Trump’s Travel Ban Could Impact Sudanese Players Attending American High Schools

Deng Gak plans to return to his home in Australia over spring break at Blair (N.J.) Academy in March, but as someone who is Sudanese he needs to know exactly how the new Trump travel ban will impact him.

“I’m going to do my due diligence before I put him on a plane at spring break, I can tell you that,” Blair Academy coach Joe Mantegna said Monday by phone. “I think he’s going to probably go back home. We have a three-week spring break in March. So I think the chances are he’ll probably go back home then. He did last year.”

President Donald Trump’s executive order banning immigration from seven predominantly Muslim countries, including Sudan but excluding South Sudan, for 90 days has raised many questions about how it will impact those in professional sports, but it also has implications for those at the prep level, too.

“Of course there’s implications with a kid like that when you tell his family that you’re going to take care of him and then you’re not sure,” Mantegna said of Gak. “The laws change out from underneath you.”