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Javier Wallace, "Basketball Trafficking: Stolen Black Panamanian Dreams" (Duke UP, 2025)
01:06:41
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- [00:04]
Sullivan Sommer
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- [01:28]
Dr. Javier Wallace
Welcome to the New Books Network.
- [01:32]
Sullivan Sommer
When a photo I requested of him capturing the moment on my cell phone's camera, the same way I had when I saw him last December 2019 at the Dallas airport with hopes that I would soon see him back in Texas with a new F1 student visa to attend junior college. Two years before that, in September 2017, Tito had first arrived in the United States on an athletic scholarship to play high school basketball, an experience that eventually became marked by exploitation and abuse. Ultimately, Tito's scholarship at the private school was revoked by his coach, supposedly based on his academic performance. After that, Tito moved in with my family in Austin and enrolled in public school, slowly piecing his new life and basketball career back together until we were surprised by President Donald J. Trump's 2018 memorandum on combating High Nonimmigrant Overstay Rates. With so much uncertainty looming on the horizon, my family and I supported Tito by helping him search for a college basketball scholarship that would allow him to stay in the United States. He received an opportunity to attend a junior college on a new student visa. However, this never happened. When he returned to Panama for the visa adjudication, he was denied re entry to the United States. Our paths reconverge tonight from the opening pages of Basketball Trafficking Stolen Black Panamanian Dreams by Dr. Javier Wallace, former D1 college athlete and scholar in the fields of history, sports and social justice. Javier, welcome to the New Books Network.
- [03:09]
Dr. Javier Wallace
Hey, hey, hey. Thank you for having me. So glad to be here. And such a wonderful introductory read. It's so amazing. I think this is my first time hearing somebody else read that back to me. Wow. I did write that.
- [03:22]
Sullivan Sommer
Yeah. Well, so. Well, no, now you have to talk about that. So what is it like hearing those words back to you of your first book?
- [03:30]
Dr. Javier Wallace
I mean, it literally took me to the moment that I'm describing, and, you know, seeing him in the airport, I can see him right now, exactly what he had on the Atlanta hoodie and, you know, all the things that myself, my father and him were thinking and maybe even nervous about. And then, you know, after it all transpired and I'm back in Panama and I'm seeing him play again on that basketball court and knowing, like, it's really. It's kind of over. It's over in one way for what we were pursuing and what he was pursuing in the US but then it was still, you know, looking at a young person whose life was still in front of him and figuring out how, like, how does he move forward from here? And then, you know, just in this moment, just reflecting on, like, why did they. Why did they happen this way? Because I always think about, you know, always. And I always tell myself, and I try not to get caught there, but I feel like if I had, or we had $10,000 back then at that time, that things would have been totally different. But I have that money now, but if I had it then things would have been different. But also, no, I think it was a reason why I didn't have it then because I was able to learn so much about something I knew so little about. And now it's like, how do we make sure that we can make it better for other young people so they don't have to go through all that? So, like, hearing you read that, it takes me back through all those years of just, like, how things went and, like. And it happened so fast in my mind. It's like, how do you. So you, like, literally, in 30 seconds, summarize three, four years in one time? So I really felt that all that one time. Yeah.
- [05:12]
Sullivan Sommer
Well, let's get. Let's get more into it. Normally, when I talk to authors, right, we say their bio a little bit. You know, you. You have a doctorate, you this, this, that, the other. But normally I. I skip right into sort of the, of the book. I don't usually ask what I'm going to ask you now, which is talk about your background and your family and your upbringing. Because that is a really important part of the story.
- [05:41]
Dr. Javier Wallace
Yes, I always tell people that I am the product of racing sports because if it's not more than divine intervention, it's definitely racing sports and the sport of tennis specifically. Where my parents meet each other on a tennis court in East Austin that brings me and my sibling prevalence into reality. My father is from the Republic of Panama in the former United States Panama Canal Zone, in a segregated community once known as Rainbow city since the 1970s, has been translated to the Spanish version and is still called Arcorides to this day. My mother is from Austin, Texas, East Austin, specifically, a historically black neighborhood, intentionally segregated neighborhood in East Austin. And their past met on this tennis court in East Austin that was intentionally designed for black people. And I just think about all the things that happen over the course of their individual lives that lead to that moment in the 1970s where they see each other on the tennis court and what ensues. Following that and what ensues is us, me and my siblings and me specifically coming into existence and learning about who I am. Growing up as a black person in Austin with the African American mother and a black Panamanian father of West Indian origins, and all these, like, different things that are going on in my life. And so always joke with people, like, I, I, I knew Celia Cruz just like I knew Al Green. Like, it wasn't something that was unfamiliar. I knew Calypso, I knew. So, I mean, I knew all these artists at one time. I knew Arroz Con, I knew Kyler Greens, like, all at one time on the same plate. And so many things. And so those always have, like, influenced me because I am them and they are me. And so even when I moved to Panama, always wanting to experience that part of who I am. Having played at a historically black college in The United States, Florida, A&M, going to school there, following in the footsteps of my father at HBCU athletic program, learning more about us in Austin, but us and in Panama, and then all these things just converge. I love sport and I've just never gotten away from it. And so it's just all these things keep always coming back. And I always think about not only me, I'm not that selfish, but I think about me quite a bit because I always ask myself, like, how do I get to do the things that I do in the person that I am? And I think it's largely because of the people who made me. And I'm always in search of our stories and trying to find myself. And by virtue of finding myself, because I know I'm not the only one, I'm able to find more people that are very similar to me, similar to us and our experiences, and then also make those connections. So that's who I am. I'm a black person from Austin, Texas, who has a black Panamanian father and African American mother that is across the diaspora in so many ways. And it shows up in everything that I do. I mean, even my name. Like, it doesn't make sense to a lot of people. Javier Wallace is like Spanish. What is this going on? And so I. That's. That's who I am. That's. That's who I am.
