Pablo Torre Finds Out - The Goalie Who Went to Hell and Back

Episode Date: December 9, 2025

America disappeared an innocent man into a terrorist prison, for his Real Madrid tattoo. This is his story of survival — and resistance — from correspondent Paola Ramos.• Previously on PTFO: The Goalie Who Disappeared• Read "Defectors" by Paola Ramos Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to Pablo Torre finds out. I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is. Is this what you lived? Is this torture? Right after this ad. It is just like hard to look at the news and be like, is this going to end well? Mm-hmm. Can we get a happy ending?

The last time you were here, we ended with a bit of a brutal takeaway in which there was no guarantee that there was going to be a happy ending. Thank you, Palo Ramos, for being back with us. Always. You bring me for the sad stories. Well, this is the key part. You are not only our translator and reporter and expert on this story, having devoted so much of your life to the question of immigration and now this administration and Latin America, you're also somebody who brought to us the last time a prayer. This is the youth soccer team from Machigues.

Machiques is a small town in northwest Venezuela. It's right by the Venezuelan and Colombian border. And these are kids that are part of the youth soccer team. And they're under 12 years old. And they're part of this club called Perihannero, Perijanero Soccer Club. Number one, they're saying guide him, wherever he is. help free him, liberate him so he's free. And the hymn in question is their coach,

who's also himself a soccer player, which is why I believe you call this very appropriately, the goalie's prayer. This goalie that they're talking about is a pretty famous soccer player from Venezuela. He's from Primera Division, the first division, and a pretty notorious He's a juger of football in Venezuela.

And when you say liberate him, I mean, this brings us to the title of the last episode, The Goalie Who Disappeared. This goalie left Venezuela a couple of years ago to leave the Nicolas Maduro regime in Venezuela. The show of force and soaring tensions have Venezuela on edge. Its government have been holding military drills, as President Nicolas Maduro issued this message in English.

Not war, not war, not war. Just peace, just peace, just peace, just peace, forever, forever, forever. Nicolas Maduro is seen as a dictator. The UN Human Rights Council accused Venezuela of crimes against humanity, including torturing dissidents, sexual violence, and arbitrary killings. Mr. Maduro did not mention this in his speech. Venezuela is a place that has been full of political turmoil, very violent place.

Over 8 million people have left the country since 2015, and this goalie is part of it. of that trend. And so this goalie did what many of them did, which was look at the American dream and he went north. He went north believing that he had a chance at entering this country and at chasing that dream. And if you were to just look at this geopolitically from the big picture sense, that did sort of add up. Like Donald Trump's nemesis, actually his latest nemesis in this current news cycle, the one not named Jeffrey Epstein, is Nicholas Maduro. That's exactly right. the natural resources. He even recorded a message to you in English recently, offering mediation.

He's offered everything. You're right. You know why? Because he doesn't want to f***ing around with the United States. Thank you, everybody. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And so the goalie in question, the coach in question who winds up disappearing, where did he get to in terms of the United States itself? He makes it to the southern border. He actually crosses legally, right? He goes through the whole process. Yes. And like many of them do, through this. legal process, he ends up at an ICE detention center in California. And then he ends up going through a process that has become very familiar under the Trump administration, which is they are sent to different detention centers across the country from California. He goes to Texas. And then suddenly,

March 16th, 2025, no one knows where this soccer player is. He is disappeared. Family doesn't know where he is in Venezuela. His own lawyer. doesn't know where he is. He himself doesn't know where he's going. His sister, just like the tape we have from her in the last episode we did. She's amazing. It is heartbreaking. I love you.

Dersi says, back to his daughter. I love you too. And then he says, I don't have much time to talk. Just so people understand, this is a guy with two daughters, with family members that he had to leave behind. No criminal record in case anyone was wondering, this is a character that from a sports angle and from just a human rights angle

is somebody that we wanted to really invest our time into understanding. He is one of those Venezuelans that ends up in this terrorist prison center. This notorious maximum security prison in El Salvador. Which I think now millions of people know this name, no? Secoat. Secoat was built in 2023. It's got metal bunks, no shale. sheets, no pillows, mattresses, it's got open toilets.

