Editorial: LA leaders, stand with your immigrant neighbors and oppose Dodger apathy

Last year, we made the difficult decision not to cover the Dodgers as they went on to win the 2025 World Series Championship.

CALÓ News understands the passion and dedication that come with supporting your city’s team. We are Angelenos after all, and Dodger Blue runs in our, and our readers’, veins.

Our website traffic took a hit. We’re still here, dedicated to covering our Latino and immigrant communities as factually and accurately as possible in a political age in which targets are placed on our backs. Yes, ours. Because this newsroom is built by immigrants, daughters of immigrants, descendants of immigrants, too. 

The Dodgers are heading to the White House yet again to celebrate their 2025 championship, accepting an invitation by the man who has greenlit a mass deportation machine that since January 2025 has used public funds — paid by everyday citizens (yes, undocumented citizens included) — to imprison mothers, fathers and children in detention centers, without adequate medical health care, without proper legal representation.

We are calling on our leaders to speak out against the sports organization that continues to turn a blind eye to the killing, detainment and harassment of our community members. When our city and county leaders remain silent on this matter, they are also choosing to turn their backs on the majority of its population in support of a multi-billion dollar sports industry.

Enough is enough. 

We’ve said it. Your constituents continue saying it.

From Mayor Karen Bass to our congressional and local council members, it’s now on you to voice it and act on it.

Los Angeles Dodgers' owner Mark Walter may have divested from the detention center industry, but the Guggenheim Partners, of which Walter is the CEO, still partners with Palantir, investing $30 million to build a surveillance platform for ICE. It’s the same platform that located and targeted Lorenzo Salgado Araujo — even though he wasn’t the person agents were looking for.

Araujo died at the hands of immigration enforcement agents in Houston, Texas, this week. He was a father, working to make a better life for his family, like many more in our community.

Since Trump returned to the White House, 52 people have died in ICE custody. 

One of them was Gabriel Garcia Aviles, 56, from Mexico, who died at a Victorville hospital on October 23, 2025, while in ICE custody at the Adelanto Detention Center. Another, Alberto Gutiérrez Reyes, died at the hospital after losing consciousness at the Adelanto Detention Center.

How many more have to die before our local leaders take a stand? Every opportunity must be taken to call out this administration and their immigration policy, especially when it comes to our sports teams. 

The apathy being exhibited by the Dodgers team is one that will always hit hard for Angelenos, but the deafening silence stemming from our local governments on the matter signals to the community that you do not care about those being separated from their families, ripped from their livelihoods and forced to endure detention and eventual deportation to a home they no longer call their own. 

There is complicity in inaction. Our local leaders’ silence speaks volumes.