- [08:37]
Sullivan Sommer
Well, so you talked about your. Your parents were tennis players, you were a football player. Yeah, D1. D1 football. And this. We're on audio, so people can't say. You just made a face when I said football.
- [08:50]
Dr. Javier Wallace
You know, I'm born in Texas, you know, so, yeah, I'm born in Texas. Tennis really wasn't the thing that was going to get me anywhere at all. At all. At all. At all.
- [09:03]
Sullivan Sommer
But you. So you came up through a football program. This book, though, is about basketball. And the title and the term you sort of coined throughout is basketball trafficking. Talk what just said. Again, we're gonna get in more detail of the book and the story and Tito's story, who we started with off the top. But before we get into the details of Tito's story, talk about what is basketball trafficking.
- [09:31]
Dr. Javier Wallace
Basketball trafficking is something I define as the exploitative and unregulated migration of youth within international interscholastic athletic migration to the United States, which in many instances starts with the F1 student visa.
- [09:46]
Sullivan Sommer
And talk about. Okay, we have to define that or at least talk through that for us. The F1 student visa.
- [09:53]
Dr. Javier Wallace
Yes, of course. So the F1 student visa is the apparatus, if you will, that allows international students to enter to the United States. Most international students come to the country using an F student visa. There's also like a J student visa, which is more exchange programs. And sometimes students come on like foreign exchange programs that some people might think about. But the F student visa is largely the one that brings. That brings students that are not U.S. citizens to the country. It's a non immigrant visa that allows them to study in the United States at a secondary school or a University. Most F1 students in the United States are studying at A university level, the majority of them. I mean, it's near a million, if not more international students at the college and university level in the United States.
- [10:44]
Sullivan Sommer
So this was a point. I mean, there was a lot in your book that I learned. I mean, you hope you always learn things when you read. Right. But I think what I found so eye opening about your book is there were things that surround me in everyday life that I had no idea about. And this was one of them. And so you have a stat in there. So I think I always, you know, intuitively I went to college with people on student visas that, you know, student people on student visas at the college level. I sort of knew that. But you have this stat in there that said 80,000 students hold F1 visas at the K through 12 level. And I thought, and this is a really ignorant question, why? Because these are not people who are immigrating with their parents. Correct. This is not a family that comes and the kids are going to school. These are kids without their parents on visas K through 12.
- [11:51]
Dr. Javier Wallace
That's correct. That's 100% correct. And it's actually. And I was surprised when I learned a lot of this too. But when we think about it is not something that's extremely out the ordinary. Like just think of like boarding schools where students leave home and they go bored at a school that it's not where they're from. And like, it happens a lot with students that are domestic to the United States, but just add that extra layer of it where there are a lot of international students who do migrate to the United States in a very similar fashion and more than likely are attending like a boarding school type environment, which is pretty common in the United States and elsewhere. And so we don't think about it a lot, especially when we think about the sport aspect of it. But it does happen. Like, students come largely because the perception and sometimes the reality that the education is better in the United States or they might have access to something that they perceive to be better. And usually like an earlier entry into the United States gets these students better acquainted. So say, for instance, a student is coming from. The majority are coming from China. And so let's just say like a student wants to. Wants to have a better gauge of learning English, wants to have a better gauge of learning American culture, have a better opportunity to attend an American university. And so they can attend school here on an F1 student visa, you know, from like 9th grade, 10th grade, and they learn, they speak English. You know, it's actually pretty common that happens the sport element is what makes it a bit different, but it's not uncommon either because unlike the sport of basketball at the high school level, you know, we often see this with tennis quite a bit like tennis, soccer, you see this more often. And these are students who are usually coming from backgrounds that have, like, high socioeconomic standing in their home country, are very good, and they might want to come to, let's say, for an example, an img, an academy in Florida that is a sport academy that's very well known internationally and domestically for producing high talented athletes. Merging at the high school level, it's a place for them to train and study to get some of that more specialized attention that they need. So sport makes it different, but it's not as uncommon as we might think. Just, again, I tell people, think boarding school. It's boarding school, but in the United States, and people come to do those things.
- [14:20]
Sullivan Sommer
So your book follows one boy, Tito. And in fact, in the introduction, you write that his mother jokingly said to you, he's your son. The two of you, you're about 12 years his senior. Talk about how Tito came into your life.
