North Carolina

Brother Soccer Stars Hold onto Dream After Deportation

"I spent a long time fighting for something — something I deserved. And they took it away from me," said Lizandro Claros Saravia, 19.

In just five days, Diego and Lizandro Claros Saravia went from being promising soccer players with college aspirations to deportees sent to one of the most dangerous countries on earth.

On Aug. 2, 2017 — despite a campaign by their family, coaches and teammates in suburban Maryland, where they'd attended high school — the brothers were put on a plane back to El Salvador, saying goodbye to the place they had called home for nearly a decade, NBC News reported.

“I felt very sad and devastated because I spent a long time fighting for something — something I deserved. And they took it away from me," Lizandro Claros, 19, said recently in Spanish, referring to the scholarship he'd won to Louisburg College in North Carolina shortly before being deported.

Their lawyer called it the fastest deportation he’d ever witnessed.

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