This goalie, this soccer player, ends up there in this place that has a nickname, actually. The nickname is just to spell it out. It's hell, El Inferno. No one knows what happens inside that place. It's a place where they typically place criminals. They're cut out off from the outside world. There are reports of just dismal, horrific conditions, torture, and death. Our own U.S. State Department.

describe these conditions as life-threatening. So our goalie disappears only to wind up in hell. And his name... His name is Jerser Reyes. We started off with bad news, but there is good news. After all, Pablo. Gerser went to hell. He went to the inferno, but he's back, and we actually found him.

So I just need to clarify that we have been working on this episode basically since May. ever since we published that initial investigation into what really happened to a professional soccer goalie and youth soccer coach named Hersey Reyes, and how Hersey's Real Madrid tattoo, which we'll explain in a minute year, got him disappeared by the U.S. government. But just to be extraordinarily clear, Hersey is a completely innocent man who had been imprisoned in his home country of Venezuela for protesting their autocratic president, Nicholas Maduro. And then Hersey got imprisoned in a Salvadoran prison camp by us. The United States. You know, the country where Hersey was legally seeking asylum.

But you should also know that when we started reporting this story, we had zero idea that President Trump would also be threatening war against Venezuela this month. And that a bipartisan group of lawmakers would be, simultaneously questioning his defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, about whether the second strike of an alleged drugboat off the coast of Venezuela this fall constituted a war crime. But what I did presume was that FIFA, soccer's global governing body, would award its first ever, quote-unquote, peace prize to Donald Trump last week,

in Washington, D.C., with various Real Madrid stars watching. at the 26th World Cup draw. Please welcome the very first winner of the FIFA Peace Prize, the 45th and 47 President of the United States of America, Mr. Donald J. Trump. All of which is to say that as we now assess this layer cake of sports and human rights abuses and outright political corruption, it does seem clear that Hersey-Raea, is absolutely the story that we needed to finish reporting for you this week. And the reason we can establish that is because in July, you, Paula,

and we hear Pablatori finds out, actually we helped break the news of a prisoner swap. And our world lead, good news. The Trump administration has successfully completed a large-scale prisoner swap with Venezuela, securing the release of 10 Americans that the Trump administration says, were being wrongfully detained in Venezuela. This involves hundreds of prisoners, including Venezuelans deported from the U.S., who were being held in El Salvador.

How did you find out that Hersey was actually part of Donald Trump's big deal, this big trade that he made, such that our goalie would be among the more than 250 Venezuelan migrants freed by El Salvador? We had heard rumors that there was going to be this prisoner swamp, that people were sort of in the midst of flying towards Venezuela. Through that, Gerse's own lawyer confirmed that he was part of that. Gerses' own sister, Jorgelis, had also heard rumors from the ground.

But again, none of this was confirmed. And I think because everything was such a nightmare, because those three months have been completely marked by uncertainty. And his sister believed that he was part of that plane. But like she told me, she could not believe it until she saw her brother in real flesh standing in front of her. And so this brings us to just last month when you had just gotten back

from the southern border of the United States on a reporting trip. And you get on Zoom for us. But, well, and becements. And before that you are, finally, seeing the face of this guy we've been talking about and reporting on.

In my sense, you know, you know, that's a day, can be in case. We've been talking about this, goalie, the soccer player for months at this point. And Gersa is back in Matikis, where he's from.

He was in his home. He feels good, but you can tell that this is someone that has gone through a lot of trauma. He told me himself that he has had to see a psychologist, that it has been difficult, almost that people have stopped asking him about how he's doing. But what was interesting is that

Gerse wanted to talk. It's almost like he wanted to relive this whole nightmare. Right. I mean, his family, what is their sort of approach to him? I mean, his mom, his dad, their son is back. That's good and complicated at the same time, right? It's good because they're celebrating his return. His dad has been ill.