- [14:41]
Dr. Javier Wallace
Oh, wow. I mean, great story. All the time talk about black mothers. And I say that intentionally because I have a colleague at Duke who, who wrote a book called Tackling the Everyday. Her name is Dr. Tracy Canada, and it's called Race Nation and Big Time College Football. And she talks a lot about the role that black mothers play in the lives of their black sons that play football, in getting the opportunities for them, supporting them every step of the way, being that emotional support that they need when beyond the field. And I say all that because his mother was exactly that. Like, that's how I meet him. And so I start with her first, because I was an athletic director in Panama for a couple of years at a very prestigious international school. I was organizing an athletic tournament, and we had a basketball portion, and I had to contract the referees and the statistics, the stat takers. And his mother was one of the stat takers. And so as we're preparing for the tournament, she walks in the gym ready to take stats. And however we get into conversation, we get in the conversation and she hands me this stack of papers that she has put together with her son, recruiting or trying to get money to help him go to a tournament in the United States. I mean, it has the official letter in there. She has photos of him. She takes out her cell phone and she shows me the video of him dunking the ball. And then she just really gets into this conversation about being from Colon, and Colon in Panama is on the Atlantic coast of the country. It is historically and contemporary thought of the black place in the country. And it's where my dad's from. It's the first place that I lived when I was in Panama. It's the place that most Panamanians always ask me if I'm from there without knowing anything else about me except what they see. And so I had always been familiar with colonial. And the story she was saying resonated deeply, is that the kids from Colon never get the support that they deserve to. But they're the best athletes, but they don't get the support they need to go different places immediately in that moment, like, I'm thinking of my dad and all the stories he has told me growing up about being from this place, playing sport, and the ways that they had to make ways for themselves. And so that's how I meet him. I meet him on the packet of papers, in the video, on his mother's cell phone. And from that moment, once I decide, I'm like, yeah, I want to be a part of this. This journey with this young person. I talked to my dad, and he was like, how much money do they need? That's all I need to know. And I told him. And then he covered the entire trip. And from there. I mean, from there, he just. His mother was like, go talk to him. Go talk to Javier. And I work in school. I'm an educator. So he's like. He said high school still, too. And so, like, he's like a student of mine, actually. And so he's. He practices after the tournament. He practices his basketball in the same complex in which my school is in. And so I think I talk about in the book, like, the security guards, because it's a very prestigious school. I work at security all around, you know, but security guards already know. Like, if this kid comes to the door, let him in. He's going to Mr. Wallace in the back. And don't ask him any questions. He has permission to go back there, so he's just coming. You know, we're always talking about different things, and I recognize how good of a talent he is in basketball already. And then as things progress for him, him and his family are just keeping up with me and just asking me to help them with different things. And so we just developed this relationship, like, this fictive kinship that is just like, him and I are just intertwined at every step of the way. Like, I see him virtually every day. His mother is keeping Me updated on what's going on in his life. We're supporting him. And then, of course, when, you know, he comes to Texas and even when things aren't going bad, I'm still very connected. And then when things do go bad, I'm very connected with him. And so I'm taking him to school every day. I'll be being that figure. He doesn't need a father figure because he has a father. That's important to note, but being that person in his life, to hold him accountable as a teenager was somebody who was, you know, I'm only 12 years older than him, but, you know, life has made a quite a big difference in those 12 years between him and I. And so that's how we met in Panama. Through his mother. Through his mother. Through his mother.
- [19:06]
Sullivan Sommer
I'm curious about. So you're an athletic director when you meet him, you know, now to now, today, you know, you, you, you hold a PhD. At what point did he. Was this your dissertation topic?
- [19:19]
Dr. Javier Wallace
Yes, it's my dissertation topic. How did that happen?
- [19:23]
Sullivan Sommer
Like, I guess. Which came first? Can you talk about. I'm just, I'm just super curious about that.
- [19:29]
Dr. Javier Wallace
Okay, I'll give you the timeline. I moved to Panama, 2012. By 2014, I'm an athletic director at one of the largest schools in the country, prestigious schools in the country, doing a lot of work in the sports space, even with at the national level. Cool. And I'm a young person at that, but I'm from the United States. I have a master's degree in sport management, so I'm. But I'm a Panamanian citizen, so I'm doing that. But I meet Tito and his mother. 2016 or so, I think it's 16 or 7. 16. He gets a scholarship to go 2017. I start my PhD in 2017. So we have already met each other before. I even start my PhD program while I am at the University of Texas at Austin. He's at his respective school. And then that's when things start to go awry. And so I'm already studying. I'm supposed to be studying. Well, no, I am studying. I'm supposed to be writing about race and sports, Black people in Latin America, primarily through soccer. That was the lens. But as all these things are transpiring in my life, in our lives collectively, through basketball trafficking and him living with me and me going to different places around, around the city of Austin, trying to get him help. And then in the midst of telling my advisors that I'm in my PhD program about everything that's happening, they are the ones that are saying that soccer thing is, it's nice you can do that's. I like it. You can write about that anytime that you want. But this thing you talking about, this basketball thing and this kid that you're working with, you need to write about that because you're like telling us all these things, you're doing all this research, write about that. And so it just impromptu, becomes a dissertation topic. And it's literally just. It's not a diary. But in many ways it's like me just recount. And I write it actually pretty fast. Like it's just me recounting everything that we're going through and then the things that we're doing in real time. And I'm just studying. So it becomes my dissertation topic, but it's not initially what I am intended to do at all.
- [21:45]
Sullivan Sommer
Okay.
- [21:45]
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- [22:15]
Sullivan Sommer
I mean, it's a very, as you said, it feels very real time as you're reading it. It's resonant. You are telling a contemporary story about contemporary real people and real institutions. And you do note in the book that you do use some pseudonyms. Um, talk about the deci as an author. Talk about the decision to preserve anonymity in some cases.
- [22:45]
Dr. Javier Wallace
Yes, that's a great question. And so the decision to use pseudonyms in the majority of the cases, not, not everybody has a pseudonym in the book, but in his instance, most definitely it comes from. By the time we are starting to get advised by a no longer in function refugee resettlement program that existed in Texas, it's unfortunate they don't exist anymore. And so by the time they're helping us understand trafficking in a real way is when they're telling, they're educating me, they're educating us about the real possibilities of somebody wanted to seek retribution in some ways against people that tell stories. And it's not. And especially because I learned about basketball trafficking through the media through mediated stories. And that was One point that they made clear, they were saying, you know, it's a. It's a strategy to use when you need the attention to go very public, you know, like, put people out there in the front so people know who they are. And it might work. It might work to get you what you need. I think it might. It probably would have worked for us, but I also had to be respectful of the young person. That's not what he wanted. He didn't want to be out talking about these things. Like, he didn't want to be, like, the person. Suli Suleiman, on the documentary that I'm in with Vice Sports, you know, this young person, he didn't. He wants to talk about these things. And so he's telling his story, he's telling people's names, and he's guiding relief in many ways by having done that. But we were advised that, you know, if that's not the route that you want to take and open yourself up to those level of possibilities, you know, maybe certain things you don't have to share. And so that was the decision there, to use pseudonyms and protect his identity in so many ways, because that's not what he wanted to do at that moment in time. And still to this day, he doesn't want to be the face of this whole thing that's happening and that we. That we've had to live together. And it's not just him, because I still get emails and read papers about people that are going through it, but it was his decision to not have to be so out there about what was going on. And largely because, you know, and also as bad as I want to, and believe me, I want to so bad like to. Because I know these people. The names of these individuals who did these things, I know them well.
