arrival

This is the weekend high school track and field takes center stage in Southern California. Quincy Wilson, who won a gold medal at the age of 16 at the 2024 Olympic Games, is coming from Maryland to compete in the 400 and two relays at the Arcadia Invitational at Arcadia High on Saturday.

“I’m so fired up,” Servite coach Brandon Thomas said.

And Thomas isn’t running.

Servite’s 4×100 and 4×400 relay teams will have to deal with Bullis High and Wilson running the anchor leg in races that should have fans standing on their feet while listening to the oohs and aahs.

“From a competitive standpoint, they’re excited to compete against the country’s best,” Thomas said.

Servite’s 4×100 relay team sent a message on Saturday, becoming the first to break 40 seconds in California history, winning in 39.82 at Trabuco Hills.

It’s all a perfect setup, from the atmosphere to the stiff competition, to prepare for next month’s section and state championships.

There’s two Loyola High athletes, sprinter Zion Phelps and 400 runner Ejam Yohannes, who hope to use Arcadia as a springboard to continue their early success this season.

Zion Phelps of Loyola edges Emmanuel Pullins of Sherman Oaks Notre Dame in the 100 meters on Tuesday, winning in 10.56 seconds. Pullins rans 10.59.

(Craig Weston)

Phelps is in his first year of track after being a defensive back and receiver for the football team. He and Loyola’s new coach, Sharaud Moore, were having conversions during the fall.

“He swore up and down he was the fastest kid in the school,” Moore said. “Yeah, put your money where your mouth is.”

Said Phelps: “I told him, ‘Just wait.’ I knew I had that speed and wanted to prove it.”

He ran a wind-aided 100-meter time of 10.39 seconds this spring. Last week in a Mission League dual meet against Sherman Oaks Notre Dame, he won with a time of 10.56.

Said Moore: “I was his harshest critic on the field.“We’re going back and forth and he was right. He’s s really fast.”

Showing his speed is legitimate will help with his football recruiting going into his senior year in the fall.

“Definitely this year has pushed my recruitment out there with my track times,” Phelps said. “I wanted to show the. I’m dedicated to this and being a multi-sport athlete. It will translate a lot.”

Yohannes, set to face Wilson in the 400, has an equally compelling story. He never played organized sports until joining the track team as a freshman. His parents came here from the small African country of Eritrea. His first name is Ethiopian.

He ran the 400 in 52.48 seconds as a freshman, focused more on having fun. Sophomore season he dropped to 50.75 and said to himself, “Wow, I’m fast.” He started getting serious.

“Now I wanted to be better,” he said.

An injury in January of last year didn’t let him get the foundation to run as fast as he hoped. He dropped to 47.69. Then Moore became coach, and Yohannes finally put in months of training to build a foundation.

“He comes in and kills me,” Yohannes said.

Then came the reward — 46.11 on March 21. In his final tuneup on Saturday, he ran 47.17 at the Red Rock Running Invitational.

“He’s a student and studies racing, training, race plans, athletes, programs,” Moore said.

As for facing Wilson, Yohannes’ attitude is bring him on.

“I’m excited to go out there,” he said. “It’s great competition. If I don’t believe I can win, nobody else can. If I don’t believe in myself, it’s over. I’m going to give my best. I might be crazy to saying this, but I think I have chance. He’s world class already in high school. He’s top of the line talent, It’s whoever wins on that given day. This is going to be unreal pressure knowing if I win, my name is out there. That puts me on the map. I can dream.”

Legal groups in Uganda have announced that a dozen deportees from the United States are expected to land in the country, following a deal with President Donald Trump.

On Thursday, the Uganda Law Society and the East Africa Law Society announced they had gone to court to challenge the deportation, which they called “an undignified, harrowing and dehumanising process”.

“We have approached the Courts of Law in Uganda and the region, seeking bespoke reliefs designed to arrest this patent international illegality,” Asiimwe Anthony, the vice president of the Uganda Law Society, wrote in a statement.

