‘We’re being hunted. That’s how we feel.’ ICE activity puts an MLS fan group on pause

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On Saturday night, Nashville SC sprung a second-half rally to defeat Charlotte FC. It was the type of result that galvanizes a fanbase, the club knocking off an MLS regional rival in thrilling fashion, with all three goals scored in a six-minute sprint.

However, the bank of supporters had visible gaps throughout the risers. Compared to previous home matches, the section lacked its usual verve. The reason was explained in a pair of large white banners.

No estamos todos aquí. 

We are not all here.

On the night of May 3 – the same night many locals viewed the Canelo Álvarez boxing match at a popular public venue – Nashville experienced a series of raids from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a federal law enforcement agency founded in 2003. As of May 9, the Tennessee Highway Patrol (which assisted ICE in the raids, along with the Department of Homeland Security) reported that they had conducted 588 traffic stops throughout that week, and that ICE had detained 103 people.

In light of those events, La Brigada De Oro — Nashville SC’s largest Latin American supporters group — decided to forgo its usual matchday routine, according to local independent website SixOneFive Soccer. There would be no hours-long tailgate with grills and thumping music, and no cheers led by their capos, whose lively demeanor and Luchador masks make them a common fixture in club and league promotional materials.

La Brigada president and co-founder Abel Acosta spoke with The Athletic on May 10. Across a 45-minute conversation, his passionate support of the club was still unmistakable. But he said that he, his family and the Latino community at large are facing turmoil — which he feels goes beyond politics and into a humanitarian crisis.

“Our community is being terrorized right now,” Acosta said. “It’s in shambles. I used the word targeted before, and there’s no (better) way to describe it. Right now, our Latino community, or anyone of our ethnic background, is being singled out, and we’re being hunted. That’s how we feel.”

Members of La Brigada De Oro, a Nashville SC supporters group, at the 2023 Leagues Cup final. ((Photo by Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images)

Acosta and his wife initially joined one of Nashville SC’s supporters groups during the club’s brief time in the second-division USL Championship. Noticing that most of their peers in the section appeared to be White, they worked to bring some Latin matchday customs into the group. However, they struggled to bring in a more diverse membership.

“Just like anything, you know when something is authentic,” Acosta said. “The best way I can describe it is going to Taco Bell, and then going to actual Mexican (restaurants). We tried it, but nobody was coming.”

La Brigada De Oro was born ahead of the club’s move to MLS for the 2020 season. The group’s first game coincided with the team’s first-division debut that February, mere weeks before the coronavirus put the world into lockdown. In their first couple of matches they brought flair to the stands, while reassuring the pre-existing groups that this wasn’t a rival faction, but an addition to the established culture.

“We went in 100 percent just trying to be authentic,” Acosta said. “We wanted to just bring our culture, our music, our food, our vibrancy, our love for the game — the way we celebrate the game that we’re passionate about.”

Cinco De Mayo is typically a time for such a celebration. Since this year’s date fell on a Monday, it was largely observed over the preceding weekend. That Saturday, May 3, also carried increased significance for some Mexican sports fans, as Álvarez — the Guadalajara-born boxer who’s arguably his sport’s biggest star — had a bout scheduled with the super middleweight championship on the line. Álvarez beat William Scull by a unanimous decision.

In Nashville, one of the biggest epicenters for the Latin American community is the Plaza Mariachi. The roughly-100,000-square-foot event space “exists to celebrate cultural diversity,” according to its own mission statement.

While Nashville has a reputation as a national epicenter of boot-scooting and bachelorette parties, it’s also a multicultural and diverse urban center. As of the 2024 census, 13.8 percent of responders in the Nashville-Davidson metropolitan area identify as Hispanic or Latino; 9.2 percent of the area identifies as being part of two or more races; and 25.5 percent identify as Black.

“That area is more Latino, and Plaza Mariachi is geared towards Latin cultures,” Acosta said. “You have different businesses inside there that represent different cultures, different countries.”