- [25:15]
Sullivan Sommer
Yeah, the bad actors.
- [25:17]
Dr. Javier Wallace
They're the bad actors. The bad actors, Yeah, I know the bad actors. But for me, I think from an author's standpoint, it's not only about me. It's not only about me and my potential gain or my potential, like, the placement that I can get by outing these people and showing these people names and faces and all the things that would probably make it easier to sell the book, make it easier to do those things. I'm just okay with not foregoing that because I still know this. I know this young person. Like, I know him. I'm in his life. Every time I go to Panama, I see him every time. Every time. His mother. I mean, she helps me out every time if I need anything in The Republic of Panel, I don't mean anything. She's going to be the first one to say, Dalia Javier, tell me what it is and I'm going to do it. And so, you know, it's more than me.
- [26:06]
Sullivan Sommer
That's why I want to return to the concept of basketball trafficking. You gave us a definition before. I'm going to read a very short excerpt from the book because I want you to talk a bit about it. You write, According to the US Department of Homeland Security 2013, human trafficking involves the use of force, fraud or coercion to obtain some type of labor or commercial sex act. Yet once Tito acquired his out of status classification and we sought assistance in the pro bono immigration space, most officials who work to protect migrants and trafficked persons could not think of someone like Tito as a victim of trafficking.
- [26:52]
Dr. Javier Wallace
Yeah, that's so layered. Because human trafficking, when most people think of human trafficking, a lot of people think of it in a very gendered way. And gendered thinking about women, people who have been gendered as female and being sexually exploited. And that's actually how the first definitions of human trafficking legally are defined in the United States. And they've, and they've had to evolve over time. It had to evolve over time because the reality of it is the persons that are victimized by trafficking are not only gendered, and it's not gendered as female, and they're not only being sexually exploited. That's just not the fact that the definition is, as you read it, it can be coercion, it can be labor. Right. When somebody is telling a young person that they need to make 18 points a game, and if you don't make 18 points a game, I'm going to withhold something from you. I'm not going to give you that. If you want a new pair of shoes, I need you to labor in my auto body shop to get that. That those are the things that this young person and his and his peers were going through. And that is a form of trafficking, that is a form of exploitation. And so then as we move on to the pro bono, pro bono immigration space, I talk about this at, in the book. These are spaces that are funded usually by philanthropy, and they don't have a lot of resources. And so they have to be very selective on who they can help. Especially they, especially when they know that they probably, they literally could help everybody. Like, because many people have legitimate cases, but their resources don't allow them to help everybody. And those are just facts. Now, those aren't things that they always tell people straight up. Now sometimes they do, they're like, it's great. And they told us, some people told us, like, we just don't have the resources to help you with this. And then a lot of the decision making process on who to help comes from who can. Who has one of the most compelling stories for individual. The compelling stories that will actually capture somebody's attention and make somebody like believe that they're a victim of trafficking and help them get relief. And not unfortunately, but a lot of what we understand about trafficking and then the growth of policies have come from media and come from film primarily. Like many people don't know. A lot of the policies around human trafficking have come about after films have come out. Like, take the movie Taken, right? Taken is taken, takes people. I mean, I remember watching Taken and I'm gonna find you. I'm a kid, I'll be able to let him free. Right? But that's what's in a lot of people's minds about human trafficking. And so it's hard sometimes to build a case for somebody who doesn't fit that mode, right? So you take a strong looking and athletic looking black male playing basketball, coming, talking about somebody is making him, making him make 18 points a game and withholding food from them. Somebody is berating them at 2, 3 o' clock in the morning about a performance and not allowing them to, not allowing them to fully engage academically in what they've been promised. Sometimes that doesn't sound as compelling as said person has been captured against their will and forced to do sexual things for people against their will. And so those things matter in those low bono spaces and pro bono spaces, like who can have the most compelling story based on the limited amount of resources that we have and the people that we can have as much success in helping them get relief than others. And that's why I say if I had $10,000, then we probably wouldn't be here because we would have been able to pay for the help that we needed. That speaks to the complexities and the realities of a young person in the situation that is playing basketball. But when we had not those, when we didn't have those resources, and that's my big concern today, is a lot of these young people, they don't have those resources. And some of the few places that they can, they have easy access to are these low bono and pro bono spaces for immigration, migration, refugee and traffic and relief. They have to go up against a lot of those things about gender stereotypes, basketball. I mean, I Had a police officer tell me that, like, I mean, his police initial response was basketball. You mean basketball?
- [31:29]
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How?
- [31:30]
Dr. Javier Wallace
I'm like, okay, so this conversation probably not gonna go anywhere because you, you, you, you won't even. You stuck on the basketball part. I can't talk to you about the kid. All you think is basketball how. And so a lot of that really influences, I believe, I would argue it influences how people are thought of as victims. And by virtue of being thought of as a victim, that indicates the type of relief that somebody is eligible for or relief that somebody can actually receive.
