Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents will stay away from this summer’s World Cup soccer matches in Miami, according to organizing committee leadership.
Miami host committee co-chair Rodney Barreto said Thursday he has received guarantees from Secretary of State Marco Rubio that ICE will not have a presence at the international soccer tournament.
“ICE is not going to be at the stadium,” Barreto said in an interview with The Athletic. “This is not going to turn into some ’round them up’ type of thing. That’s not the purpose of this.”
Barreto expressed optimism about the event’s success, stating: “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.”
The committee co-chair also discussed passport processing for international visitors, saying: “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.”
Immigration enforcement operations have expanded under President Donald Trump’s second administration, creating nationwide political tensions around the issue.
Miami’s selection as a World Cup venue comes after security problems during the 2024 Copa America final at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, where ticketless fans broke through barriers, causing injuries and delaying the Argentina-Colombia championship match.
Reflecting on those incidents, Barreto explained: “(The Miami World Cup organizing committee) took the position that we didn’t want to be critical of the planners of that event. 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.”
He continued: “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.”
