As ICE Casts Shadow Over World Cup, Organizers Focus on Keeping Communities Safe

Thousands of soccer fans gathered in my hometown of Pasadena, California, on June 24, 2026, to watch Mexico’s World Cup win against the Czech Republic. City officials erected a large TV screen outside the Civic Auditorium in the heart of the commercial district. Fans wore green jerseys, the signature color of Mexico’s men’s soccer team. Several people waved Mexican flags and danced and hugged when their team scored a goal.

Similarly joyful celebrations are taking place this summer throughout the United States, which is hosting the 2026 FIFA Men’s World Cup series. “Soccer is a beautiful game because it really connects a lot of cultures, countries, [through] immigration,” said Enrique Cárdenas-Sifre, communications director at Mijente Support Committee. Cárdenas-Sifre is also one of the co-creators of Our Copa, a campaign launched to ensure “this moment belongs to the people — the fans, the families, and the communities who make the game beautiful.”

Immigrant-rich neighborhoods all across California — which is home to the nation’s largest foreign-born population — are gathering to watch the World Cup games in public and private spaces, from downtown Fresno in the north, to Los Angeles’ Koreatown in the south. Nationwide, there are World Cup watch parties in big cities like Seattle, Washington, and in small towns like Chicago-area Bridgeview, also known as Little Palestine, and Oak Cliff, North Texas.

According to Cárdenas-Sifre, “football in the United States is really connected to immigrant communities around the different states of the U.S., because those are the places where Latin Americans, Asians, and other communities get together to build community, to play the beautiful game.”

After more than a year of violent raids, mass disappearances, and family separations by U.S. federal immigration agents, it’s not surprising that immigrant-rich communities are wary of large gatherings in public space.

A year earlier, Customs and Border Protection, in a now-deleted June 2025 post on X, announced its agents would be present at the first round of FIFA games in Florida. At around the same time, federal agents deported a Latin American man seeking asylum, who was arrested outside MetLife Stadium in New Jersey where he had been watching a FIFA match. He was promptly deported and separated from his family. The man, whose identity has been kept hidden to protect his family, told France 24 that he didn’t think it was a good idea for immigrants to attend soccer games in the U.S. this summer for fear they would be arrested and deported like he was.

The Trump administration’s ongoing travel ban, which almost exclusively impacts majority-nonwhite nations, also determines who gets to visit the U.S. for the World Cup. Omar Artan, a soccer referee from Somalia, was denied entry into the U.S. even though he was assigned to officiate at the World Cup games. After arriving in Miami, Artan was put on a return flight back to Somalia because he had, according to Trump officials, been talking to “some very bad people,” though they declined to provide any evidence.

In spite of the Trump administration’s assurances that agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) would not target soccer fans, its rampant lawlessness in immigration enforcement has left organizers worried. In response to the pervasive fear of federal immigration activity around the FIFA games, more than a hundred civil rights organizations signed onto a travel advisory for those seeking to enter the U.S. to watch their favorite teams play. The ACLU published a “know your rights” page on its website, tailored to World Cup fans.

“There was a lot of noise of having ICE raids at the stadiums,” said Cárdenas-Sifre. But as of this writing, that has not transpired, perhaps in response to major public opposition. A Washington Post-University of Maryland poll found that nearly two-thirds of Americans surveyed — including fans and those who don’t care for the sport — opposed ICE agents being deployed to soccer stadiums during the 2026 World Cup.

Still, organizers remain wary. “We haven’t put down our gloves to fight against ICE,” continued Cárdenas-Sifre. “It’s just that we think that they’re using a different approach.”

As the 2026 World Cup kicked off in earnest, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) posted a Hitlerian meme to its X account with the words “Defend the Homeland: One Nation, One Homeland, One Team.” Days later, when the U.S. Men’s Soccer Team won its FIFA match against Australia, DHS posted, then deleted, a bizarre meme of a photo of the team, captioned “Built the Wall.”

Trump officials are “using the World Cup as a stage to push their vision of the U.S.,” said Cárdenas-Sifre. “We’ve started seeing this propaganda, quasi-Nazi type of propaganda and slogans.”

Irony abounds, given that many U.S. men’s national soccer team players are foreign born. According to Newsweek, “Six players on the U.S. men’s national soccer team at the 2026 World Cup were born outside the country,” and “More than half the 26 men on the roster hold dual citizenship.”

Our Copa is pushing back against the Trump administration’s messaging on social media, with revised versions of DHS’s memes that instead center soccer’s collectivism and joy. “We’re trying to contrast those slogans, rewrite that propaganda,” said Cárdenas-Sifre.

Given soccer’s popularity among non-U.S. born communities, ICE activity has already had a deep impact on their relationship to soccer. The Human Rights Soccer Alliance (HRSA), issued a report in May 2026 titled Fear, Intimidation and the World Cup, covering the detentions and deportations of soccer players, coaches, and fans. HRSA, which is an initiative to make the game safer and more inclusive, particularly for people of color, pointed out that soccer “has served as a space of belonging, development, and cultural expression.”

As a result of the Trump’s administration’s intimidation, “teams and leagues are experiencing reduced participation [in soccer-related activities], cancelled sessions, and long-term instability.” According to HRSA, immigration enforcement agents aren’t just impacting World Cup games, but appear to be specifically targeting the public’s soccer activities given the sport’s popularity among immigrants. Youth soccer camps and parks are particularly under scrutiny.

Instead of speaking out against violent state actions aimed at soccer fans in the U.S., FIFA has ingratiated itself to President Donald Trump. The international institution, which is supposed to be soccer-focused and politically neutral, decided last December to create the “FIFA Peace Prize” and make Trump its inaugural awardee. Critics lambasted the prize as an obvious attempt to mollify a president who complained about being passed over for the Nobel Peace Prize.

According to Cárdenas-Sifre, FIFA has a history of such problematic actions. “There’s a lot of examples on how FIFA has contributed in the past to fascist regimes and to authoritarian regimes,” he said, offering the example of the 1934 World Cup in Mussolini’s Italy.

Former U.S. Olympics soccer player Jules Boykoff, in his new book Red Card: The 2026 World Cup, Sportswashing, and the FIFA Greed Machine, outlines the institution’s disturbing history, including how, under the leadership of current FIFA head Gianni Infantino, that trend continues. According to Boykoff, Infantino helped obscure Qatar’s human rights violations ahead of the 2022 World Cup. “Infantino … ran interference around the horrific human rights violations that were happening there,” Boykoff told me. “Some 6,700 workers died constructing things to get ready for the tournament between 2010 and 2021, and he said, ‘Oh, no, not a big deal. Nothing to see here.’”

And, during the 2026 World Cup, Trump called Infantino in person and successfully reversed a referee’s call against a U.S. men’s national soccer team player, making clear that rules can be bent if authoritarian leaders want it so. Boykoff called it “the rescinded red card heard round the world,” adding that “just like U.S. President Donald Trump wanted, it put him at the center of attention at the world’s most popular sporting event.”

As the World Cup continues around the U.S., Our Copa has become a hub for public watch parties resisting ICE activity. “Help protect the fans by supporting efforts to get ICE out of our communities, and lift travel bans so fans from all nations can attend,” urges a watch party invitation on Our Copa’s website. The campaign encourages people to “join us regardless of who you’re rooting for — because unlike the division we see all around — we know how to keep it cute.”