Downtown Los Angeles was a sea of blue clothing and confetti Monday as Dodger fans took to the streets to celebrate their team’s back-to-back World Series wins.
But some fans are questioning if their love for the team is reciprocated.
After all, Dodgers owner Mark Walter has a financial stake in the ongoing ICE raids that are ravaging Southern California’s Latino communities.
Los Angeles Dodgers player Clayton Kershaw, left, and owner Mark Walter, right, pose with President Donald Trump during a ceremony to honor the 2024 World Series champions in the East Room of the White House on April 7.
Amid President Donald Trump’s decision to deploy ICE agents and later National Guard members and Marines to Los Angeles, Walter already had a stake in some questionable facilities housing immigrants being targeted for deportation.
According to Black Press USA national correspondent Stacy Brown, Walter’s financial services firm Guggenheim Partners owns a 0.38% stake in GEO Group, a private prison company the Trump administration has contracted to build and operate immigrant detention centers.
On top of that, Walter is also CEO of multinational holding company TWG Global, which announced a partnership in March with software company Palantir to develop immigrant-tracking software, just months before the ICE raids began in L.A.
But as ICE agents were terrorizing local communities by detaining street vendors and raiding Home Depot parking lots, the baseball team so fervently loved by L.A.’s huge Latino population was notably silent.
The Dodgers don’t just play in a heavily Latino city; the team also leans into the culture when it's convenient—and profitable.
By hiring mariachi bands during post-season games, hosting Mexican, Salvadoran, and Guatemalan heritage nights, and even trademarking their Spanish nickname “Los Doyers” and selling merch emblazoned with the moniker, the team owners make no attempt to mask the Dodgers’ longtime connection to the Latino community.
That made the team’s initial silence on ICE raids especially conspicuous.
Adding insult to injury, the team’s executives told Dominican American singer Nezza that she couldn’t sing the national anthem in Spanish amid the raids. She did it anyway.
This all lines up with the team’s visit to Trump’s White House in April, where the owner bent the knee to the president.
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When the criticism grew too loud for the Dodgers’ owners to ignore any longer, they did what the wealthy and powerful do: throw money at the problem in hopes it would go away.
In June, the Dodgers announced a $1 million donation to immigrant families impacted by the ICE raids.
"What's happening in Los Angeles has reverberated among thousands upon thousands of people, and we have heard the calls for us to take a leading role on behalf of those affected," Dodgers president and CEO Stan Kasten said in a vague statement.
This announcement came just days after the Dodgers denied entry to ICE agents requesting to use their stadium parking lot for staging and processing.
The team’s donation and statement was a small gesture in the face of a large-scale effort to decimate the immigrant community not just in Southern California, but across the United States.
So as Dodgers fans celebrate the win, it is a joyous time by all accounts. But Walter and his multibillion-dollar empire, which has now expanded into ownership of the L.A. Lakers, loom behind the happiness.
