Pro-migration advocates are using the World Cup soccer games in the United States to argue that illegal migrants — and their employers — should get a stand-down in ICE’s enforcement operations.
The campaign is spotlighted by union members working at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, who are demanding that ICE ignore illegal migrants, whether they are fans, staff, or merchants.
The administration “thinks we have only criminals here, working, visiting, coming to games, but they’re not,” United Here union member Yolanda Fierro told the Washington Post, adding:
These are hardworking people who take care of their families. We don’t want [ICE] here. We want to feel safe, we can take care of ourselves, and, most of all, we want our guests to feel safe.
Many of the campaign’s activists are paid to stage media events that portray migrants in the most sympathetic way possible. Much of their funding comes from progressive groups who are using migrants to enforce chaotic diversity on Americans’ communities. Many are also supported by business groups that want to maximize the inflow of profit-maximizing consumers, renters, and workers.
But even as the activists slam ICE, agents continue to arrest illegal migrants, criminals, and law–breaking employers.
Some pro-migration groups are using the World Cup as a moral cudgel against the swing-voting Americans who recognize that migration rules also require enforcement.
“What is happening to players and staff and fans coming to the U.S. for the World Cup is representative of the horrors millions of people in the U.S. are experiencing under this regime,” Tanya Greene, the U.S. program director for Human Rights Watch, told the New York Times. “It’s as if the administration wants to keep the world out of the World Cup.”
Some of the activists are just leveraging the additional media outlets to promote their anti-enforcement pitch. “The world’s media is now coming to us,” said Kim Herdman-Shapiro, a pro-migration activist in New Hampshire. She told NHPR.org:
We have to see if we can try and steal a little bit of that limelight … And use it to talk about the not so pleasant aspect of what’s going on in the summer, which is the conditions that detainees are living in and the fear that immigrant communities are living with.
Most of the activists are portraying the illegal migrants as happy soccer fans who are being victimized by ICE predators.
Some migrants “would be very excited to watch the games and to participate, cheer for their teams in the soccer match [but] are afraid,” Renata Bozzetto, deputy director for the Florida Immigrant Coalition, told a sidewalk press conference on June 10.
They are “afraid to go to Fan Fests, afraid to drive to the stadium, afraid to go to the neighborhood hangout place where they could meet other people,” she added.
“My fear is that people end up separated from their families,” Yareliz Mendez-Zamora, a Florida activist with the pro-migration American Friends Service Committee, told Local10.com.
“There has been no commitment around policies that will keep our families and our community safe,” she told WLRN.
“Unfortunately, a lot of people I’ve talked to are scared to leave their own house, especially in big apartment complexes that are known to have ICE presence,” Azael Alvarez, a pro-migration activist with the Latino-focused El Movimiento group in Dallas, told the Washington Post. “It’s already instilled a fear that ‘Oh, they could be out there,’” he added.
But illegal migrants — especially if they are working hard — help shift a vast amount of wealth from ordinary Americans to wealthy investors, mostly by pushing down wages and pushing up rents.
Unsurprisingly, many media outlets are amplifying the activists’ calls for an ICE stand-down. For example, the AFP news service reported on May 26:
“Singing my country’s national anthem in a stadium in front of the whole world is a historic moment that no one would want to miss,” the [Haitian] truck driver in his 40s, who did not wish to give his last name, told AFP.
“But at the same time, I think twice. I don’t want to be arrested by ICE,” he said, referring to Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers tasked with arresting and deporting undocumented foreign nationals.
“[Haitian immigrant] Emile’s concerns are shared by many in the immigrant community, who have watched heavily armed, masked ICE officers carry out their often brutal operations in multiple US cities,” the France-based network added.