent weeks, ignited by an escalation in federal immigration sweeps that have targeted migrant workers in garment factories, car washes and other workplaces. Local media on Thursday reported further raids across the city targeting Home Depot (a home improvement retailer) locations, where day laborers often gather in parking lots seeking work. In addition to the mobilization of ICE agents, Trump has ordered the deployment of thousands of National Guard troops and hundreds of Marines to the city in response to the protests — a move opposed by city leaders and California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who is a Democrat. The incident at Dodger Stadium on Thursday comes as the reigning World Series champions have faced criticism for their response to the immigration crackdown. The team has a heavily Latino fan base, with some claiming a sense of betrayal over the franchise's failure to speak out against the ongoing raids. As of early Thursday, the Dodgers have made no formal statement in regard to the immigration raids across the city. The team's failure to condemn the immigration offensive came under scrutiny last weekend, when Latin American pop singer Nezza defied Dodgers officials and sang the U.S. national anthem in Spanish before a home game. Speaking outside Dodger Stadium on Thursday after federal agents left the venue, one 27-year-old fan among a small group of protesters said she felt let down by the team. "They've been very quiet since these ICE raids started, and I think it's very hypocritical of them not to say anything when the majority of their fan base is the Latino population here in Los Angeles," said Paola, who asked only to be identified by her first name. "It 100% feels like betrayal. I was born and raised here, I've supported them my whole life — for them not to come out and support us during these times is messed up." Los Angeles Times sports columnist Dylan Hernandez has slammed the team's response to the immigration crackdown. "The Dodgers boast that more than 40 percent of their fan base is Latino, but they can't even be bothered to offer the shaken community any words of comfort," Hernandez wrote. "How ungrateful. How disrespectful. How cowardly." While the Dodgers have remained silent, the team's popular outfielder Enrique Hernandez lashed out against the raids in a statement on Instagram. "I am saddened and infuriated by what's happening in our country and our city," wrote Hernandez, who is from Puerto Rico. "This is my second home. And I cannot stand to see our community being violated, profiled, abused and ripped apart. ALL people deserve to be treated with respect, dignity and human rights."