His dad has always had a problem with his eyes, with his vision. And that is one of the reasons why Gertes actually leaves Venezuela months ago, right? One of the things that drives Gerse to leave his hometown is that he wants to help his father have the medication and the money that he means to get better. So that's what drives Gerza to leave. He obviously was never able to realize that dream. And so life is back to normal in Venezuela that is still going through a lot of the same problems that forced him to leave in the first place. And just the way that the Department of Homeland Security detained him, the reason they stated and went back and forth with us about, it does involve social media.

And his social media, just in case people had not scrolled through it, it reminds you of like a corny dad as a corny dad these days myself. Completely. I mean, if you look at his Instagram, it's literally like countless photos of him playing soccer, doing what he loves, and him being a father, like the cutest father to two young girls. Right.

But what the Assistant Secretary for Homeland Security tells us is, quote, he has tattoos that are consistent with, with those indicating TDA gang membership. As you know, TDA stands for Trin de Rawa, this word that has now become Donald Trump's favorite word. Trende Aragua. Trendi Aragua. Trendi Aragua.

Trendi Aragua. Yes, this brand that has been sold to America to justify so much of what we've been seeing. And by the way, not seeing, just being told about. But the tattoo that the assistant secretary for Homeland Security was referencing, the one that got an innocent immigrant to the U.S. abducted, the one that got him sent to hell in El Salvador. He showed it to me. So he's pointing to his left forearm, and he's showing the illustration, the infamous illustration. Exactly. He's showing the crown.

He's talking about the soccer ball. He explains once again that for him soccer is life. And that his favorite team is the Real Madrid. The dude's a sports fan. He's a fan who played professional soccer himself. He is. And that's not the only tattoo that he has. He has 17 tattoos.

He has other sports tattoos. He also has many tattoos about his own family. And I asked him, I said, did anyone ever interrogate you in the U.S. and ask you, what is that tattoo? Right? Like, were you ever confronted? And he said yes. So, Jaze gets to this detention center in Texas.

He's there for three days. And finally, he's interrogated by this U.S. official, an inspector, as he tells me, this inspector. There is where me interrogate an inspector. The inspector. basically tells him that one of his tattoos is related to a gang. Herce said, ask him which one.

The one with the crown. This is what the inspector says. And Perse says, this does not represent any gang in his country. But then the inspector says what I think has now become the familiar sentence in Trump's America. For us here in America,

you are a gang member. And he says, you are a danger for the society. And what that literally means, Pablo, is that he tells Jersay, that he is a danger to society. I think it's just really important for us to make clear that, like, the markers of sports fandom

ended up being something that stripped an innocent man of his freedom. And that should be relatable to any American. That must and should be scary on some real level. But what did Hersey then say about what actually happened next? What happens after, that interrogation is basically the beginning of the nightmare.

Gerser literally disappears March 16th, 2025. That day, he is placed in an airplane. Gerser remembers that he is literally surrounded by ICE, by D.A., FBI. He tells me that there's sort of tear gas. Everything seems kind of violent around him. He asks officers. Where are we going? Because again, Gerse has no idea.

The officers tell him, and I'm talking about the U.S. officials, they tell him that he's going to Venezuela. I don't think. I said, me, look at my companion to be a lot. Gerseh tells me that he had this instinct where he knew in that moment that actually he wasn't going to go to Venezuela. He didn't know where he was going,

but he knew he had this deep feeling inside him, that it wasn't going to be Venezuela. Nice thing he knows. he's inside this plane. The plane suddenly stops. They end up doing this layover in Honduras. The plane takes off again. Suddenly the plane lands in Salvador's International Airport.

In that moment, when they land, he holds onto his seabelt. He grabs his seabult because he doesn't want to get off. Why? Seqot. He knows that he is a naive Buechel is El Salvador. He knows that Seqot is not too far away. from where they are, and he knows what awaits. Watching the news from my vantage point,

it was very clear that naive Buckele was the world's coolest dictator, as he had in his Twitter bio at one point. This guy Buckele is now Trump's closest buddy. And Buckele deliberately was like trying to go viral on the internet. There was a series of videos, but there was just one of them that I remember because of it's like action movie-style soundtrack.

