FIFA has always presented the World Cup as humanity’s greatest peaceful celebration. It is portrayed as an event that stops the world every four years and, for a few weeks, erases borders and religious, linguistic, and political differences. Soccer’s simple rules are understood by everyone. The game has the power to touch the world’s richest countries and its poorest communities alike. In the stadiums, billionaires can sit next to factory workers, refugees beside diplomats, children beside grandparents. At least that is the romantic myth of soccer.
Yet the 2026 World Cup is already raising questions that have little to do with offside calls or tournament predictions. According to experts, human rights advocates, and immigration specialists who participated in an American Community Media briefing, many people are no longer asking who will win the tournament. They are asking who will even dare attend the matches. The United States will host 78 of the tournament’s 104 matches, welcoming as many as 10 million visitors across 11 cities. As advocates noted, the scale is comparable to staging 78 consecutive Super Bowls.
That has intensified concerns about what immigration enforcement, travel restrictions, and an uneven human rights framework could mean for fans, workers, journalists, and the communities surrounding World Cup venues. Millions of people will arrive from every corner of the globe. The question is whether they will encounter the America they imagine as the home of the Statue of Liberty or the America defined in recent years by ICE raids, family separations, mass deportations, and fear directed at immigrants.
According to Human Rights Watch, the tournament could begin in an atmosphere of fear. Minky Worden, the organization’s Director of Global Initiatives, has publicly urged FIFA to seek what she calls an „ICE Truce,” a commitment from U.S. immigration authorities that they will not conduct enforcement actions in stadiums, fan zones, or areas connected to the matches. The proposal evokes the ancient Olympic Truce tradition, which temporarily suspended wars to allow athletes and spectators to travel safely.
Worden argues that FIFA has already recognized the problem but has failed to address it adequately. Following the human rights scandals surrounding the 2018 World Cup in Russia and the 2022 tournament in Qatar, FIFA required all 16 host cities of the 2026 World Cup to develop specific human rights action plans. Yet, according to Worden, several of those plans still have not been completed, including those for New Jersey, Philadelphia, and Miami. She described FIFA’s human rights policy as a „beautiful but meaningless document.” The criticism suggests that FIFA understands the risks but is either unwilling or unable to enforce its own standards. The American tournament, too, is surrounded by the familiar smell of money and corruption.
Worden also draws a powerful historical comparison by placing the current situation alongside the legacies of Russia and Qatar. She recalled that the 2018 World Cup took place during what Human Rights Watch described as Russia’s worst human rights crisis since the collapse of the Soviet Union, with opposition activists and journalists harassed and workers exploited. In Qatar, more than 6,500 migrant workers reportedly died while building World Cup stadiums and infrastructure. Her point is that human rights controversies have become less an exception than a recurring feature of modern World Cups. Even the expansion of the tournament field to an unwieldy 48 teams appears, in the eyes of critics, driven less by sporting considerations than by the pursuit of greater profits.
Yet the necessary conditions for such expansion may not exist. The tournament that FIFA calls „the most inclusive World Cup in history” will take place while citizens of 39 countries face various restrictions or travel bans. This is why Worden bluntly stated, „This is not a World Cup for the world.”
The case of Iran illustrates the contradiction vividly. Iran has qualified for the tournament, yet because of U.S. policies, Iranian players may not be permitted to remain continuously on American soil. They may be required to travel back and forth between Tijuana and American host cities. Meanwhile, the president of the Iranian Football Federation reportedly was denied a U.S. visa. The two countries are, after all, effectively in a state of confrontation.
But Trump’s America is not exactly welcoming toward much of the rest of the world. Beyond security concerns, travel restrictions often carry the appearance of racial and cultural bias. The administration has created tensions with numerous countries and even with Europe as a whole. Trump’s alliance with Benjamin Netanyahu in a war opposed by much of the international community could easily become a source of protest among visiting fans. Spectators may choose to express their views. What happens then? If ICE agents appear near tournament venues, stadiums could quickly become sites of human rights demonstrations or anti-American protests. The situation could become even more volatile if Trump, as critics fear, inserts himself into the spectacle and attempts to redirect attention from the players to himself.
The fears are not without foundation. ICE has already indicated that it will participate in World Cup security operations. No one knows exactly what that will mean in practice. Will there be immigration checks around stadiums? Will fans be questioned? What happens to people whose legal status is unresolved? How will authorities distinguish between American citizens wearing their national team’s jersey, tourists, and undocumented immigrants? Who decides whether a fan wearing a Mexican jersey is suspicious? Some have even raised the possibility that ICE agents could be stationed inside stadiums or assigned to secure locker rooms used by teams whose countries’ immigrants are targeted by immigration enforcement.
