Bluesky

There are three messages that the United States is sending to the world in advance of the 2026 World Cup, and you should take two of them seriously. The first comes from President Donald Trump, who said at a recent press conference hyping the 2026 World Cup, “We can’t wait to welcome soccer fans from all over the globe.” These are the words of an addled carnival barker, whose ego gets a jolt every time he thinks of doing a Hitler-at-the-1936-Olympics impression at the world’s most popular sporting event. This you should not take seriously.

The second message is from that smarmy supplicant JD Vance at that same press conference. The vice president attempted a joke probably workshopped with someone he follows on X who has a YouTube show boosting eugenics. He said, “I know we’ll have visitors probably from close to 100 countries. We want them to come. We want them to celebrate. We want them to watch the game. But, when the time is up, they’ll have to go home. Otherwise they’ll have to talk to [Department of Homeland Security] Secretary [Kristi] Noem.” Nothing like a veiled threat to have people sent to the USA’s offshore torture/labor camp in El Salvador to prime the tourist profit pump.

But make no mistake, Vance’s message is serious, as serious as the naked ambition that emanates from this barely shaved chipmunk. Expect the preparations for the World Cup to be accompanied by raids of non-white communities, immigrant and otherwise. Given that it is normal to see the state off its leash anyway in host cities before the World Cup, one can only tremble or seethe at the thought of what will take place. Trump will likely exploit the Cup to engineer a crackdown—particularly in Los Angeles, with its high population of undocumented immigrants and its Democratic mayor, Karen Bass—that looks more like the 1978 World Cup held by a torture regime in Argentina than the comparatively placid one in South Africa in 2010 (despite the media hysteria).

This leads us to the last point: Stay the fuck away, world. This is not a safe place for anyone without a passport, and these days even a passport guarantees nothing. US citizens, including Native Americans, are being scooped up by ICE. Navajo Nation president Buu Nygren recently recounted that numerous Navajo citizens are experiencing “negative and sometimes traumatizing encounters” with ICE.

If the out-of-control crackdown being orchestrated by ICE and the US Customs and Border Patrol is dangerous to this country’s First Peoples, then you can bet it is perilous for visitors from around the world. Ask the teenage backpackers from Germany who reported being strip-searched and imprisoned after landing in Hawaii. Ask the Canadian entrepreneur who spent two weeks in the Otay Mesa Detention Center, an experience she described as being “kidnapped, thrown into some sort of sick psychological experiment meant to strip us of every ounce of strength and dignity.” Ask green-card holder and lawful permanent resident Mahmoud Khalil. Ask student visa holder, the now blessedly free Rümeysa Öztürk.

Hosting the 2026 World Cup in the United States is dangerous for teams, their families, and their fans. And the word is out. A new group—Boycott USA 2026—has emerged to demand that “games scheduled in the USA must be moved or boycotted.” The organization is concerned that international visitors may be in danger and that the Trump administration may use the soccer tournament as an alibi for intensifying its deportation machine.

Numerous countries have issued travel warnings against the United States, including Canada, France, Ireland, Germany, Portugal, and Finland. They are among the growing number of people who can see that Vance’s joking is serious business.

Vance once claimed that telling jokes with his “guy friends” is “the essence of masculinity.” (There goes Vance lying again—this time about having friends.) More importantly, members of the Trump administration—from Vance to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to Trump himself—have used what they call jokes to make political space for depraved social policy. When critics push back, the standard-issue riposte is to tell those humorless fuddy-duddies not to be so uptight. But Trump and his ilk use crude humor to normalize xenophobia, racism, sexism, and transphobia. And once people are judged as unworthy of basic human dignity—after all they are “poison in the blood”—then come the arrests, camps, the prisons, and the death of due process. It’s all one agenda, and everything is in service of that agenda.

Vance got plenty of attention for his “joke” at the task-force presser, but Trump let one fly as well. When the president was asked whether people who have been engaging in “pro-Palestinian protests across the world” should feel safe to travel to the United States to enjoy the World Cup, he responded, “I think people are allowed to protest. You have to do it in a reasonable manner. Not necessarily friendly, but reasonable. Otherwise Pam will come after you, and you’re gonna have a big problem.” This is the third message.

“Pam” is US Attorney General Pam Bondi who, in a spate of Trumpian sycophancy, recently yukked it up about sending drug traffickers to a reopened Alcatraz Prison. Bondi also just signed off on Trump’s receiving a “new Air Force One” plane from Qatar as a gift, a brazen piece of corruption by a regime on a historic grifting spree. For those of us who remember scandals like donors spending the night in the Lincoln bedroom, it’s remarkable how any moral standards now appear quaint. All too often, mainstream journalists are complicit in laundering this new political reality.

We can’t expect FIFA to stand up to Trump. The world’s governing body for soccer claims to care about human rights. But of course, sitting elbow-to-elbow with Trump under the press-conference spotlight, FIFA president Gianni Infantino somehow didn ’t raise any concerns about ICE snapping up undocumented residents and sending them off to the notorious CECOT mega-prison in El Salvador. Instead, Infantino chuckled along when the president interrupted him to insist that the United States be listed first as the host of the event, ahead of Canada and Mexico. Infantino has even moved to Miami—some 70 miles down the road from Mar-a-Lago—where FIFA reportedly foots the $5,000-per-month bill for his daughter to attend private school. He was a special guest at Trump’s inauguration earlier this year, where he yanked out his phone as the president took the oath of office, presumably so he could post to Instagram, where he regularly vies against heavy competition to be Trump’s greatest sycophant.

The 2026 World Cup starts in only 13 months (on June 11, 2026). And yet, according to the US State Department, wait times are 18 months for visas from Colombia, 12 months for Nigeria, 11 months for Ecuador, and five months for Algeria (these are for general visas unrelated to the World Cup). Adam Crafton reported in The Athletic that State Department officials are expressing concern that DOGE’s reckless dismantling of the federal government may well exacerbate these wait times as well as the acceptance rates for World Cup tourists who need a visa.

People should start pulling their visa applications (even applying now comes with the threat of “enhanced vetting”) and to not come to the United States for the World Cup. You are entering an airspace where, thanks to government cuts, planes can no longer safely take off and land. Once off the plane, you will be entering an airport that could become your prison. Once you make it through, you are a leaving-your-visa-papers-in-your-hotel-room away from a gulag. Please, for yourselves, for your families, stay away from the United States. As for the players, do not bring your families into the United States. Do not endanger the people you love. It may be difficult to imagine a boycott of the US portion of the World Cup. But if you must see the tournament in person, the wonderful World Cup venues in Mexico and Canada provide an alternative for those who don’t find concentration camps “funny.”