Acosta and his wife ventured to Plaza Mariachi to watch the boxing match with friends. Shortly after Álvarez claimed victory, the couple headed home, taking one detour to drop off a member of their group.

As they neared their own home, however, their phones began receiving a deluge of messages and notifications.

“We had two other friends that stayed back and left maybe 20 minutes after us, and they saw some troopers in vans and unmarked cars stopping people,” Acosta said. “Within 30 minutes of us driving, we started receiving phone calls from friends, that one of our friends’ son was detained, arrested and taken, and others were seeing stops.

“We just started getting bombarded with all these messages. And that’s when we noticed that something terrible was really happening.”

The friend’s son, who along with his family is not being named in order to protect their privacy and safety, had also gone to Plaza Mariachi for the bout. Acosta said the son is 20 and recently became a father with his fiancée.

“He came here like a lot of people come: with a tourist visa, but they wind up staying because they want to make a better living for themselves,” Acosta said. “They work to try to get their paperwork, legalize themselves — like many folks do.

“For 24 hours, you didn’t hear from him at all. (That Saturday night), he was taken. His dad didn’t hear from him until Monday. He finally let us know that he heard from his son, but his son was already transferred to Louisiana, and that was around Monday, 3 or 4 in the morning.”

The state of Louisiana has nine ICE Detention Centers, serving as holding spaces while authorities determine the next course of action for each person in detention. According to the Shreveport Times and a report by Yale Law School, Louisiana’s facilities have received complaints and reports by the ACLU and other civil rights advocates in recent years, also becoming the subject of internal investigations by the Department of Homeland Security.

ICE’s media affairs office did not respond to The Athletic’s request for comment on the raids.

Nashville SC’s Geodis Park. (Photo by Steve Roberts/Cal Sport Media/AP Images)

Sports can be a necessary distraction from the difficulties of everyday life, an escapist entertainment. For a group like La Brigada in a moment like this, however, even the world’s game can’t provide its usual comforts. A day before Nashville SC next took the field, La Brigada announced it would not be playing its usual role on matchday.

“The difference with La Brigada is just that we are for a specific heritage,” Acosta said. “We are a specific culture. Basically, we have Latino, Hispanic origins and descent, and honestly, we are Brown people. We’re being almost systematically removed. So many people are, right now, in fear to the point of depression. So many people are in fear going to the stadium, and it’s not just those that, say, don’t have papers.”

Among the causes for concern was the location of Nashville SC’s GEODIS Park. The largest soccer-specific stadium in the U.S., with a capacity of 30,109, was built on city-owned fairgrounds land to ensure accessibility for all communities in the area and benefit from some of the city’s most utilized roads.

Two of them are Nolensville Road and I-40 — common sites for ICE’s activity over the past week. There was fear amongst La Brigada’s membership that Nashville fans would be targeted after a match as they left the team-owned stadium for the public highways and byways.

“Another fear is, would they be able to come to the tailgate area, which is technically right in front of the Fairgrounds?” Acosta wondered. “Who knows? Right now, it’s the unknown that really is putting fear into everyone.”

When reached for comment by The Athletic, an MLS spokesperson said the league had not been made aware of any presence from ICE around league matches and events.

As part of its land usage agreement, the parcel of land that holds GEODIS Park is a private plot within a much larger public fairgrounds space — making it nearly impossible to avoid those spaces that Acosta fears could become places for focused raids.

When asked by The Athletic for comment on La Brigada’s decision and safety around GEODIS Park, Nashville SC issued the following statement:

“We have worked hard to make GEODIS Park a safe, family-friendly environment where everyone feels welcome to come and enjoy a soccer match, concert or other event. While we can only control what happens inside our stadium, we are committed to keeping GEODIS Park that way for all of our fans.

