U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement will not be present at World Cup matches this summer, according to Rodney Barreto, co-chair of the Miami host committee. Barreto told The Athletic on Thursday that he received reassurances from Secretary of State Marco Rubio that ICE would steer clear of the world soccer showcase.
Assurances from Rubio
“ICE is not going to be at the stadium,” Barreto said. “This is not going to turn into some ‘round them up’ type of thing. That’s not the purpose of this. It’ll be a great experience for everybody. I think that we’re lucky that we do have a president who loves sports and has given us the resources to reimburse the cities for their police protection.”
Barreto added, “I spoke to Marco and, first of all, he’s going to make sure that the passports get processed and people can get here and there is an orderly process so people won’t be held up. It’s going to be a major undertaking by the federal government to do that. We feel very comfortable that we’re going to be in good hands.”
Political Context
The deployment of ICE for immigration-enforcement raids has increased since Donald Trump began his second stint as president last year, igniting a significant political debate in the U.S. South Florida’s role as a World Cup host market also comes against the backdrop of scenes from the 2024 Copa America championship game, when fans stormed the gates at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Fla., causing a number of injuries and delaying the start of the Argentina-Colombia match.
Lessons from Copa America
“(The Miami World Cup organizing committee) took the position that we didn’t want to be critical of the planners of that event,” Barreto told The Athletic. “It wasn’t our event. But now that time has passed, I would tell you that where the failure was, which was that there were no perimeters. People without tickets should have been nowhere near the entrance ways of that stadium. It didn’t take much to overrun an entrance. But listen, you learn from all these events, and you learn to do it better and come up with different scenarios which mitigate this from happening in the future. So that’s where we’re at.”
