Striker Ricardo Osuna, 17, who just graduated from Galax High and whose father is Mexican, says the Galax community is open and welcoming. But the opposing teams? Not so much.
“When we played, there was a bunch of racism,” he says. “Like, ‘Oh, wetbacks, get outta here!’ Once I got a yellow card, and they were like, ‘Hey ref, give him a green one, he probably needs it!’ Everybody was really mad about it.”
The Latino soccer players have powered the Galax team to four state championships in the last five years. The champion team is celebrated with a triumphant victory parade through town, escorted by fire trucks and police cars.
From this story, a classic piece of music emerged. The family, fleeing religious persecution in Russia in 1893, was soon reunited and allowed to enter the country. And that little boy, born Israel Beilin, would grow up to become Irving Berlin. Twenty-five years after emigrating, the same year he became an American citizen, he composed “God Bless America.”
INDIANAPOLIS — Companies and local governments have proposed building new immigration detention centers in Minnesota, Michigan, Illinois and Indiana, responding to a request from Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials stepping up arrests in the center of the country.
Hundreds of activists gathered in at the Monroe County courthouse Saturday as part of a national movement to condemn the Trump administration’s 
