Bridging the political divide: US and Canadian skaters hope sports can unify during worlds in Boston

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Bridging the political divide: US and Canadian skaters hope sports can unify during worlds in Boston

2025-03-25 00:53 Last Updated At：01:01

BOSTON (AP) — American ice dancers Madison Chock and Evan Bates always have been treated with such kindness and support from the people in their longtime training base in Montreal that Canada has become a second home for them.

Many of their closest friends are Canadian. They spend as much time there as they do in the United States.

None of that has changed, necessarily, despite the divisive rhetoric from government officials from both countries and tariff wars simmering between the longtime allies. Yet the two figure skaters have started to notice some other differences lately.

“We were at a cafe last weekend,” Chock said, “and Evan ordered a coffee — an Americano — and the barista delivered it and said, ‘Here’s your Canadien.' And we were like, ‘Oh. It’s an Americano, and they don't want to call it an Americano, for obvious reasons.'

“That was our first experience with that being reflected in Canada.”

Now, the reigning world champions are curious what will transpire this week in Boston, where they'll be trying to win their third straight title against a field that includes their dear friends and longtime rivals, Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier of Canada.

Will the American fans at TD Bank Garden support everyone universally, as is the custom in figure skating, when competition begins Wednesday? Or will there be more robust cheering than usual for Chock and Bates, and perhaps even some boos for their neighbors from the north, in what should be a preview of the 2026 Winter Olympics in Italy?

“America has always had a very global reach when it comes to politics and culture," Chock said, reflecting on that cafe encounter, "but we never really saw that truly reflected in her until that moment, when it was like, 'Oh, OK. I understand now.'”

World pairs champions Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Maxime Deschamps are just as uncertain what kind of reception they will get in Boston. Stellato-Dudek was born in the Chicago suburbs, but about three months ago she passed the exam to become a Canadian citizen, which was required for her to compete for that country at the Winter Olympics.

That plan was set in motion long before Donald Trump returned to the White House, when the notion of Canada becoming a 51st state seemed downright absurd and American liquor was still being stocked on the shelves of Canadian shops.

Stellato-Dudek twice finished third at the U.S. championships with Nathan Bartholomay before splitting in 2019, and that’s when she teamed up with Deschamps, who had separated from his American partner Sydney Kolodziej the previous year.

Stellato-Dudek and Deschamps considered skating for the U.S., but they were concerned he would not be granted American citizenship in time to compete at the Milano-Cortina Games; the Olympic Charter requires athletes to hold the nationality of the country represented by their National Olympic Committee in order to compete at the Summer or Winter Games.

“I did represent America for many years. I'm very proud to represent Canada. I'm now a Canadian citizen, which is the honor of my life,” Stellato-Dudek said. "And I have family that still lives in America that will be at an American worlds to come watch me. They are there to cheer me on, and I'm excited to skate for them.

“I think sports is one of the few things that bring people together from all different nationalities and all over the world,” Stellato-Dudek added, “and I hope this world championships does this for everybody as well.”

It promises to be an interesting test case given that the U.S. will be hosting — along with Canada and Mexico — the World Cup next year, and two years later, Los Angeles will be welcoming the world for the 2028 Summer Olympics.

Even newly elected International Olympic Committee president Kirsty Coventry, a former Zimbabwe swimmer who graduated from Auburn University, alluded to the challenges that could come with dealing with the Trump administration, whether that be due to trade wars, the war in Ukraine, diversity issues or a host of other potentially discordant viewpoints.

“I have been dealing with, let’s say difficult men in high positions since I was 20 years old," Coventry said after winning the IOC election in Costa Navarino, Greece. “What I have learned is that communication will be key.”

In the meantime, figure skaters headed to Boston this week are hoping to communicate that sports can be a unifying force.

“I mean, we've kind of gone about (that) sport isn't political. We've been raised that way,” said Gilles, who was born in Rockford, Illinois, but whose mother and grandmother are Canadian and who became a Canadian citizen herself 12 years ago.

“We're lucky to be able to skate in Canada and the U.S. and been welcomed on both soils,” she said. “We're kind of focused on our job, and let sport be sport, and not let it be political. We can't focus on what we can't control. We can control our skating and we can control that we're proud of our country and proud to represent our country in the U.S.”

AP sports: https://apnews.com/sports

Homeland Security Secretary Noem visits the El Salvador prison where deported Venezuelans are held

2025-03-27 11:06 Last Updated At：11:11

TECOLUCA, El Salvador (AP) — U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Wednesday visited the high-security El Salvador prison where Venezuelans who the Trump administration alleges are gang members have been held since their removal from the United States. The tour included two crowded cell blocks, the armory and an isolation unit.

