Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents won’t be at the Super Bowl, the NFL said Tuesday.
Agents from the Department of Homeland Security will still be part of security operations around the game, but ICE agents won’t be part of that, according to the league. The federal government hasn’t been clear about which agencies will be involved, which is a break from past Super Bowls.
The Bay Area Host Committee—which has organized the NBA All-Star Game, Super Bowl, and the upcoming men’s World Cup—sent a memo to local governments in San Francisco, Santa Clara, and San Jose about security. The note said the NFL had confirmed with DHS that “there are no planned ICE immigration enforcement operations associated with SBLX.” DHS will still be on the ground along with NFL security and local law enforcement, the memo said.
The Washington Post first reported the news about the host committee’s memo.
NFL chief security officer Cathy Lanier clarified Tuesday that ICE won’t be part of the federal government’s security efforts at the Super Bowl at all. “There is not ICE deployed with us at this Super Bowl and I don’t believe there has been in the last several, but most of the other departments from the Coast Guard to … many other agencies are here,” she said.
ICE has received increasing public scrutiny following the killing of protestor Alex Pretti in Minneapolis on Jan. 24. The events sparked protests across sports by athletes and teams. Super Bowl halftime performer Bad Bunny called for “ICE out” at the Grammy Awards on Sunday night.
DHS has said it will have a heavy presence at the Super Bowl. But neither DHS nor ICE has publicly said whether ICE will be involved in that activity.
“DHS is committed to working with our local and federal partners to ensure the Super Bowl is safe for everyone involved, as we do with every major sporting event, including the World Cup,” DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement. “Our mission remains unchanged. We will not disclose future operations or discuss personnel. Super Bowl security will entail a whole of government response conducted in-line with the U.S. Constitution. Those who are here legally and are not breaking other laws have nothing to fear.”
However, DHS has extensively telegraphed future operations and discussed personnel for Super Bowls in the past.
Last year, DHS posted a lengthy press release detailing which of its agencies would be involved and what they would be doing. Customs and Border Protection, whose agents killed Pretti, was involved at the Super Bowl with airspace security, video surveillance, scanning cargo at the stadium, and bootleg merchandise, according to the press release. (Both CBP and ICE are sub-agencies under the DHS umbrella.)
ICE was not listed as part of DHS’s operations at last year’s Super Bowl, but it has been involved in other ones. For Super Bowl LI in Houston, for example, ICE’s website lists a day-by-day breakdown of what its agents were doing in the lead-up to the event. The next year, ICE posted a series of videos to its official YouTube page about its operations at Super Bowl LII in Minneapolis.
The confirmation that ICE is not planning enforcement operations is a change of tune for President Donald Trump’s administration. In October, DHS secretary Kristi Noem said, “We’ll be all over that place.” Noem’s top advisor, Corey Lewandowski, also said that month: “There is nowhere that you can provide safe haven to people in this country illegally. Not the Super Bowl and nowhere else.”
Commissioner Roger Goodell acknowledged in remarks on Monday that the federal government, “including this administration and every other administration before that,” plays a large role in Super Bowl security. Goodell was also asked about Bad Bunny and once again backed the Puerto Rican artist.
“Bad Bunny is, and I think that was demonstrated [at the Grammys], one of the great artists in the world,” Goodell said. “And that’s one of the reasons we chose him.”