- [31:56]
Sullivan Sommer
Yeah, I actually want to stick a pin in a minute on the basketball piece of it because I think some listeners, some listeners who are sports fans and professional sports fans will hear this interview and they will get it. They will connect all the dots. Even if this is new to them, the concept, they will connect all the dots. But I can imagine for some people, while they might be able to wrap their head around trafficking, perhaps at the professional level, maybe even at the collegiate Division 1 level as a money making scheme. Talk about high school, because we're talking about high school now. And so I answer the question of what's in it for people to be trafficking high school students?
- [32:51]
Dr. Javier Wallace
Great question. And NBA players or WNBA players largely come from college basketball. College basketball players largely come from high school basketball. A lot of people miss that. Young people that play, people that play college and professional ball, they have to come up the ranks. And at every level of the ranks, the pool gets smaller and smaller. Right. There's a big pond of high school talent that eventually becomes a smaller pond of college talent. That eventually comes a very, very small population of people who go professional. So it's important that people understand that college players have to come from somewhere. Like, they literally can't just show up in college and say, I'm playing basketball now. So the reason why I focus so much on high school is because they're actually the majority of the people that are playing the sport that are, that are fueling every other aspect of the game. And what's important about high school basketball specifically is unlike the collegiate level and specifically the NCAA, the Division 1 level that most people look at when they see basketball at the high school level. The NCAA does not exist. There's no centralized governing body over high school athletics. Every state has a governing body over their athletic board that are mostly their public schools and some of their parochial private schools. But not every school has to participate in those leagues or under the governance of those athletic bodies. And so you have schools and academies, and particularly like the biggest academies at the high school level that we see now that are playing like in these major companies sponsor national championship that don't, that never, that didn't exist really back in 2000, early 90s. Like those schools don't have to have this. They don't have, they don't have to follow the same level of governance as the schools that are in the state sponsored associations that have rules against F1 student visa players playing a sport at the varsity level. And then the amount of time they can spend playing sport at the varsity level. In the state of Texas, if you are an F1 visa holder, you only can play varsity level athletics for one year. If you're in the, in the, in the, in the school system that are in UIA only one year. And that means you can't play consecutively. And so what that does is that forces, that takes a lot of these people out that want to have international F1 players playing for consecutive years because they can't do it. But if you are in an independent school that doesn't, that doesn't, that doesn't fall under the governance of these athletic bodies or your athletic body doesn't have that rule. You can have players playing that are student visa holders for however many years they can pay or their tuition is paid for and they are, they remain in good standing status. Now that is where the largest amount of the issue lies is because at the high school level, 50 states and you don't have to be under any governance, people can do what they want, people can create schools. And that's what we see the most problems, not the big established academies that we see. Not to say they're not without problems because that would be not the truth to say that. But largely they have a lot of governance and resources, checks and balances that I haven't seen a lot of this type of exploitation happen there. But it's these schools or air code, if y' all can see me with my hard air coat finger. Schools that exist, that just kind of exists and we have the right to have education in the United States in the way that we want to. That's one of the things that makes the US different. So people can create their own schools in addition to people creating schools. Not everybody has the resources to create a school that can, that can maintain and provide for kids that they're bringing from out of the country who are coming at 16, who are coming without their parents, who are coming on basketball scholarships, who need somebody to take care for them physically Emotionally, who need somebody to make sure that they're studying. Some people that need to live somewhere 247, 365 days of the year, they can't go home in Christmas break. They can't go home during New Year's, they can't go home in the summer. Not everybody has a resource to provide for those kids. And that's where we see a lot of the trouble happen. And so it's important that we move our levels down from college and professional to think about the majority of the people, the kids that are fueling college in the program at the high school level. And so you see all these kids coming in, and the schools, just some schools, some academies, some people don't have the resources or the intent to do right by those kids. And then because it's unregulated, you have kids that are moving to different schools, and sometimes the coaches are moving them, and they're not even doing it as a bad actor. They just think it's a good or it's a better situation to go somewhere. But that can put a kid in violation of their visa, because there are certain steps that one has to take to transfer schools. If you are F1 student visa holder, and once you do that incorrectly, then you are in violation of your visa, which means you also could be in the country unlawfully and which means you could then be on, Depending on the severity, you could be on the grounds for forced removal from the country, which is not something that many people want to be experiencing. So I hope I did an okay job of that one.
- [38:40]
Sullivan Sommer
Yeah, well, and you just touched on what I think is one of the most poignant questions that you ask in the book. The book asks a lot of questions. You were talking about Tito's coach, Coach Barragan, which is a pseudonym. And when it becomes clear that Coach Barragan's name is actually not on any of Tito's visa forms at all, Even though this is the coach that is supposed to be Tito's coach at his school. And you write, how does someone with so much power have so little responsibility for the young people they recruit to come and play basketball?
