US Customs and Border Protection has promised to be "suited and booted" at the first round of Club World Cup soccer matches, as the curtain-raiser event for next year's World Cup kicks off amidst anxiety from some fans in the United States.
The tournament starts in Miami on Saturday as soccer great Lionel Messi and his MLS team Inter Miami play Egypt's Al Ahly, as protests over US President Donald Trump's immigration policies continue across the country.
"CBP will be suited and booted, ready to provide security for the first round of games," the department wrote in a widely reported social media post that added to some fans' concerns over attending the Club World Cup.
The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment over the now-deleted post.
Tom Warrick, a former DHS deputy assistant secretary, told Reuters that while it is a normal practice for agencies like ICE and CBP to provide surge capacity security at major sporting events, the language from the post caused understandable alarm.
Trump's immigration policies
"I suspect it was just a moment of inattention before somebody cleared a message that someone else should have said, 'Oh, whoa, wait a minute, we need to change the messaging'," said Warrick, a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council think tank.
"They may also need to change the security posture because very clearly, you know, uniformed officers or people in tactical gear are going to be looked at very differently, especially by a sporting event that is of such interest to people who come from countries that have citizens that have been the target of some of Trump's immigration enforcement measures."
Trump deployed the Marines in Los Angeles this week in response to civilians protesting against his immigration policies, as Immigration and Customs Enforcement ramps up raids to deliver on his promise of record-level deportations.
California Governor Gavin Newsom and other Democratic leaders said the deployment was unnecessary, while Trump defended his decision, saying the city would be in flames if he had not done so. Protests so far have been mostly peaceful.
"I'm scared because things have got ugly. But let's hope that things calm down a bit and let us enjoy the games," said bricklayer Tono, who was originally from Monterrey, in northern Mexico, and now works in Los Angeles.
The 25-year-old, who has been in the United States for five years and declined to share his last name, said he and his friends had tickets to see Liga MX side Monterrey, who play all three of their group-stage matches at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena.
"If things get uglier, we'll talk about it, after all we have time to decide," he said.
The Club World Cup will see 32 teams competing in 12 stadiums across the United States, after world soccer's governing body FIFA expanded the format in a billion-dollar gamble to revolutionise the club game.
The tournament is a curtain-raiser for the 2026 World Cup, as organisers try to fan enthusiasm for the quadrennial global spectacle in the soccer-ambivalent US, which is co-hosting next year's finals with neighbours Canada and Mexico.
Jorge Loweree, managing director at US advocacy group American Immigration Council, said that soccer owes some of its growing popularity in the US to immigrants.
"It's reasonable to expect that lots and lots of folks that just want to attend these events are either immigrants themselves here permanently, temporarily - even folks that may be undocumented," he told Reuters.
"It's perfectly reasonable to be scared. We haven't seen large-scale immigration enforcement actions at sporting events like this historically, but this is also a moment that is not like any other moment in history in the US"
