WASHINGTON — Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin told Breitbart News that the “biggest issue” federal agents are facing in securing the events around the FIFA World Cup in North America in 2026 is “counterfeit tickets” that patrons are getting duped with.
“We have a huge amount of counterfeit that comes in with this,” Mullin told Breitbart News. “People don’t realize this but counterfeit tickets—which is a major issue, that’s probably the biggest issue we have right now, is counterfeit tickets. The barcode, we saw this issue, but we were having the barcode that was getting you into the fan fest but it wouldn’t get you into the stadium and so people were buying these tickets thinking they were buying actual tickets and they were expensive. These tickets are expensive and so the counterfeit of it—which is part of ICE’s job, which HSI, we’ve been having to deal with.”
Mullin sat down at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) headquarters in Washington with Breitbart News for nearly half an hour around the 100-day mark of his time as Secretary for a big exclusive on-camera interview detailing his time in office. Mullin was thrown into the job quickly after his predecessor Kristi Noem was reassigned by the president to focus on Latin American affairs, and went through a relatively quick confirmation process by the U.S. Senate. Mullin was a senator, so his confirmation went smoothly and did have bipartisan support with at least two Democrats—Sens. John Fetterman (D-PA) and Martin Heinrich (D-NM)—backing him. When he was confirmed, it was just days away from the biggest event in DHS history to secure here in the United States with the advent of the now-happening World Cup. This first part of the interview focuses on the World Cup security efforts, and more from the interview which is forthcoming will zone in on President Donald Trump’s administration’s immigration enforcement and border security efforts as well as how Mullin is combating foreign threats.
Asked about securing the World Cup, Mullin praised Andrew Giuliani who was running a task force at DHS before he came into the position—but noted that when he was sworn in as Secretary the efforts were lagging behind in large part thanks to congressional Democrats’ shutdown of DHS. Mullin said the efforts to secure the World Cup amount to having scores of Super Bowl-level events in a matter of just over a month as well as partnership with Mexico on happenings there. Mullin praised state and local law enforcement partners from all 11 host cities, even noting that while some are sanctuary cities that differ greatly with the Trump administration on immigration enforcement he is hopeful that the closeness of the relationships being built now could lead to closer cooperation in the future.
World Cup gear (Jon Kahn / Breitbart News)
“Andrew Giuliani was running a task force and his team has done phenomenal, but when we got in, we were a little bit behind, all right,” Mullin told Breitbart News. “We’d been shut down, in fact, we just were still in that time a pretty long shutdown but we ended up going 76 days for a complete DHS shutdown and then ICE and CBP was shut down for 115 days. That was tough because we have MOUs that we have to pay back our local law enforcement. We have 11 stadiums in 11 different cities and 78 Super Bowls in 38 days and plus we’re helping Mexico with their 13 games that they have in Monterrey and Mexico City and so we have a huge task. We have five to seven million visitors that are coming in, they’re getting to see America for the first time. We want everybody to enjoy the game and also feel safe. Plus, we have the teams that are coming in, and each team has around 120 people that travel with it on average which that means we’ve got to have base camps for them plus we’ve got to secure the hotels that they’re at, we’ve got to secure the practice fields that they’re at, and DHS is over all that.”
In addition to the immigration matters as well Mullin noted that DHS is currently running the largest ever counter-unmanned aerial system or UAS operation in the history of the United States to prevent drones and other hazards at these stadiums.
“Then when we go to the stadiums, we have the largest counter-UAS activity going on right now in the nation’s history and we had to build all that,” Mullin said. “It has been a challenge but I have worked with some of the greatest people from every state, even in California, even in New Jersey, Texas, Kansas, Atlanta, Georgia—the list goes on—Seattle, Washington, and everybody has been so focused on making sure these games are successful. Some of these places we’re working are sanctuary cities and sanctuary states but hopefully we can build momentum when this game is over because guess what? We’ve learned that we can work together in great partnership and be successful in securing the sites and so far we’re finishing up in two weeks and they’ve been pretty uneventful except for having some really great games and the fans really getting to enjoy themselves.”
When it comes to immigration processing for the millions of fans and thousands of players and team personnel, Mullin said DHS is working closely with Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s State Department to smoothly process everything there.
“We’re working on it too but there’s no other agency that could take care of that, right?” Mullin said. “That’s why DHS exists—Department of Homeland Security—that’s why we have 22 components here because we have CIS that takes care of the immigration part at which we have a great partnership with State because we have to sign off on it then State has to actually issue it. We have FPS, which is our Federal Protection Service. We have Custom and Border Protection, which has to process all of our visitors coming in.”
And for what it’s worth, in addition to the counterfeit tickets issue, Mullin said that there is a burgeoning industry of counterfeit merchandise of both Puma and FIFA gear—and also that federal agents are working with state and local partners on fighting crime and particularly drugs that “follow” big crowds into the United States.
“When you start talking about clothing, everybody’s knocking off Puma right now and knocking off FIFA, their gear, and so we’re having to fight that constantly,” Mullin said. “This is just stuff that you don’t understand, or people don’t pay attention to, because we have counterfeit. You also have other criminal activity—you have drugs that follow it too. Because we have such a good partnership with our local police departments and our state police departments in the cities are working in—and the towns and the states—but then we’re able to have the federal partnership too and we’re actually building to fight back this crime.”
More from Mullin’s latest exclusive interview with Breitbart News is forthcoming.