- [39:16]
Dr. Javier Wallace
100%, he did not have it. His name wasn't on not one piece of official paperwork. Not one. And that is what blew us away as we. And I write about it in the book, because I remember it the same way I remember being in the moment when you read at the opening of today. I can remember sitting at our kitchen table and hearing the young woman on the other end of the phone that was helping us from the Student Visa Exchange Bureau, clicking away, looking for the name that we're giving her, which is the name that Tito has and the name that I have on the document on my emails and my text messages. And she can't find his name on any of the government sponsored documents. And then she says, he can't take your scholarship away. His name is not on anything. It blew me. I mean, it blew me away because I'm like, wow, his name isn't on. And then, you know, I went back and looked at the visa, the i20 that the school sent. I went back and looked at the letters from the school that they sent when he was back in Panama when I was there. And I was like, she's absolutely right, his name isn't on any of this stuff. But he's the person who saw him play in Dominican Republic. He's the person who said he wanted him to come. He's the person who was responsible for him when he was in the space in Texas, when he was the person who was responsible and he was a person that kicked him out, that said all these things, but he didn't have. Because he wasn't the owner of the school, he wasn't the designated school officer, the DSO that the US government depends on to make these type of decisions about who comes to the school, who transferred to the school. He didn't work in the admissions building or work with the money part of it. And so the monies that was dispersed to Tito as a scholarship or athletic granted aid, he wasn't over that process, process either. Even though we know he's the one who told people how much he wanted this person to have and how much he did not want them to have. He's the one who got them to remove him from the system. But he's. But his name was nowhere to be, nowhere to appear. And that goes to the point about some of these schools and these coaches. Because of the relationship some schools go to with coaches, some coaches go to schools and they create their own programs at a school that has the infrastructure and has the ability to offer student visas and they partner with them. But once again, that the school is the one who offers, the school is the one who brings, the school is the one who provides the i20, not the coach because the coach doesn't have any legal authority to do so. And so that is something that I feel we have to address because you have people that are responsible for these people and aren't there legally. Legally aren't there and A good example of this is the movie Amateur on Netflix. Anybody go watch Amateur on Netflix and you'll kind of see this play itself out where it's a coach who has a basketball academy that he's running at a private Catholic school. And so the Catholic school is hosting his basketball academy where his basketball players are attending school at the Saint, whatever the school is called, but they play for his academy. They live in the residence that he sets up. They go to the games with his transportation, but he is not the school. And so they are on contract. They would be on contract as an international player with St. Joe whatever the name of the school, St. Whatever Academy, not the coach's basketball academy, which is something we have to address because again, the student visa, I don't think it was made for the athletic system in the United States, even though school and athletics have always gone hand in hand in the US but the way is just kind of crazy.
- [43:19]
Sullivan Sommer
So you, you write at one point in the book, before Tito left Panama, I constantly reminded him that this opportunity was a business deal, not one of benevolence. I knew he needed to take advantage of the opportunity in the same way as the school was taking advantage of his athletic talents and labor. I was complicit in his new predicament with the athletic industrial complex. Talk about that.
- [43:46]
Dr. Javier Wallace
Yeah, I was complicit. And I say that as somebody who studies racing sports at a deep level. And the reason I'm complicit is because I knew from the jump, from the onset of the whole scenario situation we were placed in, that this was a business in my description of it as a business deal. I Tito, he gives them his basketball talent, his labor through his talent. In exchange, they need to give him access to a US High school education, access to English training and education, and an opportunity to continue playing at a higher level, to get more. And so I say I'm complicit because I know I study these things at a deep level, the athletic industrial complex. How these institutions take, take, take, take specifically from young black people and how they play on the dreams and the aspirations of certain people and certain people within our communities that some people might say have unrealistic expectations in relation to sport. Not always true in my estimation. And they take advantage of it and least of it all in return. But I'm complicit because I knew these things going in and I just couldn't. I couldn't. But I couldn't see anything other. I couldn't see anything different to do because as I'VE said over today a couple of times, if I had $10,000, things would have been different. I mean, if we had $10,000, we could have paid for him to come to a school in the United States and he wouldn't have needed to play basketball. He could have just studied here. He could have learned English better, He could have maybe stayed in school and just continued working towards his education, but we didn't have that luxury. Like myself and like my father, my parents couldn't pay for me to go to college. They made that abundantly clear, that I was going to get loans to pay for college, but they knew I was going. But one of the big reasons why I played football and continue to play football is because the coach told me that I could go to school for free. And I said, you know what? Well, that's what I'm going to do. I'm gonna play football until I came no more. And that's exactly what I did until I blew out my acl. That's exactly what I did. But along the way, along the way, and I don't want to make this sound romantic, but along the way I obtained my bachelor's degree with no debt. I obtained my master's degree, and because of my own decision, I only had one semester to pay for out of my pocket. Other than that, it would have been completely paid for. And my doctorate degree was 100% paid for. All of, all of it because of sport. All of it because of sport. And I said, when you talk about my asking about my family and my father and if you ever been to Cologne, you would know what I'm talking about. But the place on which he come from, into his parents with zero that they had the only thing, and he'll tell it, and he says the only thing that he had because he came to the country first unlawfully and he was sent back, but tennis is allowing him to come to the US the second time. And he tells this story about him going to the immigration office in Panama with his mother. I don't know if I write about this in the book, but he tells it all the time because there's a certain, you have to play a certain game in the immigration office says, and you know, the, the, the, the, the F1 student visa is a non immigrant visa, so you can't have immigration intent when you make this, when you go to this visa for adjudication. And so he says, the gentleman asked him, the American asked him, what is he going to do once he finishes studying and playing tennis in The United States. And he said him and his mother have rehearsed his answer over and over and again that he was supposed to say he's coming back to Panama. That was the answer that he needed. And he said, he told this man, sir, if I'm leaving here and I'm going to study in the United States, why would I come back? Why would I? He said his mother was kicking him underneath the desk. He said the wrong thing. And then she said the man put a stamp in the passport and she took it out of his hand. She wouldn't even let him look at it. And she was so upset. They were walking out of the. The US Embassy in Panama, she wouldn't even look at it. And then she finally opened the passport up as they getting on the bus to go back to Col. And she said, he said it was approved. And she said, how was it approved? And then. And so he came. I say all that to say in my. My complicity in the situation, because I seen what happened. I see what happened to me. I seen what happened to my father. What does it mean to give yourself to these sit. These places that take so much from you? Because the little things that you could possibly get that can maybe make your life just a little bit better than ways you could never before? And so that's why I say I'm complicit, because I knew what awaited, what possibly awaited him. But the little things that I've seen in my life and my father's life and how I came to be are the things that were saying, like, you know, we should still try this. We should still try this, because we didn't have no other option.
