LOS ANGELES — Confetti was still stuck to the streets when word spread that federal immigration agents were gathering outside Dodger Stadium on the day after the team’s World Series championship parade.
For Angelenos, a familiar panic set in. The city had already endured months of the Trump administration’s campaign to deport undocumented immigrants, with armed and masked agents fanning out across the region and arresting thousands of people as they went about their daily lives.
LOS ANGELES — Confetti was still stuck to the streets when word spread that federal immigration agents were gathering outside Dodger Stadium on the day after the team’s World Series championship parade.
For Angelenos, a familiar panic set in. The city had already endured months of the Trump administration’s campaign to deport undocumented immigrants, with armed and masked agents fanning out across the region and arresting thousands of people as they went about their daily lives.
The new operation on Nov. 4 — less than 24 hours after a jubilant citywide celebration of the Dodgers’ back-to-back titles — struck a sensitive nerve.
Later that day, a group of advocates began circulating a petition urging the Dodgers to reject President Donald Trump’s invitation to visit the White House next season, a major sports tradition that has become fraught in a hyper-partisan era.
“Do not go to the White House, do not shake the hand of the person causing all of this harm,” said Jose Madera, a lifelong Dodgers fan and director of the Pasadena Community Job Center, which works closely with immigrant day laborers. “If they do, it’s a betrayal of our passion and love.”
Dodgers supporters have for months been pushing their team to more forcefully denounce raids like those that unfolded one day after the parade, which led to the arrest of a U.S. citizen at a Home Depot near the ballpark. Some have been furious with what they see as the team’s tepid response, and they say the organization will need to win them back — by standing up to Trump.
The season-long angst has inspired boycotts and protests. Fans who felt spurned have repainted murals and some even began rooting for their side to lose. In bars and backyard barbecues, friends and family debated whether they should even be tuning into the games. A team that so often unites this sprawling, 500-square-mile metropolis has prompted some fans to reconsider donning their ubiquitous Dodger blue.
The moment is especially complicated for the Dodgers’ heavily Latino fan base. The franchise has long styled itself as a champion of inclusion, from signing Jackie Robinson to pioneering Spanish-language broadcasts and introducing the world to Fernando Valenzuela, a superstar pitcher from Mexico who in the 1980s turbocharged baseball’s popularity across Latin America.
The team became a symbol of multiculturalism in a city of immigrants — which is why some fans were so disappointed when they felt the Dodgers weren’t speaking out this year.
“You can’t celebrate Jackie Robinson and ignore that the people who root for you have had their civil rights trampled on,” said Natalia Molina, a writer, historian and third generation native of Echo Park, the neighborhood surrounding Dodger Stadium. “You don’t get to claim a civil rights legacy and stay silent in a civil rights crisis.”
A spokesperson for the Dodgers declined to comment on the petition and fan criticism. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
Some supporters began the season angry. The Dodgers accepted Trump’s invitation following last year’s World Series victory and visited the president in April. Shortstop Mookie Betts, who had skipped a White House visit during Trump’s first term, agreed to go but said the decision was agonizing: “No matter what I choose, somebody is going to be pissed,” he said then.
He was right. Los Angeles Times columnist Dylan Hernández called the team’s trip “spineless” and “hypocritical.” But the controversy soon faded as excitement over the star-studded team took hold.
Then, in June, Trump’s immigration crackdown began in earnest, with federal agents conducting aggressive, high-profile raids across Los Angeles County. Days of fierce protest followed, and Trump deployed the National Guard and active-duty Marines to quell them. Leaders of the region’s governments and civic institutions denounced the federal operations. L.A. Mayor Karen Bass declared a state of emergency. And two of the city’s professional soccer teams issued statements of solidarity with immigrant communities.
But Dodgers officials remained quiet. As frustration mounted, fan favorite and Puerto Rican native Kiké Hernández posted a bilingual message to Instagram, writing, “I cannot stand to see our community being violated, profiled, abused and ripped apart.”
As the organization was preparing to issue a statement of its own, federal agents showed up at Dodger Stadium for the first time, attempted to access a parking lot and were turned away. The Dodgers later said they would donate $1 million in financial aid to immigrant families “impacted by recent events in the region.”
The gesture wasn’t enough for fans already considering a boycott.
“It made it difficult for me to keep watching,” said Logan Brauer, who lives steps away from the stadium and was among a crowd of protesters that swarmed the immigration agents who gathered there. He stopped attending games and only grudgingly followed the team.
“I continued to support them in spirit,” he said, “but definitely not monetarily.”
Not all fans feel this way. The Dodgers remain one of the most popular teams in pro sports. They sold out their stadium night after night and led the MLB in attendance this year. And while Los Angeles is a deep blue city, they have devotees of every political stripe. The team has become a moneymaking juggernaut and advertising magnet. Fan protest is unlikely to hurt the Dodgers financially anytime soon.
But the season has tarnished the team’s reputation among a sizable slice of supporters, especially Latinos.
Madera, with the Pasadena Community Job Center, grew up going to Dodger Stadium with his father, a gardener who learned the game in Mexico.
“Especially for an immigrant, going to a stadium to watch a game known as ‘America’s pastime,’ and being a part of that, was very important to him,” Madera said. “We saw ourselves in the players, many coming from other countries and sometimes not even speaking English, but being a part of Los Angeles. There was a feeling that we belong here.”
Madera used to go to 20 games a season, but he has not been since 2024. If players visit the White House and ignore the petition — which as of this week had more than 18,000 signatures — he’ll stay away another year.
Trump’s invitation puts the team in a challenging position, said Fernando Guerra, the director of the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University.
“It’s really not a decision,” Guerra said. “If you decide no, the wrath of Trump and the right wing will come after you. It will be bad business.”
But if the team goes, he added, it can expect Trump to try to use the event to score political points.
Angelenos will be angry, he said, but most will get over it.
“They will be upset, but they will also be there for Opening Day,” Guerra said. “It’s one of those things. We all have complicated relationships like that.”
The Dodgers have always been complicated. Their iconic ballpark was built in Chavez Ravine, after the forced eviction and displacement of a largely Latino and working-class neighborhood. Families driven from the land are still seeking reparations.
The writer Erick Galindo, an Angeleno and Dodgers die-hard, never expected his team to speak out against the immigration raids — it’s a business, after all, he figured. Besides, his relationship to the club has always been more about what it represents: a piece of his cultural heritage.
But as the playoffs wore on, he found it harder to root for them. In an essay for the local news site L.A. Taco, he described these conflicted feelings as “a complicated compromise,” one akin to pulling for a protagonist with dubious morals. Galindo cheered when the Dodgers won the World Series, but he was also relieved the season was over.
He said he doesn’t care if the team visits the White House. Either way, he plans to continue trying to protect his neighbors from the ongoing immigration raids. Most of all, he’s ready for a break from the Dodgers and the compromises that now accompany his fandom.
“I hope the Dodgers can repair their relationship with the community,” Galindo said. “But I also really want to go back to the time when sports was the one place we didn’t have to worry about who voted for who.”
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