Barber Roy Lizcano at his shop 3rd Ward Finest Kutz in the Third Ward in Houston. The Third Ward is one of the city’s six historic wards and is the center of the African American community.  Photos by Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times.

The boys sprint in white and yellow uniforms down the green turf, grunting and sweating as the coach shouts from the sidelines. “Búscalo, búscalo,” he yells in Spanish, urging the players to sprint for the ball.

“Umusitari!” comes a voice on the sidelines — run down the line — from Biganiro Espoir, a native of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The Margaret Long Wisdom High School soccer team hails from Central America, Mexico, Africa and points between. Its bench hums with Spanish, Kinyarwanda, Swahili and often English. But its real unifying language — soccer, played hard — is universal.

The high school is in southwest Houston, a city whose stunning growth and high-volume immigration have turned it into the most racially and ethnically diverse major metropolis in the country, surpassing New York in 2010.

“It’s really surprising to see a place like this in the South, where you consider it to be racist and xenophobic,” said Michael Negussie, a Wisdom High School senior from Ethiopia. “Stereotypes of Texas don’t apply here.”

Of course in some ways they still do. Houston — with a black, Democratic mayor and a powerfully pro-immigrant population — has potentially become one of the battlefronts in Texas over the city’s “don’t ask” ‘sanctuary policy,’ which prohibits police from inquiring about the immigration status of a person who hasn’t been arrested.

Read the continued article from the original source.