I mean, you're seeing, again, These uniformed military officers, vaguely police, also soldiers, just escorting men with their heads down in chains off of these airplanes. What happens to Hersey after they land is literally a version of that video. The moment he lands, literally the guards tell him, which they say, which literally means welcome to El Salvador, you son of a bitch. Harrisay's family, I want to always like swing the camera back to them because they didn't know where he was at all. They also saw this footage on the news.

The same footage released by Buckele and the Salvadoran government. What you're getting is this footage of these guys being shaved, they're on their hands and knees, they're all now dressed identically, these white t-shirts, their hands are behind their head. And Hersey's family is just pouring over this footage. One of the ways in which Gerst's family is able to confirm that he was in fact

part of that group of Venezuelans that were abducted and disappeared and now taking to Segoog is because they zoom into some of those images that Naïbe Bukal is releasing. They first kind of see this guy that has a Michael Jordan tattoo. Yeah, the Jumpman logo, the Air Jordan logo

that is all over, you know, all the sneakers you see in the NBA, but also one PowerPoint slide released by the Texas Governor's Office, which identifies, yes, the Air Jordan logo itself as yet another marker of gang affiliation. But then they look behind him and they see that there's this guy

that also has his head shaved, but they see that the thumb looks like Gherse's thumb. Right? And his sister and his mom know that his his thumb, I guess, is a certain way. A gole's thumb is a particular digit. And that is what makes them realize that their son, their brother,

their loved one is in fact inside of Sikot. Which ends up being something, by the way, that Hersey, to us in this interview you did, establishes, yes, that is in fact definitely me. And when I asked him to confirm that, he even got a little bit emotional. I think, again, going back to that time and seeing the way that he was treated,

kneeling down in that way, you could tell, no, that it was hard for him to relive that moment. What happens after that specific moment? So they get there. They shave their heads. And everyone is sort of sent to their cells. But what I think Gerser is always reminding me is that the guards around him kept telling him,

which literally means welcome to hell on earth. And so I think there was always this understanding that they were never going to leave that place, right? That they were to be treated like terrorists, that were going to die. Yeah, once you remember that so many of these guys, are not criminals at all. They're like soccer coaches and hairdressers

and normal people, people that we should relate to as innocent civilians, some of whom, by the way, their crime allegedly was protest, protesting against an authoritarian government, the Maduro regime in Venezuela. It just makes me wonder,

like, what does that actually sound like? What is that seen as they're being told, actually, you're going to be treated like you're a terrorist now? What he told me is that he remembers the sound of people yelling around him. Screaming, even some people fainting. I think it was very evidence as he was speaking that he saw a lot of things, right?

A lot of dark things. People being beat up. He said that at least once or twice a week and there was a lot of violence. He too was hit by several officials and several of the guards inside there. And I asked him, point blank. Is this what you lived? is this torture? Tortura?

Yes. Tortura. Literally a torture. And he said yes. That it was this physical, physical violence, but it was also psychological violence. And this is something that is backed up by reporting from Human Rights Watch, which points out that these men from Venezuela, quote, were subjected to constant beatings.

I think beyond that, right? I think they tried to make. their lives as difficult as possible, and in kind of the weirdest ways, right? So one of the things that he kept talking about was that they wouldn't let them shower until 4.30 in the morning. They could only take showers at 4.30 in the morning. If it was any time before that, the guards would beat them. Yeah, I mean, this is seemingly designed to emotionally and physically, psychologically,

just destroy an innocent person. I see even ended up in what was known as La Isla, the island, which was the solitary confinement. And so he even had an experience inside that place himself. He was stuck for about six hours. Obviously, he didn't talk to anyone. It was small. And there are reports of other detainees that ended up in similar situations. And reports have even said that some people were sexually assaulted.

I asked Hersey if he knew anything about them. He said, he said, he said, no, but he did tell me, though, and I thought this was interesting, that no one knew, no one knows what happened inside that Isla, that solitary confinement. I'm imagining just like having kids. He has daughters.