Noem's trip to the prison — where inmates are packed into cells and never allowed outside — comes as the Trump administration seeks to show it is deporting people it describes as the “worst of the worst.”

The Trump administration is arguing in federal court that it was justified in sending the Venezuelans to El Salvador, while activists say officials have sent them to a prison rife with human rights abuses while presenting little evidence that they were part of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang.

Noem notably dodged questions by the press about if the Venezuelan deportees were going to be in the prison indefinitely and if the Venezuelans could ever be brought back to the U.S. if a court orders the administration to do so.

“We're going to let the courts play out,” she told reporters following the visit.

Noem toured an area holding some of the Venezuelans accused of being gang members. In the sweltering building, the men in white T-shirts and shorts stared silently from their cell, then were heard shouting an indiscernible chant when she left.

In a cell block holding Salvadoran prisoners, about a dozen were lined up by guards near the front of their cell and told to remove their T-shirts and face masks. The men were heavily tattooed, some bearing the letters MS, for the Mara Salvatrucha gang, on their chests.

After listening to Salvadoran officials, Noem turned her back to the cell and recorded a video message.

If an immigrant commits a crime, “this is one of the consequences you could face," Noem said. "First of all, do not come to our country illegally. You will be removed and you will be prosecuted. But know that this facility is one of the tools in our toolkit that we will use if you commit crimes against the American people.”

Noem also met with El Salvador President Nayib Bukele, a populist who has gained right-wing admiration in the U.S. due to his crackdown on the country's gangs, despite the democratic and due process implications that have come with it.

“This unprecedented relationship we have with El Salvador is going to be a model for other countries on how they can work with America,” Noem said to reporters Wednesday.

Since taking office, Noem has frequently been front and center in efforts to highlight the immigration crackdown. She took part in immigration enforcement operations, rode horses with Border Patrol agents and was the face of a television campaign warning people in the country illegally to self-deport.

Noem’s Wednesday visit is part of a three-day trip. She'll also travel to Colombia and Mexico.

The Venezuelans were removed from the U.S. this month after Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 and said the U.S. was being invaded by the Tren de Aragua gang. The Alien Enemies Act gives the president wartime powers and allows noncitizens to be deported without the opportunity to go before an immigration or federal court judge.

An appeals court Wednesday kept in place an order barring the administration from deporting more Venezuelan immigrants to El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act.

A central outstanding question about the deportees’ status is when and how they could ever be released from the prison, called the Terrorism Confinement Center, as they are not serving sentences. They no longer appear in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s online detainee locator and have not appeared before a judge in El Salvador.

The Trump administration refers to them as the “worst of the worst” but hasn't identified who was deported or provided evidence that they’re gang members.

Relatives of some of the deportees have categorically denied any gang affiliation. The Venezuelan government and a group called the Families of Immigrants Committee in Venezuela hired a lawyer to help free those held in El Salvador. A lawyer for the firm, which currently represents about 30 Venezuelans, said they aren't gang members and have no criminal records.

The U.S. government has acknowledged that many do not have such records.

Flights were in the air March 15 when a federal judge issued a verbal order temporarily barring the deportations and ordered planes to return to the U.S.

The Trump administration has argued that the judge’s verbal directions did not count, that only his written order needed to be followed and that it couldn’t apply to flights that had already left the U.S.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that about 261 people were deported on the flights, including 137 under the Alien Enemies Act.

Bukele opened the prison in 2023 as he made the Central American country’s stark, harsh prisons a trademark of his fight against crime. The facility has eight sprawling pavilions and can hold up to 40,000 inmates. Each cell can fit 65 to 70 prisoners.

Prisoners can't have visitors. There are no workshops or educational programs.

El Salvador hasn’t had diplomatic relations with Venezuela since 2019, so the Venezuelans imprisoned there do not have consular support from their government.

Video released by El Salvador’s government after the deportees' arrival showed men exiting airplanes onto an airport tarmac lined by officers in riot gear. The men, who had their hands and ankles shackled, struggled to walk as officers pushed their heads down.

They were later shown at the prison kneeling on the ground as their heads were shaved before they changed into the prison’s all-white uniform — knee-length shorts, T-shirt, socks and rubber clogs — and placed in cells.

For three years, El Salvador has been operating under a state of emergency that suspends fundamental rights as Bukele wages an all-out assault on the country's powerful street gangs. During that time, some 84,000 people have been arrested, accused of gang ties and jailed, often without due process.

Bukele offered to hold U.S. deportees in the prison when U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio visited in February.

At the prison Wednesday, El Salvador Justice Minister Gustavo Villatoro showed Noem a cell holding Salvadorans he said had been there since the prison opened. “No one expects that these people can go back to society and behave,” he said.

Santana reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Marcos Alemán in San Salvador, El Salvador, contributed to this report.