Basketball Trafficking

Stolen Black Panamanian Dreams
Tito is a Black Panamanian teenager with dreams of playing in the NBA. When a private high school in Texas recruits him under the guise of an athletic scholarship, he believes hes one step closer. Instead, he becomes entangled in a system that exploits young Black athletes through the F-1 Student Visa program. In Basketball Trafficking, Javier Wallace follows Titos journey from international tournaments and high school to his near deportation, exposing the underbelly of the basketball pipeline that stretches across borders. Wallace situates Titos experience within a broader framework of anti-Blackness, labor exploitation, and the unchecked power of the NCAA and US immigration system. Titos story is more than a sports story – it is an urgent account of the policing and manipulation of Black male athletic labor for institutional profit. Prompting readers to consider how the global athletic industria