Again, he has people that are so worried. And based on what he is describing, which again is validated separately, with the experiences of others by Human Rights Watch, those loved ones were right to be deeply disturbed and horrified and constantly checking in, like, how can we get him out? And meanwhile, Hersey, in his head, where does he turn to as all of that is happening? I thought much in my daughters.

In Carla, Isabella. In Carla Isabella. He thinks about his daughters, but then he also thinks, about soccer. And he told me that he had this stream. I always always was a little bit of my his iret and when I was to have a ball, he had this stream of a soccer field and where he saw himself and he once again

re-envisioned himself playing again. He thinks about this soccer field, not when he has these visions of himself in the soccer field, but also with his daughters, giving hugs to his daughters. Yeah, and the thing that I'm imagining, as I hear Hersey say that, is I'm imagining those kids in that video that we started with, the kids who were praying. While they are sending that image out into the universe,

their coach is kind of doing the same thing. But then there's one thing that really, really, I think, gets him going. And that is that at some point, along the journey, inside of that hell, someone tells Gersey that the world is watching, right? And someone tells him that there was someone that looked like his sister, Yorgelis, that kept advocating for Jersi from the outside. And so even when he explains it, he's going to, you know, you can tell how excited, no, he was when so many of the detainees that were locked up

that had absolutely no contact with the outside world suddenly understand that the entire world is talking about these Venezuelans detainees inside Naibuke les secote. And then it's very evident. Herzeg says that that gave him enough energy to understand that one day he could leave that prison. That was the hope he needed to hold on to something. I always want to be mindful of when I am over. dramatizing something. But I read these reports by Human Rights Watch, Paula, and I'll just quote it,

in early April, the Venezuelans carried out a protest after guards beat up a fellow inmate and sprayed pepper spray in his mouth. The detainee fainted, but some detainees thought that the detainee, who they said had asthma, was dead, which is to say that, okay, shit, like, they're trying. There's resistance. There's resistance. Exactly. And I think that's, that was amazing to to hear that directly from Gerser, right? That even in the midst of these horrendous conditions where literally your life is at risk, like people resisted. And so Gerset talks about this hunger strike.

But then he also talks about this day in which some of the detainees tried to escape. He wasn't one of them. I think he was too scared. He remembers that day, particularly because of the way that the guards reacted, right? There was so much violence. He remembers that.

Apparently, The guards started shooting at everyone with their shotguns. I was scared. I was a lot of I got her bill. And Dersi says that they shot at him as well. But that it was a horrible day and he didn't know how it was going to end up. That's in April. Protests continue into early May.

And now we're in July. This is when we get word of the aforementioned prisoner swap. But Hersey, how does. Hersey find out. How is he now realizing, oh my God, I'm actually getting out of hell after four months of it? So remember when I told you that, typically the guys showered at 4.30 a.m., right? Not before, not after, but exactly at 4.30 a.m. But there's this one night where at 2 a.m., the guards yell. And they tell all the detainees, they say, attention, attention, population.

Attention, which literally means attention, attention, people. you guys have 20 minutes to bathe Gerser remembers that vividly because he knew that that that had to mean something that something was going on enough for them to be allowed to shower 2 a.m. Not only that they get shampoo that day, they get shaving cream, they get toothpaste.

So again, like Gerteser has a feeling that maybe they'll get out. Right, the signal is suddenly they care about how they actually might present to the outside world. Exactly. And he told me, That's what they kept telling themselves, which literally means like something is up,

something's weird, something's going on. What were horrifying, haunting screams when they enter this place, there must be a different emotional sort of tenor as all of this is happening out among the general population of this prison. He says that that was the best shower of his life. His 2 a.m. shampoo shower.

That was it. And when he talks about it, he gets goosebumps to this day. And when do they officially get told that they're about to be free? So they're not necessarily told that they'll be free, but they're placed in this bus, which means that they're leaving, Sikod, finally. So they put a bunch of detainees in this bus. And what Gersa tells me is that in the moment

when they are finally out of this terrorist prison cell, when they're sitting down in this bus, he looks around his group. And they all make a pledge. And they tell themselves, they promise themselves that no matter what, no matter what happens, no matter where they go,

no matter what the guards do, that they will not go back inside Segoat. And that is what they say, that they would rather lose their lives than going back to this terrorist prison cell. They're waiting on this bus. They go into El Salvador's, International Airport.