“Our perspective of the matter is broader than a single act of deportation. We view it as but one gust from the ill winds of transnational repression that are blowing across our world.”

Thursday’s deportation marks the first confirmed instance of deportees being transferred from the US to Uganda.

The 12 people reportedly landed at the Entebbe International Airport, some 40 kilometres (25 miles) from Kampala, by private aircraft. No identifying information was provided about the deportees.

But the deportation is the latest example of Trump’s far-reaching efforts to offload immigrants to “third countries”, where they have no personal connections — and may not even know the language.

Scrutiny of third country deportations

So far, Trump has struck deals with a number of countries to accept deported foreigners. They include at least six African countries, among them Equatorial Guinea, Ghana, Rwanda, Eswatini and South Sudan.

The deal with Uganda came to light last August. The country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed that the agreement was a “temporary arrangement” and that priority would be given to deportees from other African countries.

Unaccompanied children and people with criminal records would not be allowed under the deal, according to the ministry’s statement at the time.

It is unclear whether Uganda received payment for its decision to accept third-country deportations.

Other countries, though, have signed multimillion-dollar deals. El Salvador was given nearly $6m to imprison deportees from the US, Equatorial Guinea got $7.5m, and Eswatini nabbed $5.1m.

There is no official estimate about the total cost of these third-country deals, but Senate Democrats in the US have estimated that at least $40m in funding has been given as incentives for countries to accept deportations.

Most of those funds, the Democrats added, were disbursed in lump sums before any deportees arrived. They also note that those funds are separate from the additional costs of the deportation flights: US military aircraft can cost $32,000 per hour to operate.

“Through its third country deportation deals, the Trump Administration is putting millions of taxpayer dollars into the hands of foreign governments, while turning a blind eye to the human costs,” Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen said in a February statement.

“For an Administration that claims to be reigning in fraud, waste and abuse, this policy is the epitome of all three.”

Critics have also questioned whether the countries receiving US deportees are adequately safe.

In the past, the US has criticised Uganda for “significant human rights abuses”, citing reports of extrajudicial killings, life-threatening prison conditions, and torture and other degrading treatment from government agencies.

It also noted that Uganda had government restrictions against human rights and civil society organisations, and that consensual same-sex conduct was outlawed.

According to the United Nations, Uganda already plays host to nearly 1.7 million refugees and asylum seekers, as people flee violence in neighbouring countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and South Sudan.

An ‘authoritarian project’?

In his letter on Thursday, Anthony, the vice president of the Uganda Law Society, called the US deportations part of a “broader authoritarian project” that his group felt compelled to oppose.

“This development and the attendant illegalities that accompany it are reminiscent of a dark past that the global family of humanity supposedly put behind itself in the pursuit of the ideal that every human being is born equal,” Anthony wrote.

He added that US actions under Trump were paving the way for similar policies elsewhere.

“In the United States, the militarisation of society has given carte blanche to captured democracies in Africa to carry on with despotism unchecked,” he said.

Still, the Trump administration has defended the deportations as legal under the US Immigration and Nationality Act, which has loopholes for removals to “safe third countries”.

The Trump administration has also pointed to diplomatic assurances from the “third countries” in question that US deportees would not face persecution.

The “third-country” policy has, however, faced numerous legal challenges. While the US Supreme Court has largely let such removals proceed, a lower court once again ruled in February that the policy could infringe upon immigrants’ due process rights.

In the case of Salvadoran immigrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia, lawyers have even argued that his deportation to a country far from home was evidence of “vindictiveness” on the part of the Trump administration.

Uganda has been floated as one of the destinations for Garcia, who was wrongfully deported in March 2025 and then returned to the US in June, only to face deportation proceedings once more.

Trump has pushed an aggressive programme of mass deportation since returning to the White House for a second term in 2025.

At least 675,000 people have been removed under his administration as of January, according to US government statistics.