Image by Fauzan Saari.

Who would imagine that an international sporting event will be the next battleground in the fight against authoritarian repression?

Yet that scenario is unfolding right now, and the battleground is the World Cup tournament – soon to begin in cities around the U.S. To understand the dynamics of the situation, consider the concept of state terror, i.e. a regime’s efforts to instill fear as a means of dividing and disempowering a people, thereby tightening its grip on power.

In the past year and a half, the Trump administration has deployed ICE as an instrument of state terror. In assaults on LA, Chicago, Minneapolis, and other cities, ICE agents have engaged in unlawful traffic stops and racial profiling, carried out warrantless raids on homes, and inflicted excessive and lethal force on protesters and bystanders. ICE’s management of detention centers around the country has been characterized by cruelty, violence, and degrading conditions. At least 46 people have died in ICE custody since Donald Trump took office last year.

Markwayne Mullin, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, made clear that ICE will be present at World Cup venues, including SoFi Stadium near my home in Los Angeles County. Mullin ruled out broad immigration sweeps but not individual apprehensions. At the same time, FIFA, international soccer’s governing body, has required stadium workers to disclose sensitive information (social security numbers, residential addresses, nationality, and country of birth) and to allow the sharing of that information with federal authorities.

Some say that workers, vendors, and visitors have nothing to fear if they’re here legally. But the argument is both specious and disingenuous. It denies the toxic power of racialized scapegoating that Donald Trump ratcheted up over the past 11 years. From the time he announced his first candidacy in 2015, when he declared that Mexico was sending us rapists, drugs, and crime, he has made pronouncements about “shithole countries” like Haiti and African nations, about ways that unauthorized immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of Americans, and about Haitian immigrants stealing and consuming the pets of their citizen neighbors – to name just a few of the lies. Such baseless claims have made many Americans more fearful of immigrants, and – along with rogue immigration enforcement –- have frightened many migrants into the shadows or helped pushed them to self-deport.

Answering the lies requires an expansive bearing of witness: about the cruelty and waste of our present immigration enforcement policies – and about the insatiable need of authoritarians to scapegoat, instill fear, and divide. If a person has lived in, and peacefully contributed to, a community for many years – his or her lack of documentation says much more about the failure of the broader polity than it does about the individual. It speaks to the failure of lawmakers to recognize in law the economic and cultural contributions that immigrants bring to this nation. It declares the failure to set down pathways to citizenship that will liberate even greater contributions when people are fully free.

But bearing witness in and of itself is not enough. As Minnesotans made clear when they forced ICE and CBP (Customs and Border Protection) to retreat from Minneapolis, people power is needed – along with high levels of solidarity, organization, and nonviolent discipline that enable such power.

Solidarity and discipline are needed now at the World Cup games. In LA, for example, there are about 2000 unionized workers at SoFi Stadium – servers, cooks, and bartenders – and they’ve begun to take action through their union, UNITE HERE Local 11. They’ve filed a complaint with California’s Attorney General, citing an intrusion of their privacy and the violation of their rights under the California Consumer Privacy Act. They’ve also threatened to strike unless several demands are met, including assurances that ICE will have no place at the games.

As in Minneapolis, the workers deserve the support of the broader community, a support grounded in an awareness of what’s at stake for them, for the community, and for the nation as a whole. A number of community groups, including faith-based organizations, have already stepped up in support and solidarity.

Were ICE to be forced into retreat once again, that would indeed be a World Cup victory deserved by all.