- [49:03]
Sullivan Sommer
One of my takeaways in that, though, is, you know, you as the author, who is highly formally educated, you know, at the point that this is all happening, you have a MA you have advanced degrees from prestigious institutions, you're a dual citizen. You are bilingual, you have experience in sport as well. You have a title. And yet. And maybe you don't have as much money as you want to have. So a grant that you didn't. You didn't have a bunch of extra money. But. But. And yet. And so what is it like for someone who doesn't have all of those, all of those privileges seems to me like a fairly impossible system to nap. To navigate. I don't know how you navigate it.
- [50:00]
Dr. Javier Wallace
That's. That's the. I mean, honestly, that's the reason why I wrote the book, because everything that you just said, that's what caught me like A deer in the headlights. I'm like, all this education I have about sports, racing, sports playing in collegiate system, being athletes, and this is still happening. I don't even know anything about this. That's the reason why I wanted to write this book and still dedicate it to this work. Because it's all those things that you mentioned about me that allows me to even get to this point, to even help us get to the point that we get to where he's able to make a decision to based in fact, in reality, in the lawful things that could happen or could away him. And he made that decision. And I think all the things you mentioned is a credit to us being able to be in that situation. In hindsight, if he would have just stayed, he would have got the relief from the government. You know why? Because they sent us a letter two weeks after he left saying that they granted him temporary relief. But because of the things you mentioned about education, experience, it wasn't my decision to make. And that's the decision that he chose to go back home and try it, to do it. DONALD TRUMP well, you can ask me a question if that's where you want to go with that. But that was the decision that he wanted to make. And so I've only been now with all the education that I have formally in the prestigious institutions and being able to write a book about these things, I just really want this to be a resource for those individuals. A lot of people not gonna read the book. I know that because it's thick. I want, and what I'm working on now is taking the information from the book and turning those things into digestible resources for people. Like when immigration attorneys are looking for ways to help people. I want to take, I want them to read the book, but I know it's 200 something pages. They might not have time. But here are five points from the book. What you should do if you encounter a young person who's playing sport, they've been kicked out and they don't know what to do next. These are five things you can do right now. And so that's where I want to take my formal education and my business savviness, that I now have to bring that more into the fore of people so they can use it and hope, mitigate and help these young people that are experiencing things like everything that we have to go through and just learn on the fly.
- [52:29]
Sullivan Sommer
Well, I want to touch on a few of those things because to your point, I hope people do, I hope people do go get the Book, I will say also, it is a, you know, it's. It's an extremely readable text. I want people to know that as well. You know, academic texts are so important in. For so many reasons. This is one I would say is a more generally accessible text. So I will say that. And I want to talk about. I do want to talk about some of your recommendations, which you have in the book. Before we get do that, though, I do want to stick one more minute on Tito because we've been sort of talking kind of around his decision to go back, but ultimately, Tito's faced with the decision of staying safe or violating his student visa. Talk about that decision that he is faced with and ultimately makes.
- [53:35]
Dr. Javier Wallace
So we eventually get linked up with the. Again, they don't exist anymore, but a refugee resettlement service in Austin that not only gives us education and resources for Tito, for things for him to do, but they actually get him in contact with a pro bono immigration attorney who decides to take on the case. This is the first time that an attorney decides to take on the case. Well, not a case, but she's willing to advise as she can through the recommendation of the services that we were accessing. And a big part of what she does is she's helping us stay abreast of the changes because this is under President Donald Trump's first administration. And so there's a lot of changes that are happening with immigration and policies specifically around student visa overstays. And so she's helping us keep abreast and she's keeping him abreast of these situations. She's telling him his options. She's asking him, as she has a lot of experience with people who have experienced extreme forms of exploitation and trafficking and don't want to and can't go back home. Like, she's asking questions of him, such as, do you feel like you're in danger if you return home? Is there anybody in Panama who is waiting to hurt you? Do you feel like you can go back to your home and your parents will take you in? And all of his questions were affirmative that he can go back home. He feels safe if he goes back home. Nobody. He doesn't feel like he's in danger if he goes back home. And so she's asking these questions based on her experience and expertise as an immigration attorney that helps people get relief. And she's also advising us on or she's creating this scenario, informing us, educating him on what type of decision or informing him enough to make an educated decision. I think that's the best thing to say then, you know, another cool. One thing that she brings up is. And one that really resonated with me, and one she told him directly as things were changing, he had access to a student ID card from the public school he was in when he was in Austin, as they give them to everybody. And what his public, with his student id, he's able to ride the city buses for free because that's the rules that they have. He's under 18, so he actually can travel through the United States to tournaments with his AAU team that he acquires in Austin because he has a student ID and they take that form of identification. But like she says, she says, Javier, he's black, he's a boy. It's not a matter if he's going to be stopped by the police. It's a matter when and when he turns 18, he's not going to have access to get any type of identification card from the government. He won't have anything else. And then she's telling him this as well, too. She's like, you're not gonna have anything else. So do you wanna face that? Do you wanna be in this country at this point in time, especially if you feel like nothing at home is putting you in harm's way? And so she gave. And that's a reality. I grew up with an African American mother. I'm a big black man. She used to tell us all the time, you got two strikes against you in the baseball context. You black and you a boy. All you need to do is one more thing and you outta here. So that resonated with me, like I knew what she was talking about. Even to. Even when you travel now, I think about this every. I travel quite a bit. Every time we go into the airport now, you know, there's a thing called the