WASHINGTON—With soccer’s World Cup tournament set to open in the U.S., Mexico, and Canada on June 11, the AFL-CIO is demanding the sport’s ruling federation pressure host cities to keep Donald Trump’s vicious and violent ICE agents out.
But given the past attitudes of the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) towards worker rights abuses in other World Cup nations, especially Qatar four years ago, that may be easier said than done.
Which raises the possibility that if ICE descends on the stadiums where the soccer matches are played, particularly in Los Angeles and D.C.—where the agents are still Trump’s occupying army—the federation’s unions may have to counter with job actions to protect its members, Shuler warns in a letter to FIFA President Gianni Infantino.
Infantino himself may be no help. Just weeks ago, he presented an ersatz “peace prize” to Trump in an Oval Office ceremony. And FIFA already shares worker information—names, addresses, etc.—with ICE.
The World Cup is scheduled to begin in Los Angeles, and at MetLife Stadium in Northern New Jersey, Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia, Audi Field in D.C., and stadiums in Kansas City, Seattle, Atlanta, Miami, Boston, the San Francisco Bay area, Toronto, Vancouver, B.C., and Mexico City, Guadalajara, and Monterrey, Mexico.
Later-round playoff matches will be in other cities as well as those sites.
But not one very logical choice, given its large union density and even larger foreign-born and especially Latino population: Chicago. It said “no” to FIFA last November, Kara Bachmann, executive director of the Chicago Sport Commission, told The Athletic earlier this year.
The costs were too high, FIFA’s “requests” were actually “demands,” and Chicago doubted being a host city would be profitable.
As The Athletic pointed out, retrofitting MetLife Stadium alone would cost $37 million, and that’s not counting road work and security spending, which would eat up millions more.
But the AFL-CIO’s May 8 letter was concerned with protecting U.S. workers from Trump’s ICE agents. Trump’s Acting Homeland Security Director, Todd Lyons, has already declared ICE “will be a key part of the security” apparatus for the World Cup, Shuler noted.
After all, ICE agents lurk in Home Depot parking lots to arrest, detain, and deport people they illegally grab. They lurked in L.A.’s Dodger Stadium lots until the team barred them. They could do so in L.A., at D.C.’s Audi Field, and elsewhere.
“Given the racial profiling, warrantless arrests, and other unconstitutional tactics, the Trump administration is using to detain and deport people with no regard for due process, our affiliate unions are deeply concerned about ICE being engaged for any purpose during the World Cup,” wrote Shuler.
“The tactics of discrimination, violence, and intimidation used by immigration agencies to target working people across the country cause fear and chaos in our communities, and directly affect workers, business operations, and local economies.”
“Indeed, some unions have signaled” ICE’s presence “would create an unsafe work environment that may require them to take collective action to ensure that no members are put at risk.”
Spectators and area residents would also be at risk from ICE, Shuler added.
“To ensure the success and positive legacy of this tournament, we are asking FIFA to publicly call on the administration to commit to keeping immigration enforcement agents, particularly ICE, out of host cities.
“We demand FIFA publicly clarify what role DHS will play, with the expectation that any DHS presence at FIFA events be strictly limited to providing operational security,” Shuler wrote.
FIFA has yet to respond to Shuler’s letter. But in a press conference in Kansas City—which will host later World Cup matches, new Trump Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said the DHS funding shutdown, which just ended, will hamper its efforts at the World Cup.
“We haven’t been able to be as proactive on putting those positions–those safety measures in place, and the first match is June 11,” Mullin said. “The first one in the U.S. is in L.A., June 12. That is around the corner. We have so much work to do.” Planning and housing the ICE officers “takes months,” the pugnacious and partisan former Oklahoma senator elaborated. He blamed congressional Democrats for his agency’s unpreparedness.
The Democrats demanded legal reins on ICE’s raids, home invasions, dragging people out of their cars, and deportations without due process and on the basis of racial profiling.
Democratic rank-and-file voters, however, say that’s not enough. A majority want to defund ICE.
The controversy over ICE is not the only labor problem FIFA faces. In preparation for co-hosting the World Cup this year and the Summer Olympics in 2028, the Los Angeles City Council, by a 13-2 vote, raised the city’s minimum wage for hospitality and restaurant workers to $22.50 hourly last July, $25 this July, and $30 hourly in July 2028.
Corporate interests, led by the city’s hotel and restaurant associations, plus assorted right-wing financiers from suburban Orange County, financed a petition to put the increases to a referendum in early 2025, to force a repeal and rollback. They didn’t get enough signatures.
FIFA’s own report after the last World Cup, in Qatar in 2022, ratified outside reports of “severe impacts on human rights” there. It documented “deaths, injuries, unpaid wages for months, and crippling debt for workers and their families, who had to pay back fees related to obtaining jobs in Qatar,” the Associated Press reported.
Workers’ direct employers and the Qatari government—for lack of enforcement—were mainly responsible, it said. But “a credible argument can be made that [FIFA] contributed to some of the impacts.”
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