NEW YORK — Far from the eyes of the World Cup’s major cities, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents have arrested thousands of people since the tournament began.
The uneasy “truce” which was promised by Trump officials for the duration of the tournament did not hold. Before a ball was kicked, migrant communities feared raids would take place in and around the stadiums and the streets where they came out to support their teams. Instead, beyond the World Cup’s reach, it is estimated that more than 10,000 people have been taken into custody. One man has been fatally shot.
Three days after Houston, Texas hosted its final game between Morocco and Canada, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a 52-year-old Mexican who had lived in the US for 35 years, was killed by agents while he was driving his van, in a raid of which he was not the intended target. Agents say that he attempted to ram their vehicle; bystanders and his family dispute this account and say he was close to obtaining legal status in the US.
He is at least the eighth person to be shot dead by ICE agents in Trump’s second term; across the border, President Claudia Sheinbaum estimates that 17 Mexicans have now died during raids or while being held in the custody of immigration authorities in that time.
Here in New York, the state’s major cities host World Cup festivals while games have taken place across the Hudson River in New Jersey. Three-hundred miles upstate, in the shadow of the Adirondack Mountains, migrants at Lake Placid spoke of a climate of fear after raids targeted seasonal workers on temporary visas.
Along Broadway, I visited the ominous 34-storey courthouse, now the centre of a battle between activists and ICE agents, who have been accused of monitoring the door and arresting people showing up to court to have their immigration cases heard.
The vast majority of those detained have been Latinos. Tribal leaders also say Native American communities have been targeted. In Los Angeles, anti-ICE campaigners told The i Paper that ICE agents had been seen in the vicinity of the SoFi Stadium, where the USA played its opener, but that they had not made any arrests. There have been more calls to immigration helplines in the city across June than in previous months.
“There has been a marked surge in detentions during the World Cup,” US academic and former footballer Jules Boykoff tells The i Paper.
“It wasn’t happening around the vicinity of World Cup stadiums with foreign tourists who were here for the game, but it was happening far away from these venues where the international tourists and journalists are not based.
“This actually was the fear of a lot of people who follow immigration in the United States, that Trump would proceed in a quieter way. By that, I mean quieter than the sort of brutal shootings of US citizens in the streets of Minneapolis, and do it much more quietly, behind the scenes, far from the international journalists and cameras. And that appears to be what they’re doing.
“They’ve been going to rural areas at the same time that there’s been an uptick in unaccompanied minors being sent away.”
Over 4 July weekend, as the nation marked 250 years of American independence, the Department of Homeland Security said it had “celebrated Freedom 250 by arresting criminal illegal aliens from American communities”.
Acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis said ICE agents had spent the weekend “arresting the worst of the worst, including multiple murders, paedophiles, rapists, kidnappers, drunk drivers, drug traffickers and other dangerous public safety threats,” said Acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis.
“Thanks to President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, we have an additional 12,000 ICE officers who will continue delivering on the American people’s mandate to make our nation safe again.”
Data from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) suggests around 70 per cent of detainees across the US –42,722 of the 60,000 in custody – have no criminal convictions or pending charges. At its peak during the World Cup, the ICE operation has been detaining up to 2,000 people a day. Raids on workplaces have increased, as have detentions via traffic stops. Texas, Louisiana and California are the states with the most detainees.
In the final days of the tournament, Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform: “The men and women of ICE are doing a GREAT job, one that has to be done. CRIME IS WAY DOWN IN AMERICA, in many cases with numbers that haven’t been seen in decades. The Open Border Policy of Sleepy Joe Biden allowed 25,000,000 people to pour into our Country, unchecked and unvetted.
“Many were Criminals, and we have to get them out. In order to do this, we must be strong, tough, and smart, and we CANNOT give up one of I.C.E.’s most important and effective Crime Fighting tools, THE TRAFFIC STOP! Once we do, we are playing right into the criminal’s hands. The Radical Left Dumocrats [sic] would like to see this done, but it won’t happen on my watch. I.C.E., be judicious, fair and smart, and go back and do your very important job. Keep those Crime Stat Records coming!”
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In May, as tournament preparations were being finalised, there was another spike in detentions. Mexicans, Hondurans and Guatemalans were the most affected. Even on the day the World Cup began, a major raid took place on a construction site in Bemidji, Minnesota.
Now the legal status of around 1.3 million more migrants has been called into question after the Supreme Court ruled that the President could overrule the Temporary Protected Status programme, which offers protections for migrants for countries affected by war or natural disaster.
The promise that there would be no “civil immigration enforcement” at matches has been kept; beyond the reach of the World Cup, ICE are more powerful than ever.
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