Who would have imagined that an international sporting event would be the next battleground in the fight against authoritarian repression?
Yet that scenario is unfolding right now, and the battleground is the World Cup tournament. In the past year and a half, the Trump administration has deployed ICE as an instrument of state terror. At least 46 people have died in ICE custody since Donald Trump took office last year.
Markwayne Mullin, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, made clear that ICE will be present at World Cup venues. Mullin ruled out broad immigration sweeps but not individual apprehensions.
At the same time, FIFA, international soccer’s governing body, has required stadium workers to disclose sensitive information (Social Security numbers, residential addresses, nationality and country of birth) and to allow the sharing of that information with federal authorities.
Some say that workers, vendors and visitors have nothing to fear if they’re here legally. But the argument is both specious and disingenuous. It denies the toxic power of racialized scapegoating that Trump ratcheted up over the past 11 years.
From the time he announced his first candidacy in 2015, when he declared that Mexico was sending us rapists, drugs and crime, he has made pronouncements about “sh-thole countries” like Haiti and African nations, about ways that unauthorized immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of Americans and about Haitian immigrants stealing and consuming the pets of their citizen neighbors—to name just a few of the lies.
Solidarity and discipline are needed now at the World Cup games. In Los Angeles, for example, there are about 2,000 unionized workers at SoFi Stadium—servers, cooks and bartenders—and they’ve begun to take action through their union, UNITE HERE Local 11.
They’ve filed a complaint with California’s attorney general, citing an intrusion of their privacy and the violation of their rights under the California Consumer Privacy Act. They’ve also threatened to strike unless several demands are met, including assurances that ICE will have no place at the games.
Were ICE to be forced into retreat once again, that would indeed be a World Cup victory deserved by all.
Andrew Moss writes on politics, labor and nonviolence from Los Angeles. He is an emeritus professor from the California State University.
