The Los Angeles Dodgers are visiting the White House and President Donald Trump next week — following a tradition for the winning teams in many pro sports leagues.
But the Thursday, July 23, meeting to mark the second of the team’s back-to-back World Series titles has been met with controversy.
Some loyal Latino Dodger fans call it a “slap in the face” for the team to schmooze with a president whose immigration enforcement agenda they say has ripped their community apart. Others said the trip is a longstanding custom, was earned by the team and need not be viewed as political support of the president or his administration’s policies.
The decision to go to Washington D.C. during the team’s next road trip — supported by team Manager Dave Roberts — has led to a protest organized by some in the Dodgers’ diverse, heavily Latino and immigrant fanbase. Many Latino fans and immigrant advocacy groups condemn the Trump administration and its policies they say target these communities, with some calling for a boycott of the team, and others planning a Saturday, July 18, afternoon rally outside Dodger Stadium.
“If they can’t stand up for us, then we can’t stand by them,” organizers of the 2 p.m. demonstration at Sunset Boulevard and Vin Scully Avenue wrote on Instagram.
Joe Price, co-director for the Institute for Baseball Studies at Whittier College, called the Trump visit “tragic.”
“I think it’s ludicrous that a number of the Dodgers, who are not U.S. citizens, will be attending at a time when there are so many other undocumented or non-citizens being directly pursued by the current administration,” Price said. “I think it’s a slap in the face to everyone because the Dodgers are an international team, and the current administration is increasingly making international ties difficult.”
Others, such as Alexander Womack, a 22-year-old Long Beach resident, disagree.
The longtime Dodger fan said he “has no problem” with the meeting and noted that a champion’s visit to the White House is a tradition in many sports, not just Major League Baseball.
“It’s just kind of, like, a thing that they do.”
A possible solution to the backlash, he said, would be to “just stop doing (the visits) all together … everybody has their opinions, everybody has their feelings.”
A Dodgers spokesperson declined Wednesday, July 15, to comment on the controversy.
White House officials on Tuesday, July 14, confirmed the team’s visit, but declined to comment further.
However, White House Assistant Press Secretary Taylor Rodgers wrote July 9 on X that Trump “is excited to welcome the Los Angeles Dodgers BACK to the White House to celebrate their World Series championship!”
In a statement, the team said it’s following the “longtime tradition of visits by other World Series champions” and that the Dodgers appreciate “these tributes in recognition of our back-to-back championships.”
Fans split over trip to see Trump
Around Los Angeles, some say the immigration crackdown’s impact on the Dodgers’ community cannot be denied.
Federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in the greater Los Angeles area — defined as L.A., Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties — made nearly 14,500 arrests in 2025, data show. A majority of L.A.-area ICE operations occur in Latino-heavy neighborhoods, according to the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights Los Angeles. An October report by the UCLA Center for Neighborhood Knowledge analyzed ICE data to find that Latinos made up about 9 in 10 ICE arrests during the first six months of Trump’s second term.
This won’t be the Dodgers’ first decision to meet Trump or the team’s first trip to the White House.
The Dodgers visited the White House in 2025 after winning the 2024 World Series and met in 2021 with former President Joe Biden after its 2020 crown. This year’s session, originally scheduled for April, was delayed due to scheduling conflicts.
As the visit nears, criticism has gotten louder.
Osiris Bahena, a longtime Dodger fan from San Pedro, said she was “disappointed” in the team’s failure to oppose Trump. She stopped going to games last year and wants the team to take an official stance.
“Maybe the first time they visited, they were still kind of giving President Trump the benefit of the doubt,” Bahena said. “I feel like this time around, having seen everything that’s happened in L.A. and still continuing to happen, that they would have stopped and made a statement by not going.”
Acknowledging the team’s support of Latino activities and Mexican heritage, she said “if they really came out in support of what’s going on with Latinos, and not going to the White House, then that would mean a lot.”
Vicente Chente Montalvo, founder of Displaced Los Angeles who helped push for legislation recognizing Chavez Ravine’s original Indigenous and Mexican American communities, blasted the team after hearing of the visit.
“No one should be surprised that your ‘Boys in Blue’ are really wearing red,” Montalvo posted on social media. “For generations, many in the Brown community have proudly supported the Los Angeles Dodgers. But support should never come at the expense of truth.”
In a public letter to the team, the East Area Progressive Democrats condemned the session, saying it gives the Dodgers’ “corporate seal of approval to the hate-fueled, anti-immigrant policies and violations of Constitutional rights and basic human decency by this president … (and) dignifies the bigoted, false, divisive rhetoric by President Trump.”
Cypress resident Patrick Nava said he was indifferent to the team’s Trump meeting.
“If players, coaches, whoever don’t want to go, it’s their prerogative,” he said. “When Boston Bruins won the Stanley Cup, their goalie didn’t want to go. He didn’t want to meet Obama, and I know players don’t want to meet Trump. So you know, it goes either way, it’s definitely player preference.”
Whittier resident and veteran Santiago Nieves Jr. said he is “pleased” the Dodgers accepted this year’s invitation, posting on Facebook that “this event underscores the focus on sportsmanship rather than political affiliations.”
Meanwhile, advocacy groups are taking a hard line.
In February, the Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice called for a “boycott” of Dodger games and merchandise, citing concerns over the team’s ownership being “associated with immigration enforcement,” said spokesperson Tamara Marquez. The Inland Empire group urged fans to flood Dodger players’ social media and urge them to “stand with the families and lives who have been destroyed by this regime.”