Real ID program that we have now. Real id even you can't even travel the same. And people. I think that's gone under a lot of people's radar. But even real ID is changing the way we even travel domestically in the United States and the level of surveillance that is now happening with the Real ID program. And so when I saw a Real ID, I was like, what she was saying is 100% correct. He wouldn't even have access to be able to travel anymore, because at one point you could get an identification card, but now a real ID is different. And so all these things that she's educating him and us on, that's when he makes the decision where we find him. The opportunity and we actually find he's not out of status. That was a big thing. We found out he's not out of status because she told. She showed us how, how status is, how out of status is actually calculated for people who are under 18, where their clock doesn't start at the age of 18, if they enter the country before they turn 18, which was the thing that Donald Trump's administration, that memoranda was trying to revert or was trying to change, which doesn't happen. But in the moment, that's what we were facing. That's when the clock starts ticking. And once we find him the opportunity to go to the junior college, the junior college is saying, hey, this is your scholarship. You don't have to go home to take it. You can just come, you can go to school. It's a public institution. We can't ask you those questions. But everything that we were told, and he was told by the immigration attorney, the education, he says, I want to take this scholarship, but I want to do it the right way, and I need to go home. I need to leave the country to adjudicate my visa, to come back. And so that's the decision that he makes, is that he doesn't want to be unlawful in the United States. Once he figured out he's not unlawfully present, which he thought he was. But once he figured out he's not unlawfully present and he hears that there is a possibility that he can re enter lawfully and won't be in violation, that's the decision that he takes. And I'm glad that she gives him that information in a real way and talks about him being a black man and what that would mean for him, so he could make that decision for himself. So he wouldn't, you know. Cause that's. And some people might not ever understand that. And I get that, because if you never walked in these shoes before, it's hard to articulate. It's hard to get somebody to empathize or sympathize or even care what you have to say. But it's certain things that you just feel. And you know, when you walk in the skin like I walk in, and with him and I look very much alike, that can't be explained. And you just do the same way that parents do for black kids and black boys specifically. They do. And they say the things that people can't understand to try to protect in a world that they know is real for their children. And so I think that's the decision. Well, that is the decision. The Context in which the decision he makes to leave the country is everything that some the things that we can't understand, the legalities of, like adjudicating the visa and then the things that might not everybody understands about being a black man in the United States.
- [60:27]
Sullivan Sommer
So you end the book with recommendations, talk about some of those recommendations.
- [60:33]
Dr. Javier Wallace
Now we need to do a lot. One of the recommendations and the way I thought about recommendations, knowing that it takes an act of Congress literally to change this visa, were more practical things I think we can actually do. And I think one practical thing that I don't think would cause too much harm to the immigration system would be just to add a line. Are you coming for sport? Are you coming to play sport in the United States? Because I realized the only way that we knew in the way I was, through the Freedom of Information act, through those 80,000 second secondary students in the United States on F1 student visas, I was able to request that through the Freedom of Information Act. I explained the situation and they gave me all the documents for free, all the data. And one of the only ways that we were able to identify at the high school level who was in the United States is because they had athletic scholarship written on their i20 application form, which is one way to indicate who was in the United States that were playing sports. Other than that, we just don't know who's in the US who's playing sports. And so I think that would be a great thing to do is just add that little small detail. I think schools. I think we should make schools that are using sport reveal who's there internationally. I think those are definitely things that they should do because we just need an account. We just don't know. We don't know who's here playing, so we don't know. And I think that would be a great thing for us to do.
- [62:15]
Sullivan Sommer
You talked before about Coach Barragan specifically and him not being on any of the forms, even though he's the coach.
- [62:24]
Dr. Javier Wallace
We need a more. Yes, thank you for that. We need in students who are coming to the US for sport purposes. We. I will request that the United States Embassy and adjudication that they take the names of the people who are involved in the process of the kids coming to the United States, because it's not just the families. It's oftentimes the coaches and recruiters. And we need them documented at some point of the journey to even know who they are. Because sometimes even in the big case with Evelyn Mack Academy, the one in North Carolina, I don't agree with not one thing that she did. However. No. However, in addition to the argument and the rebuttal of her defense and her defense team put together was the other coaches that were involved. Who she sold these students to didn't get any level of punishment at all. Why? Because their names are not there. The only person's name who was on all the document was Evelyn Mack and the Evelyn Mack Academy. And again, she did it. She was wrong for doing it and she should have been punished in the way that she was. In addition to that because nobody else's name was listed. She was the only one that was not the only one, but she was one of the few and the primary person that were punished. And there are many people like her defense put together that say the coaches are walking scot free away because they're not. Their names weren't involved and that was just with deals that she made with them under the table. But because they didn't have any legal bounding to it, they walked away. And unjust and unrightfully they walked away.
- [64:03]
Sullivan Sommer
Well, one name I think people will walk away with after listening to this is yours, Dr. Javier Wallace. The book is basketball trafficking Stolen black Panamanian dreams. You can find javier online at javierwallace.com, on Instagram @javierwallace512 and on LinkedIn at Javier Wallace. And I am your host, Sullivan Sommer. You can find me online@sullivansummer.com On Instagram he SullivanSummer and over on substack ellivansummer where Javier are going right now to continue our conversation. Thank you for listening to the new.
- [64:55]
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- [65:11]
Sullivan Sommer
Limu is that guy with the binoculars watching us.
- [65:14]
Dr. Javier Wallace
Cut the camera.
- [65:14]
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