{"id":55796,"date":"2023-05-05T09:59:38","date_gmt":"2023-05-05T16:59:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/eltecolote.org\/content\/?p=55796"},"modified":"2023-05-08T10:06:41","modified_gmt":"2023-05-08T17:06:41","slug":"just-goals-immigrants-activists-find-hope-liberation-through-soccer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eltecolote.org\/content\/en\/just-goals-immigrants-activists-find-hope-liberation-through-soccer\/","title":{"rendered":"Just Goals: Immigrants, activists find hope, liberation through soccer"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The first time Pedro Ay\u00f3n and Seraf\u00edn Andrade played soccer together, they were in an ICE detention facility in McFarland, California. For a few hours a day, during designated \u2018yard times,\u2019 they were allowed to be outside \u2014 as long as there was an officer to escort them through the hallway and another to watch them outdoors. Games were five on five, or six on six \u2014 whoever wanted to play, and have a brief escape from the inhumane conditions of detention.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Inside the Golden State Annex, Ay\u00f3n would help detainees who didn\u2019t speak English with medical requests, translations, letter-writing, and commissary purchases. \u201cI was a leader. I did what I could to help out \u2026 because there\u2019s a lot of need,\u201d he told El Tecolote<\/em>. But after six months, guards woke him in the middle of the night with the news that he, Seraf\u00edn, and a group of others were being transferred. \u201c[It was] out of nowhere,\u201d Ay\u00f3n says. \u201cThat\u2019s how unjust and unfair the system is. They\u2019re cruel.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"Pedro
Pedro Ay\u00f3n poses for a portrait after CCIJ\u2019s Soccer Tournament for Liberation, hosted in Alameda on April 30.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The next morning, Pedro was moved to the Mesa Verde ICE Processing Facility in Bakersfield, another private, for-profit prison. And though Golden State was far from pleasant, he had gotten used to it. Mesa Verde was smaller, the hallways were too narrow, and the windows were permanently fogged \u2014 so you couldn\u2019t actually look outside. The food had insects, the walls had black mold, and those who worked cleaning the dormitories made only a dollar a day. <\/strong>\u201cIt was one of my worst experiences,\u201d Ay\u00f3n remembers. But he played soccer there too, with Seraf\u00edn, and with the Mesa Verde guys. It\u2019s what kept them united \u2014 and hopeful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In December of 2021, four months after winning his case against deportation and over nine months after first being detained by ICE, Ay\u00f3n was finally released. Around the same time, some 300 miles north, Ricardo Vasquez Cruz was freed after being alone in Yuba County Jail \u2014 the last immigrant detained<\/a> there before Yuba shut down, was repopulated, and then finally terminated its contract with ICE.\u00a0 A year later, Seraf\u00edn Andrade was released from Mesa Verde.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last Sunday, April 30, Pedro and Seraf\u00edn played together for the first time since being detained. The two of them, Ricardo, and others formerly detained by ICE at Mesa Verde, Golden State, and Yuba played together, outside for real<\/em>, at the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice (CCIJ)\u2019s inaugural soccer tournament for liberation. Their teams, the S\u00faperL\u00edderes and Los Campeones, were two of sixteen to compete for the small prize of a trophy and the main goal of ending immigrant detention in California.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Members
Members of CCIJ and immigrant rights activists pose with folks formerly detained by ICE\u2014including Pedro Ay\u00f3n, Adan Castillo, Eladio Cortes Morales, and Jose Rub\u00e9n Hern\u00e1ndez Gomez after CCIJ\u2019s Soccer Tournament for Liberation on April 30.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In Alameda, the morning of the tournament began with a gray sky. Players walked beneath a thick sheet of clouds and fog to registration tents at the Oakland Roots fields, and then sat down on the grass to get ready. Before tying their cleats, some raised socks over shin guards, and others over ankle monitors. They warmed up, passed, dribbled, and juggled. By the end of the tournament\u2019s first round, the sun was out. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Laura Duarte Bateman, the CCIJ\u2019s communications manager, ran around the fields with a scoresheet, pausing to say something to a volunteer referee before pointing a team in the direction of their match. \u201cEs un sue\u00f1o hecho realidad<\/em>,\u201d <\/strong>she said later through a megaphone \u2014 a dream come true, a day of joy after years of advocacy. <\/p>\n\n\n

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\"Laura
Laura Duarte Bateman, the CCIJ\u2019s Communications Manager, speaks during the halftime show at CCI Just Goals Soccer Tournament for Liberation in Alameda on April 30.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

