ESYDA
Fofo
Agbegnigan Amouzou, a resident of the U.S. for 20 years, has a wife and a son, works with special needs children in Prince George’s County public schools, and runs a local soccer academy.
Often sports is just a leisure activity: a pleasant escape from the most burdensome pressures produced by this world. Sometimes it is a foghorn of reactionary refuse, spewing pro-war propaganda or advocating corporate welfare in the guise of stadium spending.
We have also seen sports be a platform for athletes willing to speak out stirringly for social justice. And there are times when sports can play a role in galvanizing an entire community to fight against evil and right a political wrong.
This happened recently in suburban Maryland—Montgomery and Prince George’s Counties—when efforts by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to deport a beloved local soccer coach to the small West African nation of Togo resulted in petitions, protest rallies, and even a soccer game. In the end, it became a remarkable example for the entire country that ICE can be beaten back.
The coach is Agbegnigan Amouzou, known locally as “Coach Fofo.” He has been in this country for more than twenty years. He has a wife and a son. He works with special needs children in Prince George’s County public schools. In addition, he runs a soccer school—the Elite Soccer Youth Development Academy in Silver Spring—for young people throughout the region, where they focus on schoolwork and healthy social interactions as much as soccer.
Coach Fofo actually lives up to the cliché “a pillar in his community.” He has been seeking asylum for years, without success, although he faces physical harm if he were to return to Togo due to his criticisms of the country’s authoritarian leadership. (Mass protests in Togo in 2017 were ruthlessly crushed.)
Even though Coach Fofo was left without formal asylum status, he had been allowed to stay in the country as long as he checked in with immigration officials on a regular basis. But when ICE—due to new regulations handed down from the Trump Administration—was ready to send Coach Fofo back to Togo, the community leapt into action. Friends and neighbors who had not necessarily seen themselves as “politically active” changed their posture dramatically.
The story is a stirring example of how sports can unite a community and provide a way for people to not feel so beaten down and helpless in the age of Trump.
As Silver Spring resident Michele Bellis said to me, “We all know what Coach Fofo means to our area. This is a community with a huge immigrant population from West African countries and El Salvador, and also a large, more affluent white population. Coach Fofo has bridged these communities through the power of soccer and through his own amazing ability to preach teamwork and reach children. We knew that we needed to do something. Losing Coach Fofo was for us simply not an option.”
And so Bellis and others demonstrated, raised money, and signed petitions. They were able to hold a community soccer game that was aimed at raising awareness about his case. The soccer game also served as an organizing event, drawing new people into the struggle. The petitions—many handed out at the game—garnered hundreds of signatures and prompted local politicians in the area to call for any deportation to be halted.
When the dust had cleared, ICE granted Coach Fofo a six-month reprieve.
“We owe this victory to the power of people’s mobilization,” says Ingrid Zelaya-Ascencio, a communications specialist with CASA, a civil and immigrant rights organization based in Langley Park, Maryland. “When community members work together we achieve great things.”
Of course, the fight is not over. “Coach Fofo still faces imminent deportation,” she says. “CASA will continue to argue as strong a case as possible to allow the beloved soccer coach to remain in the United States alongside his wife and teenage son ahead of his newly rescheduled ICE check-in on October 28, 2019.”
But, in the short term, the story is a stirring example of the way that sports can unite a community, raise the profile of a tremendous coach, and provide an opportunity for people to not feel so beaten down and helpless in the age of Trump. It’s a story that should be known nationally, and replicated.