“It is unfortunate that some of our fans aren’t there with us right now. Their presence is certainly missed and we look forward to having all members of La Brigada and our Supporter’s Groups back very soon. On Wednesday and every upcoming match night, we are going to continue to create a fun, inclusive environment for all our fans within the guidelines set forth by Major League Soccer.”

ICE and Department of Homeland Security officers walk ahead of a bus at the DHS field office in Nashville, Tenn., on May 4. (Photo by Nicole Hester/The Tennessean /USA TODAY NETWORK/Imagn Images)

Acosta was born in New Jersey, the son of a Honduran mother and a Puerto Rican father. He moved to Tennessee with his wife and children about 20 years ago. As he tells it, neither his son nor his daughter speaks much Spanish, communicating almost entirely in English. He senses that they feel safe amidst the raids but has tried to get them to live with caution.

It’s a message he thinks more citizens of the country with similarly colored skin must heed.

“They are having a hard time understanding that, because they feel like, ‘Well, we’re fine, we’re American. We’re born here,’ and they speak perfectly good English,” Acosta said. “They have never faced this in their lifetime, this hardship.

“Right now, the Latinos are the ones that are being racially profiled, whether you were born here or not. People are being stopped just because of the way they look.”

Nashville is among the many areas of the U.S. that has seen ICE raids in its community. Since President Donald Trump took office for a second time, in January, major American cities impacted by ICE raids include Chicago, Seattle, Denver, Miami, New York City, Philadelphia and Los Angeles. Smaller communities have also been targeted. The scale of these efforts have spiked anxiety among many immigrants and citizens of Latino descent, with these fears making many afraid to go outside altogether.

Acosta says the community is closely monitoring the latest in the proposed changes to American law from the Trump administration. This past week, top Trump aide Stephen Miller said the administration would consider suspending immigrants’ right of habeas corpus — the legal principle that allows anyone who believes they are being unlawfully detained or imprisoned to petition for their release in court.

“It starts with Latinos, Brown people,” Acosta said. “Here’s the part that scares us even more: it starts with us, but who could be next?”

Acosta said that the group did not consult Nashville SC leadership ahead of its announcement, which dropped on the afternoon of May 9. Shortly after the post went live, however, he did hear from a few club employees.

“They expressed their concern, their sorrow for what’s happening, those who reached out,” Acosta said. “But they reiterated that they can’t do anything, that they have to stay neutral at this time because it’s a political matter, and they can’t do anything by league rules or whatnot. So they have to stay with their hands tied.”

This isn’t the first time that MLS and its clubs have attempted to appear apolitical. In recent years, the Black Lives Matter protests and use of the anti-fascist Iron Front symbol have been sources of contention and forced the league and its clubs into difficult discussions and decisions.

Those were different situations than what’s currently occurring in Nashville and around the country. Nevertheless, the lack of actionable support from Acosta’s local club was still viewed as a disappointment.

“It’s understandable to a degree in a way, but at the same time… When it’s Pride Month, when it’s Hispanic Heritage Month, when it’s Black History Month, certain events of that type, they’re out there promoting and celebrating it,” he said. “But when something is truly happening, and it’s to us: this is not so much a political matter. This is something that is injustice happening in our society, in our community.

“We’re asking for safety. We’re asking for reassurance. We’re asking for support, in that sense, understanding, more than anything. You’re not supposed to get into political matters, but this is humanitarian.”

Acosta and La Brigada plan to remain absent from Nashville SC’s matches, including Wednesday night’s clash with the New York Red Bulls. This is not intended as an act of protest, Acosta said, but a decision made in the interest of safety.

“We have good friends within the club itself,” Acosta said. “There are good people in the club, 100 percent. There are good people within the club that we respect and admire. We know that this is not on them.

“Now that the community is reeling and suffering, this demographic that is very much a key contributor to your sporting events, we’re hurting. It’s disheartening that they’re not there or making some kind of statement. I have no other way to put it.”

(Top photo: Kindell Buchanan/Sipa USA/AP Images)

This news was originally published on this post .

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