It was during the CCIJ\u2019s campaign to Free the Yuba Eleven, after a conversation with Ricardo Vasquez Cruz, that Duarte Bateman first had the idea for a tournament. On one of their phone calls, Ricardo mentioned that he loved soccer \u2014 and Laura, who had grown up playing in Colombia, loved it too. From then on, she would check the score of the important La Liga<\/em> games before every visit to a detention center, to give the people she met with something to speak about besides the trauma of being detained. For a lot of them, Laura said, \u201csoccer symbolized hope.\u201d Ricardo once told her the only goal he still needed to score was against ICE. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Ricardo, the last of the Yuba Eleven, was finally released, Duarte Bateman and Edwin Carmona-Cruz, the CCIJ\u2019s community engagement director, began organizing the competition. It was to be part fundraiser, part community building event. All adults who supported the mission of ending immigrant detention were invited to fundraise for an entry fee and play \u2014 and teams started pouring in. There was one from Pangea Legal Services, an immigration advocacy group; there was ArsenVal, playing in honor of Valerie Zukin, the CCIJ\u2019s late director; there was Corinthians\u2013a team of friends from Bicis del Pueblo named after the Brazilian great Socrates\u2019 club team; Leftwing FTP (For the Pueblo), who play in a feminist, anti-capitalist soccer league in Berkeley; Lxs ACABadores, a team of educators, organizers, artists, and formerly detained folks; and more. In total, the tournament brought together over a hundred players and raised over $10,000 to fund the CCIJ\u2019s efforts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Members
Members of LeftWing FTP (For the Pueblo) stand on the sidelines of their first game at the CCIJ\u2019s inaugural Soccer Tournament for Liberation in Alameda on April 30. Photo: Mara Cavallaro<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe most important and most necessary work that our community needs is the unfunded one,\u201d Carmona-Cruz told El Tecolote<\/em>. \u201cA lot of funders [and] foundations typically have \u2026 a lot of strings attached. People that have had some sort of contact with the criminal legal system \u2014 they\u2019re carved out from receiving that type of service. It\u2019s unrestricted funding [like this] that helps us support [everyone], that helps us support people who want to go on a labor strike \u2026 [or] a hunger strike.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Several of the S\u00faperL\u00edderes, for instance, had been in state prison before they\u2019d been in ICE custody, and had been part of huelgas<\/em> inside detention before they were released. Ad\u00e1n Castillo, who was part of one of Mesa Verde\u2019s labor strikes, listed the horrors that prompted the protest: wages of a dollar a day and cuts to work on top of that, institutional refusal to provide medical care unless someone was bleeding out or had stopped breathing, unhealthy, insect-ridden food, and refusal to remove black mold, even when people fell ill. \u201cThe whole system \u2014 ICE \u2014 is made to discourage the person, to traumatize the person, and to \u2026  break that person emotionally, mentally, and physically,\u201d Ay\u00f3n says. \u201cWe [went on strike because] of the inhumanity, and the unfairness that they put every single one of us through.\u201d Officers intimidated and insulted strikers, threatened them with solitary confinement, and separated them from each other. All of this while Mesa Verde made money, because private detention centers are for profit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last September, Castillo was released, but inside, the strikes continued \u2014 and so did ICE\u2019s violence. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This February, after a 10 month labor strike, ICE violently transferred<\/a> four hunger strikers out of Mesa Verde and into a detention facility in El Paso, Texas \u2014 where they were threatened with force feeding. The day of the transfer, 33 other detainees at Golden State and Mesa Verde had also been fasting \u2014 they hadn\u2019t eaten in 20 days \u2014 but the next day, the Mesa Verde strike ended, out of fear of more transfers. Now, the hunger strike is on pause, because \u201cfolks were really violently retaliated against,\u201d to the point that they couldn\u2019t participate and still survive, Duarte Bateman says. \u201cWe\u2019re waiting to hear back from folks inside detention [to] follow their lead.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Between Mesa Verde and Golden State, some 190 men remain detained. <\/em>And while Los Campeones and the S\u00faper L\u00edderes celebrate their freedom, they keep fighting \u2014 on the field and off \u2014 for those still inside. To be free, playing with the people they had been imprisoned and detained with, was a reminder that everyone deserves joy, dignity, and liberation. \u201c[Today] I feel the support around me,\u201d Castillo said. \u201cI was treated like a person.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"Eladio
Eladio Cortes Morales and Pedro Ay\u00f3n celebrate after a goal by Eladio for the S\u00faperL\u00edderes, a team with several players formerly detained by ICE, during CCIJ\u2019s Soccer Tournament for Liberation on April 30. Photo: Mara Cavallaro<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Pedro, Ricardo, Ad\u00e1n, Eladio, Jonny, Fredy, Anthony, Melissa, Esperanza, Carlos, Rudis, and Victor \u2014 the S\u00faperL\u00edderes \u2014 made it to the semifinals with over a dozen group stage goals, but lost, honorably, to the tournament champions, whose team name says it all. Free Them All, F.C.<\/p>\n\n\n\n