U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement will not be present at World Cup matches this summer, according to the co-chair of the Miami host committee.
Rodney Barreto told The Athletic on Thursday that he received assurances from Secretary of State Marco Rubio that ICE would stay away from the global soccer tournament.
“ICE is not going to be at the stadium,” Barreto told The Athletic. “This is not going to turn into some ‘round them up’ type of thing. That’s not the purpose of this.
“It will be a great experience for everybody. I think we’re lucky to 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.”
The deployment of ICE for immigration enforcement has increased since Donald Trump began his second term as president last year, igniting a significant political debate in the United States.
South Florida’s role as a World Cup host market also comes against the backdrop of scenes from the 2024 Copa America final, when fans stormed the gates at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida, causing multiple injuries and delaying the start of the Argentina-Colombia match.
“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 entryways of that stadium. It didn’t take much to overrun an entrance. But you learn from all these events, and you learn to do it better and come up with different scenarios that mitigate this from happening in the future. So that’s where we’re at.”
