Deported Soccer Star, Brother 'Don't Have A Future' In El Salvador

GERMANTOWN, MD — 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 Aug. 2, deported as Lizandro prepared to attend college on a soccer scholarship and Diego worked at a garage. Both men now live in fear in deadly El Salvador, a country they scarcely remember, a nation where coffin building is a booming industry.

The Washington Post sent reporters to Central America to see how the brothers are adjusting to life without their parents and siblings, where they barely speak the language. “I feel like in this country, I don’t have a future," Lizandro told The Post.

Both men graduated from Quince Orchard High School in Gaithersburg, and their friends in Maryland said they 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 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.

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

Neither man feels safe in their new home. They sleep in an aunt’s houses, with bars on the windows and guard dogs at the door, the newspaper reports. Lizandro can't see attending college in El Salvador, instead both he and his brother practice with a local soccer team in hopes that might become their career.

»Read full Washington Post story here.

“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. “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 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.”

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.

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