The San Diego Padres\u2019 minor league catching coordinator was detained on Sunday at a Texas airport by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to his family.<\/p>\n
Oswaldo Pirela, 34, was traveling back home to Arizona from El Paso after a work trip when he was taken into custody by federal agents. According to his family, he is a Venezuelan asylum seeker with an ongoing case who has been living in the U.S. since 2014 and has an active work permit.<\/p>\n
Pirela is being held in a detention center in El Paso, and his family said a hearing is expected next week.<\/p>\n
ICE officials did not respond to a request for comment Monday about the reason behind his detention. The Padres\u2019 top minor league affiliate is located in El Paso; the Chihuahuas played at home all last week.<\/p>\n
The Padres said in a statement Monday that the organization was aware of Pirela\u2019s detention: \u201cWe are working to gather additional information and will not have any further comment at this time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Over the past few weeks, there have been reports of ICE arrests at airports in several states. Knowing this, Pirela and his family came up with a routine: He would check in with them every time he left or arrived on a flight, so his family could feel at ease since he travels often for work.<\/p>\n
Still, Naivy Dominguez, Pirela\u2019s mother, said they never thought he would actually be targeted.<\/p>\n
On Sunday morning, his family became worried when he didn\u2019t respond to their text messages. They soon learned that he had been detained.<\/p>\n
\u201cI felt horrible,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Dom\u00ednguez described her son as \u201cextremely responsible, loved by his family and friends.\u201d He is the father of two young U.S. citizen girls.<\/p>\n
Pirela was born in Barquisimeto, a city of 1.2 million people located in the state of Lara in the northwest part of the country. A catcher and first baseman in the Texas Rangers organization, Pirela joined the Padres\u2019 minor-league coaching ranks in 2024, serving as bench coach for the Lake Elsinore Storm, the team\u2019s Low Single-A affiliate.<\/p>\n
Pirela is based in Arizona, where the Padres hold spring training and ongoing minor league workouts throughout the season.<\/p>\n
Staff writer Kevin Acee contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The San Diego Padres\u2019 minor league catching coordinator was detained on Sunday at a Texas airport by U.S.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":782130,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2407],"tags":[5,2178,21146,853,1358,4,43,137,12282,18,4339,4338,185,3546],"class_list":["post-782129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego-padres","tag-baseball","tag-california","tag-immigration","tag-latest-headlines","tag-local-news","tag-mlb","tag-padres","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-county","tag-san-diego-padres","tag-sandiego","tag-sandiegopadres","tag-sports","tag-top-stories-sdut"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/117117655657625684","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/782129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=782129"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/782129\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/782130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=782129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=782129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=782129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}