Rodney Barreto received reassurances from Secretary of State Marco Rubio that ICE will not participate in the World Cup.
Published May 8, 2026
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will not be present at this summer’s World Cup games, according to the co-chairs of the Miami organizing committee.
Rodney Barreto said Thursday he received reassurances from Secretary of State Marco Rubio that ICE will stay away from the world soccer showcase.
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“ICE will not come to the stadium,” Barrett told the US-based website The Athletic. “This is not going to be like, ‘round them up.’ That’s not what this is about.
“It’s going to be a great experience for everyone. I think we’re lucky to have a president who loves sports and has given us money to reimburse cities for police protection.”
Barreto added: “I spoke to Marco and he’s going to make sure that first of all passports are processed and people can get here and there’s an orderly process so that people aren’t stranded. It’s going to be a huge undertaking for the federal government to do that. We feel very confident that it will be well managed.”
Since Donald Trump began his second term as president last year, ICE deployments to crack down on immigration have increased, sparking significant political debate in the United States.
South Florida’s role as a World Cup host market also comes after fans stormed the gates of Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens during the 2024 Copa America championship game, causing numerous injuries and delaying the start of the Argentina-Colombia match.
“(The Miami World Cup Organizing Committee) took the position that they did not want to criticize the organizers of the tournament,” Barreto told The Athletic. “It wasn’t about us, but now that time has passed, where the failure was was that there were no boundaries.
“No one without a ticket should have been near the entrance to that stadium. It didn’t take long to crowd the entrance. But listen, we learn from all of these events, we learn how to respond better, we come up with different scenarios to prevent something like this from happening in the future. That’s where we are.”
