Miami host committee assures ICE will not be at World Cup games | World Cup 2026 News

Rodney Barreto received assurances from Secretary of State Marco Rubio that ICE would stay away from the World Cup.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will not be seen at World Cup games this summer, according to the co-chair of the Miami Host Committee.

Rodney Barreto said Thursday he had received assurances from Secretary of State Marco Rubio that ICE would stay away from the world soccer exhibition.

“ICE is not going to be at the stadium,” Barreto told US website The Athletic. “This is not going to turn into some ’round them up’ type thing. That is not the purpose of this.

“It will be a great experience for everyone. I think we’re lucky that we have a president who loves sports and has given us the resources to compensate 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 are processed and that people can come here and there’s an orderly process so that people won’t be held up. It’s going to be a big 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 raids has increased since Donald Trump entered his second term as president last year, sparking a significant political debate in the US.

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, causing a number of 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 was not our event. But now that the time has passed, I would tell you where the failure was, which was that there was no girth.

“People without tickets shouldn’t have been anywhere near the entryways of that stadium. It didn’t take much to breach an entrance. But ‌listen,‌ you learn from all these events, and you learn to do it better and come up with different scenarios that mitigate it from happening in the future. So that’s where we are.”