They're waiting around. And then finally, this guard walks up to the detainees and says the words that to this day, Hersi remembers vividly. Nothing. And then so we're going back to Venezuela. You're going home. We're going home. And so this is where the two timelines, the inside world of Sikata and the outside world

that we've been talking about that have been like sort of trying to interact with each other through these walls. they actually finally get to connect and they intersect because the plane lands, Harris Day gets on this bus, and the bus finally makes its way back to his hometown, this small town in Venezuela, Marikis, where he is not this terrorist and this anonymous guy with his head shaved

behind the dude with the Air Jordan tattoo on his neck with his own terrorist marker, allegedly, on his forearm. He's back to where he gets to be. his actual self, this soccer coach, this soccer player. And the video that gets posted on Twitter is where my mind kind of started melting because he was home. I mean, this is like, you know, this is Diego Madadona. Literally, yeah.

Just like the idol is returned. Yeah, I mean, after being called a terrorist and a gang member and to be then received as a hero. This is like a Taylor Swift level number of phones with like their flag. Flashlights all out. He's hugging people. He's just like he's immediately welcomed back a hero. Yeah, and what's beautiful is that Gerse hadn't really seen that footage in those images before. And so we watched it together.

And he was very emotional. He was even crying. It's still overwhelming for him to understand. To understand what maybe he couldn't really see inside that cell, right, which is that people. people love him and that people were waiting for him. And like he says, he is everything that Donald Trump doesn't want him to be. He is a hero.

Yeah, it's just yet another sports story, another story of an innocent man that this administration wishes people never actually heard. So this has been a very human on the ground story so far, but it is worth pointing out that there is a series of actual. legal claims here being made about the treatment of these innocent men at Seacot. And the international condemnation we were referring to the world watching has sort of culminated with this organization called the League of United Land American Citizens. And we are told that they are filing claims for damages for unlawful detention, physical and psychological, as you were explaining before, under the Federal Tort Claim Act on behalf of the detainees.

And we're also told that this case might come before the Inter-American Commission on human rights, which is, again, one hell of a place to escalate to because of a soccer tattoo. Because of someone's drive to find an American dream. Yes. Hersey wanted to become an American. And the question is, does he think that was a mistake? Like, how does Hersey feel about the United States, which she was only in for so long before he got disappeared to hell? I mean, I was so curious about that question. question, right? Because the core of all these immigration stories

has always been about going north. I mean, generations of immigrants like him have always, always, always left their countries to seek that American Dream North. And they asked him, is it worth it? Would you do it again? He said no. He said, it is not worth it. No valet la pen.

And one of the things is that a lot of people in his small town, a lot of those young soccer players that we heard, a lot of the kids that are praying for Gersa every day. Like, it is very typical for them to also leave, to do what Gersa did, which is to leave their small town and seek that dream elsewhere. And Gersa's advice to those kids is to stay. To try and find whatever you were looking for in the U.S.

inside your own local teams and your local towns and to stick to your roots. And it is worth pointing out here that Donald Trump, simultaneously as this story is still unfolding, is bringing the World Cup to the United States. Hersey always wanted to go there, by the way. I mean, of course. Of course, of course. But Hersey now has this position of being hopefully someone that people beyond our audience will listen to, especially on immigration. And he says what about people who might want to visit the country because they're also enormous diehard soccer fans?

Sadly, he's telling people to not come. He sees the potential of these ice rates taking place around the World Cup. He sees the potential of people that look just like him, right? These brown people with sports tattoos that can be racially profiled and can perhaps end up disappeared.

And so his advice is, don't come, don't go to the World Cup. I mean, how sad is that? This is not the happy ending that I think We were promised when we started this. No, but I promised you a good ending, though. So how did the rest of Hersey's interview with you go? So you know how it ended? It ended because he had to go to practice.

