For an organization the FBI once probed for possible violations involving human traffickers and document forgers, the Los Angeles Dodgers have adopted high-and-mighty airs.
Since no legal avenue exists to travel from communist Cuba to the United States, the Department of Justice wondered how, in 2012, the Dodgers managed to get outfielder Yasiel Puig to Los Angeles.
In 2018, Sports Illustrated obtained a large dossier of information originally provided to the FBI. The dossier included videotapes, photographs, confidential legal briefs, receipts, copies of player visas and passport documents, internal emails, and private communications among franchise executives. The evidence pointed to how smugglers access underground pipelines to ferry prospects from Cuba to Haiti or Mexico Ƶ waystations to MLB riches.
The Dodgers, with their extensive scouting operations throughout the Caribbean, were prominently featured in the FBI dossier, which described efforts to circumvent federal and MLB laws. Puig, for example, paid Florida businessman Gilberto Suarez $2.5 million from his $42 million Dodgers bonus to help him travel from Mexico, where he had been holed up in a cheap seedy motel, to Los Angeles. The DOJ found evidence of shredded documents and large-scale forgeries. The criminal activity reached its peak when Cuban Jose Abreu testified under oath before a grand jury that, prior to his arrival in Miami from another smugglerƵs route through Haiti, he ate his fake passport and washed it down with a Heineken.
ƵI knew I could not arrive in the U.S. with a false passport,Ƶ Abreu said before signing his $68 million contract with the Chicago White Sox.
The recent dust-up outside Dodger Stadium consisted of a relatively small group of malcontents, unemployed agitators, and immigration activists. The gathering was responding to an NBC News report that quoted Eunisses Hernandez, a Los Angeles City Council member, who alleged she received calls stating that Ƶfederal agents were staging here at the entrance of Dodger Stadium. We got pictures of dozens of vehicles and dozens of agents.Ƶ
The Department of Homeland Security immediately responded to deny that ICE had plans to take removal action in or around Dodger Stadium. Despite that, the Dodgers boasted that they blocked ICE from entering their grounds.
Prohibiting federal law enforcement from entering and conducting lawful business constitutes a federal crime; ƵThe current policy allows ICE agents to enter public areas without permission.Ƶ Independent journalist Ali Bradley provided the backstory, reporting: ƵCBP teams went to Hollywood Home Depot to make apprehensions. They did, and weƵre going to transfer the illegal aliens to transport vans off Sunset Boulevard, but when things escalated outside of Home Depot, they went to an open parking lot at Dodger Stadium to make the consolidated transfer. Agents say no one came over and told them to leave.Ƶ
In his book ƵBaseball Cop: The Dark Side of AmericaƵs National Pastime,Ƶ Eduardo Dominguez, a decorated Boston police officer, a FBI agent and then a MLB Department of Investigations task force member, documented his ongoing efforts to alert MLB executives to the trafficking crimes that brought Cuban players to their teams. Aiding and abetting and human trafficking are federal crimes, and cases could potentially be made against major league teams that sign Cuban players. MLB ignored DominguezƵs warnings and attempted to suppress his well-received bookƵs publication. MLB desperately sought to prevent public access to the book and hired law firm Clare Locke to threaten Dominguez and his publisher with defamation lawsuits if the book were published.
Later fired, Dominguez said that he could not understand how MLB was so dismissive of a federal investigationƵs findings.
The Dodgers are more than just a baseball team Ƶ they are a politically progressive, DEI-focused multibillion dollar business that acts in what it perceives as its best interests, including misrepresenting what occurred with ICE. MLB operates as a collective $79 billion industry, with the Dodgers representing a $6.9 billion segment of that market.
In a word salad announcement, the Dodgers pledged $1 million Ƶ an infinitesimal fraction of the teamƵs value Ƶ to assist illegal immigrant families who claim to be adversely affected by ICE operations. The Dodgers and MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred maintain in-house legal counsel and have immediate phone call access to the nationƵs most experienced outside attorneys. They should rely on that legal expertise to assess the validity of DHS immigration removal operations when they occur.
Meanwhile, the DodgersƵ fan base should recognize the reality of their teamƵs transformation. The Dodgers are no longer the romanticized ƵBoys of SummerƵ Ƶ they are multimillion-dollar athletes employed by billionaire corporate executives who show criminal disregard for federal immigration laws.