Soccer Star, Brother Who Fled Violence Deported In Maryland

A soccer star with a scholarship from a North Carolina college and his brother, both of whom fled violence in El Salvador, have been deported, according to officials with Casa of Maryland. Diego and Lizandro Claros arrived in El Salvador Wednesday as their family and friends attended a news conference denouncing the action of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials in Baltimore.

The men are not the face of the “bad hombres” President Trump said he wanted to scour from the country under broad immigration reform. Casa’s senior legal manager, Nick Katz, says the two brothers reported to an ICE office in Baltimore on Friday as ordered. They had hoped to get permission to leave Maryland to attend college. Lizandro Claros Saravia, 19, had received a soccer scholarship, reports Montgomery Community Media.

“I am shocked and dismayed that county resident Lizandro Claros Saravia, a graduate of Quince Orchard High School and college-bound with a soccer scholarship, was detained and has been deported to his native El Salvador by federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement," said County Executive Ike Leggett in a statement Thursday. “Instead of focusing ICE resources on those who have committed serious crimes, ICE instead has deported a young man, along with his brother, who by all accounts was talented and hard-working. He fled violence in his native land in search of safety and opportunity in Montgomery County. He found it. But now ICE has sent him right back. This makes zero sense. ICE should be ashamed of itself.”

The Gaithersburg brothers put a face on the plight of an estimated 11 million unauthorized immigrants who lived in the United States relatively worry free under Obama-era guidelines that focused on deporting serious criminals. (Get Patch’s daily newsletter and real-time news alerts, or like us on Facebook. Or, if you have an iPhone, download the free Patch app.)

For them, the reality of President Trump’s order greatly expanding deportation criteria is a far cry from candidate Trump’s campaign assurances that it would be “a very, very hard” thing to deport someone “who’s been here for 15 or 20 years and throw them and their family out.”

The Claros Saravia brothers entered the United States illegally in 2009, reports The Washington Post. Lizandro Claros Saravia planned to attend the two-year Louisburg College in North Carolina this fall; older brother Diego, 22, graduated from high school and had since worked in a car repair shop.

Neither brother has a criminal record, Katz said. The duo received final removal orders by an immigration judge in November 2012 but were released under supervision, ICE spokesman Matthew Bourke told the Post. While they were both granted a stay of removal in 2013, two subsequent applications for stays were denied.

In Trump’s first 100 days in office, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested more than 41,300 immigrants, up 37.6 percent from the same period in 2016, the agency said. About three-fourths of those arrested during the period have criminal records, but the biggest increase in arrests was among immigrants who, like the Claros Saravia brothers, have no criminal records, the Washington Post reported. Among that group, arrests have doubled.

About 50 family and friends rallied in Hyattsville about the same time the Claros Saravia brothers arrived in El Salvador.

Image of Claros Saravia family courtesy of Montgomery Community Media YouTube video