For the second year in a row, a coach from the Cuban Little League team slipped out of the complex under the cover of nightfall, officials with the league confirmed Tuesday.

“On the night of Aug. 24 at the Little League Baseball World Series, Carlos J. César Martínez, a coach with the team from Santa Clara, Cuba, left the grounds of the Little League International Complex and did not return,” Senior Director of Communications for Little League International Kevin Fountain said in an email to the Sun-Gazette.

“Immediately upon learning of his departure, Little League International made all appropriate notifications and, most importantly, ensured that the Santa Clara Little League players and all remaining adult coaches were present and safe,” the statement continued.

“On Monday, Aug. 26, all remaining team members, coaches, and Cuban Baseball Federation officials arrived home safely in Santa Clara, and we look forward to Cuba’s continued participation in the Little League program for years to come,” Fountain’s statement concluded.

It was just a year ago that Jose Perez, a coach with Bayamo, Cuba was captured on surveillance camera being picked up in a vehicle and driven away by another person in the dead of night. His whereabouts remain a mystery to this day.

Though commonly referred to as a “defection,” there is a legal distinction to be made between the term and simply disappearing as the two coaches did, according to Clifford Rieders, a local attorney who counts Constitutional and civil rights as one of the many areas he practices in.

“Disappearing in the U.S. is not defecting in the legal sense, it’s basically running away and hoping you know you won’t be found and becoming an illegal alien and a fugitive, really,” he explained.

“Defecting is when you go to the State Department and make a claim for the right to stay in the United States because you’re from a country that the United States recognizes as a place that a person has a right to defect from,” Rieders explained.

“Just the fact that a person is from a nation that the U.S. recognizes as a repressive regime does not mean that they could just disappear without further notice,” Rieders said.

Calling it a fairly complicated process with no guarantee of approval, Rieders said there are several reasons that someone can request asylum, including political or religious persecution.

“If you had a Christian missionary or a priest from Cuba, that person would be a different status than somebody who is an ordinary citizen from Cuba, but I think, generally speaking, the U.S. has made the way for Cubans easier because of the traditional animosity between the U.S. and Cuba, due to the fact that Cuba is a professed communist regime,” he said.

“Here, you’re dealing with a Little League coach. You’re not dealing with a diplomat, so I would say that would make it much more difficult to get asylum or to demonstrate a reasonable cause for having gone into hiding,” Rieders explained.

A lack of direction from federal officials over the past 10 to 15 years has led to an increase in those reaching for the “American dream,” according to Rieders.

“The problem is, if you’re going to have a country like this, a magnet for others, you really do need to have a coherent policy that’s an administrative point of view, is efficient and works well, and the fact that we don’t have that is really a disgrace, regardless of who’s fault it is,” he said.

Though going about staying in the U.S. this way doesn’t preclude someone from later seeking asylum, it would make it more difficult, depending on their specific situation, Rieders said.

“A lot of people think they’re better off disappearing, and maybe in five or 10 years when they’re found, it’ll be easier for them to get asylum, and that is generally a mistake.

There are many reasons people look to stay in the U.S. including certain industries looking for cheaper labor or those looking to give their children a foundation here, Rieders said.

“If your kids are born here, they’re legal through the 14th Amendment. So a lot of people don’t really care, they think, ‘maybe when I’m 90 years old I’ll be deported, but at least my kids are citizens,” he explained.

And while the second coach in two years slipping away is big news for the area, it is in fact more common than one would expect, according to Rieders.

“It’s actually very typical. If you look at the Olympics or any international event that brings people to this country from other nations that don’t have our robust rights and economic environment, it happens all the time,” he explained, adding that an area such as Williamsport is easier to disappear in because it lacks the security apparatus of bigger cities.