It ended because... Hersey had a heart out. Like any good podcast guest, he's like, I got to get out by this time. He had to leave, but he had to leave for the best reason, which is that Gersey is back doing what he loves to do, which is playing soccer, but coach. He's back at Perihannero Football Club, coaching those kids that we heard at the beginning of the show,

the very same kids that were praying for him, that were thinking about him when he was disappeared for all those months. And the kids never forgot him. The video of their reunion, when they're like hanging off of him like a koala, you know, just like clinging to him. All of these hugs that we're seeing in that video, on this soccer field that Hersey had been dreaming about

while he was at Seekot. It's not the dream he wanted. It's not the American dream. that he was hoping for, but it is one that actually did ultimately come true. So now his big dream is to open his own goalie school. And that's literally what he's focused on, right? Like, that's all he wants to do,

to give those kids a new goalie school. Yeah, he wants to raise another generation of goalies, of heresais. And those kids, by the way, like the future of Venezuela, this country that is once again in the news cycle, in the American context, how do they talk about this stuff? Like, do they know what happened? So I don't think they do, right? Like, I think the big picture, like, they don't really know what in who Naibo

is. They don't really know what Segot is. But what they do know is that their favorite soccer player, this goalie, went through literally hell because of a tattoo, because of a Real Madrid tattoo. And so Jese was telling me that that is kind of the number one question that the kids have, right? Like, did all of this really happen to you because of this? sports tattoo.

It sounds like what Hersey's also raising is another generation of frontrunners of Real Madrid fans. Oh yeah, that's not gone anywhere. I mean, it was to the point that when Gerze is finally back, when he comes back to his hometown, they literally have a Real Madrid-themed party for him as a welcoming party. I mean, that's how much they love Real Madrid in this town. Yeah, I mean, these are two like columns of young kids in their soccer uniforms and their cleats holding these white balloons, wearing these blue jerseys. And, I guess to, yeah, walk through and high five.

Literally everybody. I know, they love him. I mean, look at the way that they're looking at him with, like, so much pride. Yes. Like, they want to be like him. Absolutely. Finally, the goalkeeper gets a soccer ball in between both hands, and he gets to hold that as the last image in that video.

But I also understand, Palau, that this was not the last thing that Hersey wanted to communicate. Oh, no, it gets even better, I told you. He, uh, believe it or not, he wants another Real Madrid tattoo. And he's got to realize to make the real estate of Real Madrid in this part of glass. A little, where? In this part of it. So, one of the questions I had for him is, after everything you want, went through, right? Like, after everything you lived, do you regret this Real Madrid tattoo?

Like, would you do it again? Would you erase it? And he said that he has no regrets at all. In fact, the opposite, right? That he did nothing wrong, that all of this happened to him simply because of his love, his genuine love for this soccer team. And that that's nothing to be ashamed of. He feels no shame. He knows that that tattoo does not make him a criminal. And so he wants to kind of redefine that and get more, get another Rana'anita tattoo.

You know, the subtext of this entire conversation is who gets to look like one of the good ones? Who gets to look like someone that America would welcome? Who looks to look like an innocent man? And we have seen this administration and all of these allegedly cool dictators use sports to pervert sports itself. And so, yeah, Hersey at the end saying, fuck you. And in fact, I'm even more of a sports fan,

a Real Madrid supporter, a pro athlete, a coach, than you even thought, is a form of genuine resistance that I just am so hardened to see him embrace. Part of the story is that you have these administrations that thought that they could criminalize, these sports tattoos and these athletes. And now the real story is that DIRSA really proves that the survival instinct of an athlete, that resilience that he showed inside of Segoat,

that resilience that he showed that he was able to envision hope, I imagine, I'm not one, but I imagine that that is what an athlete does, know that when it feels like you're about to lose or when it feels like the game is going to go the other way, somehow you understand you got to keep going. So we started with one Real Madrid tattoo that got him to hell. And now we end with the second Real Madrid tattoo that gets him where? To freedom.

This has been Pablo Torre finds out a Metal Arc Media production. And I'll talk to you next time.