Anyone who reads my Top Comments diaries knows I regularly write about the NHL usually through the lens of my favorite team. Today, I came across a linked article in a DKos diary to the Detroit Free Press regarding MLBPA warning their non-citizen players to carry their documentation with them should ICE arrest them. After the Supreme Court essentially granted ICE the ability to detain people without allowing them any chance to have any form of due process to contest their detention, I started wondering when the first prominent member of a sports team would be detained for little reason other than not being White or having some negative comments about the Felon and his criminal enterprise on their devices as they pass through the boarder.
Unlike baseball, football, and basketball, hockey players regularly cross the Canadian/US border since there are 7 teams that play home games in Canadian cities. While all teams usually pass through the border away from where the general public does when they travel as team, players sometimes have to take commercial flights for various reasons. Start of season activities being one as well as due to trades and call ups.
With the fact that large majorities of most teams are comprised of Canadians and Europeans, visa issues are very important to the hockey world. In the past, you would regularly hear about a player who is delayed joining a team because visa issues need to be sorted out as they move from playing for a Canadian team to an American team or vice versa. Now with the threat of ICE rounding someone up at the border, one wonders how this will impact player movement. In the linked article, MLB players are having difficulty getting family and friends visas to watch them play in games.
It has become a very perilous time to be a non-citizen, and I don’t think professional athletes will be immune. There haven’t been any reports thus far about border or ICE issues but will it last?
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