Price, of the Institute for Baseball Studies, noted that the tradition dates to 1865, when President Andrew Johnson welcomed two season-winning amateur baseball clubs to Washington D.C.
However, Price said, “a visit to the White House is a political event, if not a political statement, by virtue of the event itself.”
Teams, players have skipped visits
Roberts — the son of a U.S. Marine — has defended his team’s visit to “respect the highest office in our country.”
“For me, it doesn’t matter who is in the office, I’m going to go to the White House,” Roberts told reporters earlier this year. “I’ve never tried to be political.”
Roberts said at a July news conference that he hopes the Dodgers get such an invite every year — because it would mean they’ve won a title.
“I’m not a politician; I’m doing something that teams have done for decades.”
Other championship teams have not traveled to the White House for various reasons.
The NBA’s Golden State Warriors didn’t visit in 2017, when Trump withdrew the invitation. The Super Bowl-winning Philadelphia Eagles’ 2018 visit was canceled by Trump, citing controversy over whether NFL players must stand during the national anthem. After the Eagles’ 2025 win, some players skipped the visit, including MVP quarterback Jalen Hurts. Eagles’ owner Jeffrey Lurie told reporters then that the visits “are optional things.” Last year, the NBA’s Oklahoma City Thunder missed the stop due to “timing” issues, the team stated.
Over Trump’s two terms, other players declining invitations to meet with Trump include Washington Capitals hockey goalie Braden Holtby and player Devante Smith-Pelly, both of whom have criticized the president, and the Golden State Warriors’ Stephen Curry, who in 2017 said Trump represents the nation “in a very damaging way.”
When asked if he expected any Dodgers players to stay away, Roberts called it “an individual choice — and I don’t think anyone is judging anyone for going or not going.”
So far, shortstop Mookie Betts — who sat out a visit when he played for the 2018 World Series champion Boston Red Sox, but attended last year’s Dodgers’ visit — and Kiké Hernández, who is rehabilitating from an injury, said they would skip the meeting.
Betts told the California Post that his decision wasn’t political, but family-oriented, and acknowledged that “people are gonna hate me” whatever choice he made.
“So instead of trying to make everyone else happy, I’m gonna think about myself and my family,” Betts said.
In June 2025, during the initial peak of ICE enforcement, Hernández, who is from Puerto Rico and has criticized Trump, posted a social media statement condemning ICE operations. Hernández, who attended last year’s visit, said he “cannot stand to see our community being violated, profiled, abused and ripped apart.”
This time, Hernández said his decision was rehab-related, but added that he “probably wouldn’t have gone.”
‘Los Doyers’ are close to fans’ hearts
The controversy is unfolding against the backdrop of the Dodgers’ long ties to communities of color, said Priscilla Leiva, a professor of Chicana/o and Latina/o Studies at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles who has researched the history of baseball, baseball stadiums and fan culture.
Many Mexican American fans call the team “Los Doyers,” Leiva said, and the Dodgers have become an integral part of the story of Los Angeles and Latino American culture.
Before moving from Brooklyn to L.A., the Dodgers broke baseball’s color barrier by signing Jackie Robinson. Upon moving west, the team knew it would need to cater to Southern California’s growing Latino market, Leiva said. It upped its Spanish language broadcasting, bringing on sportscaster Jaime Jarrín. In 1981, Fernando Valenzuela, a pitcher from Mexico, came to the team, launching “Fernandomania” and transforming the Dodgers’ fanbase into a majority Latino one.
“When you have a team so embedded into the identity of the city, it’s completely understandable to say that the Trump administration does not represent the type of city we want to be,” Leiva said. “Where would the Dodgers be without Latinos? .. It’s not a far-off statement (for Latino fans to think) their team is shaking hands with the oppressors.”
“It’s not about, ‘Do we like Trump or not?’” she said. “It’s the fact that L.A. is hurting. And who or what are the institutions who wield power in L.A., how are they helping to stop the bleeding in L.A.’s largest community?”
Protest set against ‘Boys in Blue’
The question of the Dodgers’ place in political discourse is not new. A year ago, some Latino fans also called out the team and its ownership.
In June 2025 as immigration raids intensified, officers reportedly came to Dodger Stadium and asked to use the parking lots. They were denied entry, the team confirmed on social media.
The Dodgers soon made a $1.1 million donation to two L.A.-based nonprofit groups to support families impacted by ICE, according to reports. Its carefully worded statement — to help “families of immigrants impacted by recent events” — was made after Latino fans and community leaders had pressured the team to take a stand condemning ICE and to show support for its heavily-immigrant fanbase.
Now, angry fans and advocates plan to demonstrate Saturday, July 18, in a rally organized by Highland Park Strong and other pro-immigrant groups. They’re calling on the team not to visit Trump.
“They all have free will, and they can choose not to go,” organizer Monica Alcaraz said. “Every player who goes to the White House is sending a very clear message that they don’t care about the community that supports them — that they are OK with the kidnappings, killings, and rapes of women and children at ICE detention centers.”
“They are OK with families being ripped apart. They are OK with this administration destroying our country, killing our people, and making it so hard to make a living.”
The protest is for all immigrants who come to the U.S. to seek the American Dream, she said.
“Many Major League Baseball players, including members of the Dodgers organization, were born outside the United States or come from immigrant families whose parents or grandparents sacrificed to build a better future,” she added.
“The Dodgers must stand with our communities,” Alcaraz said. “They must refuse the visit to the White House and publicly reject any attempt to normalize the attacks on immigrant communities … Words are no longer enough.”