Thousands of soccer fans will flock to stadiums across the United States over the next week as the 2025 FIFA Club World Cup gets underway, starting with the opener between Inter Miami and Egyptian club Al-Ahly on June 14.
According to a since-deleted social media post, U.S. Customs & Border Protection (CBP) will be there, too.
‘CBP will be suited and booted,’ the organization wrote June 4 on X, ‘ready to provide security for the first round of games.’
The presence of federal law enforcement officers, including those from CBP or Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), is relatively common at major sporting events like the Super Bowl, which often carry special designations that prompt more rigorous security.
But as the Trump administration continues to aggressively enforce immigration laws, prompting wide-scale protests in Los Angeles, there are concerns that CBP and ICE will go beyond their traditional security roles at the Club World Cup.
‘You never know with how this administration, the aggression they’re showing on immigration enforcement, whether they have other intentions, as well,’ said John Sandweg, a partner at Nixon Peabody LLP who previously served as the acting director of ICE in late 2013 and early 2014. ‘But the role, certainly of CBP and even ICE, in terms of a major sporting event is not unusual.’
CBP has since deleted its post about being ‘suited and booted’ for the opening round of games, with The Athletic reporting June 12 that FIFA officials had ‘expressed concerns to the CBP about the reaction it had provoked.’
In response to a series of emailed questions about that report, how many CBP officers would be at Club World Cup games and what their roles would be, a CBP spokesperson said the organization is ‘committed to working with our local and federal partners’ to ensure the event is safe for everyone involved, as it does with other major sporting events.
‘Our mission remains unchanged,’ the spokesperson said.
ICE did not reply to an email from USA TODAY Sports seeking more information about its role at the Club World Cup, though the organization confirmed to WTVJ-TV in Miami that its officers will be assisting with security. The NBC Miami station also reported the statement from ICE included a reminder that ‘non-American citizens need to carry proof of their legal status.’
That sort of language is concerning to people like Thomas Kennedy of the Florida Immigrant Coalition, who said it could be intimidating both to U.S. residents and foreign fans with valid travel visas.
‘I’d be worried and disturbed if I were going to the games,’ Kennedy told The Miami Herald. ‘If I didn’t have status, I would probably stay away altogether.’
When asked about ICE agents working security at Club World Cup games, and the possibility of fans being detained, president Gianni Infantino told reporters June 10 that he didn’t have any concerns.
“No, I don’t have any concerns about anything in the sense that we are very attentive on any security question,’ he said. ‘Of course the most important (thing) for us is to guarantee security for all the fans who come to the games. This is our priority. This is a priority of all the authorities who are here.’
While there has been concern and confusion on social media about why CBP and ICE officers would be on hand at a sporting event, Sandweg said their presence alone is not strange.
At major sporting events that receive a special security designation, he said, federal law enforcement officers usually support local and state officials with general security efforts while also offering different forms of expertise. ICE, for example, has worked to identify, investigate and curtail the sale of counterfeit merchandise at past Super Bowls. And CBP has mobile technology they use to screen vehicles at the border, which can instead be used to scan delivery trucks entering a stadium.
The questions around the Club World Cup, however, stem from a broader shift in immigration enforcement efforts under President Donald Trump.
The Trump administration has taken aggressive and sometimes extreme steps to enforce immigration laws over the past few months, with officers sometimes wearing masks and detaining people at schools, restaurants or as they leave courtrooms after immigration court proceedings. The raids have prompted both national and local backlash, with the most recent flashpoint coming in Los Angeles over the weekend, when Trump dispatched the national guard to quell protests in the streets.
Many of those enforcement efforts have targeted Hispanic people, who also make up a significant portion of soccer fans in the U.S.
‘If people think they are going to get scooped up, they wouldn’t go. I wouldn’t,’ Gerald Foston, national president of the U.S. Soccer supporters group Sammers SC, told NorthJersey.com, which is part of the USA TODAY Network.
‘I’m African American. I’ve been mistaken for Dominican, so even though I’m going to a game, do I have to walk around with my passport?’
The Club World Cup features 32 teams from 20 countries, including the United States, with games spread across a dozen venues during the next several weeks. It will run concurrently with the Concacaf Gold Cup, another soccer tournament that includes national teams from North and Central America. Citizens of Haiti, a country whose national team is playing in the Gold Cup, have been banned from traveling to the U.S. by Trump, though the ban includes an exception for competing athletes and coaches.
In many ways, the two events will serve as a tune-up for next summer’s men’s World Cup, which the U.S. is co-hosting with Canada and Mexico, and the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.
While Trump has embraced the United States’ role as an international sports host and pledged to welcome fans from around the world, some immigration advocates see his recent actions as having the opposite effect.
‘Military parades, Border Patrol officers ‘providing security’ at international sporting events … no, this is not a description of the buildup towards the 1936 Summer Olympic Games. This is how the Trump regime welcomes the world,’ George Escobar, the chief of programs and services at immigration advocacy group CASA, said in a statement.
‘Sports are supposed to bring people together, not be used as weaponized targets for political agendas.’
It’s unclear whether or how the broader political environment in the U.S. will impact international attendance at the World Cup or Summer Olympics. But for the Club World Cup, Sandweg wonders if even the potential presence of ICE and CBP could put a damper on the festitivies or drive away fans.
‘Given all that’s going on right now, the optics are such that it’s certainly going to have a chilling effect, I think, on attendance,’ he said.
Contact Tom Schad at tschad@usatoday.com or on social media @tomschad.bsky.social.