According to Ariel G. Ruiz Soto of the Migration Policy Institute, uncertainty alone can be a powerful deterrent. Many fans are unsure whether making the trip is worthwhile. In some countries, visa applications take months to process with no guarantee of approval. Others are discouraged by travel restrictions and increasingly strict immigration rules. Ruiz Soto warns that the World Cup risks becoming not a celebration of openness but a demonstration of who is allowed into America and who is not.
He also highlighted another troubling issue. The Trump administration has considered requiring fans from certain countries to post visa bonds of up to $15,000, refundable only if they leave the country after the tournament. In practice, that means some supporters are treated as potential illegal immigrants before they even arrive.
This is also a sensitive issue for immigrant communities already living in the United States. In Los Angeles, Houston, Miami, and New York, millions live in mixed-status families. A child may be an American citizen while a parent lacks legal status. Will these families take their children to the matches? Or will they stay home out of fear that a soccer celebration could become a nightmare?
Katherine La Puente, Senior Children’s Rights Coordinator at Human Rights Watch, warned that children’s rights require special protection. Sports should provide young people with experiences of safety, joy, and community, not fear that a family member could disappear on the way home.
Global instability only deepens these concerns. The wars in the Middle East, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and ongoing terrorist threats mean that the World Cup will require one of the most complex security operations ever attempted. Massive police deployments are expected around stadiums. The question is where the line lies between security and intimidation.
Perhaps the most powerful human rights story cited by La Puente involves an asylum-seeking father who attended the FIFA Club World Cup final in New Jersey with his two children. He was flying a recreational drone in the parking lot to take a family photograph when ICE agents arrested him in front of his children. The ten- and fourteen-year-old watched in tears. Their father was detained for three months and then deported to the very country from which he had originally fled. The children were left at the stadium under the care of others.
That story may capture the fears surrounding the World Cup more effectively than any statistic. La Puente raised a critical child-protection question: what happens to children separated from their parents at stadiums or related events? FIFA has adopted a child safeguarding statement, but she believes it came too late and remains insufficient.
Immigrant fans interviewed by Human Rights Watch told researchers, „I don’t care if I get arrested or deported. I’m going to follow my team because I love the World Cup that much.” Yet given the extraordinary costs, many supporters may only make it as far as the parking lots around stadiums, which could become some of the most dangerous places if immigration enforcement is present.
Since January 2025, more than 167,000 people have been arrested on immigration-related grounds in the 11 American host cities alone. The highest numbers have been recorded in Miami, Dallas, and Houston. Those figures reinforce the sense that the fear is grounded in reality.
Jamal Watkins of the NAACP argues that a successful World Cup requires more than stadiums and security plans. It also requires resisting a political logic that places profits above people and militarizes communities. His observation extends beyond soccer and reaches the moral core of the tournament itself.
Many critics fear that the World Cup will become part of Trump’s political spectacle. Some already refer to it as the „MAGA World Cup.” FIFA President Gianni Infantino’s unusually close relationship with Trump has generated additional controversy. Norwegian sports officials and human rights organizations have filed ethics complaints after FIFA awarded Trump its own peace prize, arguing that the decision violated the organization’s political neutrality. Critics worry that the world’s biggest sporting event could become a stage for one man’s self-promotion and political branding. Trump may even fold the tournament into celebrations marking America’s 250th anniversary, another opportunity to place himself at the center of the narrative.
The social questions surrounding soccer do not end with politics. Soccer has always been considered the sport of ordinary people. It is played in the world’s poorest neighborhoods just as it is at elite European academies. Yet World Cup prices have become staggering. Airfare, hotels, and match tickets often cost more than a substantial portion of an average American family’s annual income. The best seats are reserved for corporate guests, sponsors, and wealthy tourists. The question naturally arises: will the people who have sustained soccer culture for generations still be able to fill the stands? Or is the World Cup becoming a luxury product accessible only to privileged elites?
Watkins argues that the World Cup is also a moral mirror for a nation. Building modern stadiums and producing spectacular opening ceremonies is not enough. The real question is whether everyone can feel equally safe and free. The world will be watching how America treats its guests, its minorities, and its own citizens.
The United States has enormous experience hosting major sporting events. It can manage logistics. It can provide infrastructure. It can stage dazzling entertainment. But this time the question is deeper. Can it also present the best version of itself and of humanity?
At its finest, the World Cup is not about winners. It is about strangers singing together in the stands, celebrating and consoling one another with arms around each other’s shoulders. It is about a Moroccan fan crying alongside an Argentine, a Mexican alongside a Japanese supporter, an American beside a Senegalese one. The question is whether Trump’s America will allow that simple human miracle to happen.
Long before the opening whistle, the 2026 World Cup has already become historically significant. It will determine not only which national team lifts the trophy. It will also reveal whether the so-called land of freedom welcomes the world as an open and confident democracy, or whether fear, suspicion, and exclusion cast a shadow over soccer’s greatest celebration and over America itself.
The true miracle of soccer would be if the game manages to overshadow all of that.
