On Saturday, Markwayne Mullin, the Department of Homeland Security secretary, used a speech at Kansas City International Airport to deliver an unusual message. Customs and Border Protection officers stood around him as a backdrop, and in his right hand, Mullin held the squishy pink ball he carries as a stress-management tool, gripping it as he spoke. The United States isn’t fully prepared to host the biggest, most expensive sporting event in world history—and, he wanted to make clear, it’s not his fault.
Kansas City, Missouri, will be one of 11 U.S. host sites for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, which starts June 11. The soccer tournament is the world’s most popular sporting event, and Mullin said the United States is expecting as many as 7 million international visitors. Although Mexico and Canada are co-hosting the tournament, more than three-quarters of the matches will be played in the U.S., and Mullin has likened the security challenge to protecting “78 Super Bowls.”
Mullin said that the 76-day DHS funding shutdown this spring put the safety of the World Cup in jeopardy, and he blamed “kamikaze Democrats” who “will do anything to destroy our nation as long as they can find a way to get back to power.” The shutdown—over Democrats’ demands to rein in ICE—ended April 30 when Republicans settled for a procedural work-around. “Can we still deliver? Yes,” Mullin said. “Were we able to be as proactive? No. Absolutely not.”
Mullin, who took over the department in March after President Trump ousted Kristi Noem, has acknowledged that he is not a soccer fan. But as a former wrestler, he knows how to set up a takedown. Although the stated purpose of Mullin’s speech was to promote a Republican proposal for an additional $70 billion to fund immigration enforcement, it also allowed him to pre-deflect blame if something bad were to happen during the World Cup. Mullin made appearances on Fox News this week to drive that message home.
Mullin has lots of reasons to worry. The war with Iran and its proxies. The presence of foreign leaders and top U.S. officials, including Trump, at the games. Lone-wolf attackers with innumerable possible grievances. In an era of heightened political violence, any high-profile public event is a potential target for extremists, and the country remains deeply polarized and heavily armed.
Mullin said he is especially concerned about “soft” areas outside the stadiums: Bars, restaurants, and public transportation will be packed with crowds. Missouri has mobilized its National Guard to help with those locations, and Mullin urged other states to follow. “Everybody remembers the correspondent dinner with the active shooter,” Mullin said in Kansas City, referring to the event last month in Washington, D.C., that was cut short by a gunman’s failed attack.
Each host city will be responsible for coordinating the security of its venues, and DHS, the FBI, and other federal agencies will provide logistical support. FIFA, which organizes the World Cup, has provided $625 million for additional security funding to the host cities through FEMA (which is part of DHS). The money was partly delayed during the shutdown, but checks have since gone out, Mullin said.
I asked a DHS official involved in the preparations what the mood was like at department headquarters with the event less than a month away. The shutdown, and Trump’s removal of Noem and her team, “definitely interrupted planning,” said the official, who is not allowed to speak with reporters. “There is confidence the team will rise to the occasion, but the challenges and the strain are real.”
The Transportation Security Administration is a main source of anxiety at DHS, two officials told me. The Trump administration is planning to deploy TSA officers to help screen fans at stadium entrances, and heightened attention will be paid to games attended by foreign dignitaries and U.S. leaders. The stadium work will divert officers away from U.S. airports that are expected to be busy with an influx of soccer fans. DHS declined to tell me how many TSA officers it plans to send to stadiums.
Mullin said on Fox News recently that TSA lost nearly 8 percent of its workforce when its staff went without pay during the shutdown. The agency has about 65,000 employees, including roughly 50,000 transportation-security officers. The DHS official I spoke with outside official channels told me that TSA officials “aren’t adequately prepared to manage the stadium work and the airport work.”
DHS’s digital defenses are even more ragged. On Tuesday, Mullin told Fox News that the U.S. cybersecurity agency, CISA, lost 1,100 staffers during the shutdown—a third of its workforce. “You can’t have connectivity with local law enforcement and emergency management without having secure cyber,” he said. “We are months behind.”
The DHS official I spoke with mentioned concerns about potential travel delays at land-border crossings with Mexico and Canada, especially between Seattle and Vancouver, British Columbia, where the two cities have several back-to-back games. CBP is preparing to temporarily reassign some airport officers to those land crossings. One agency official I spoke with said that new facial-recognition technology and other improvements will help speed up processing times, but visitors unfamiliar with CBP screening procedures could slow things down.
Seattle is preparing to stage a Pride celebration on June 26, the same day the city is scheduled to host a match between Iran and Egypt, two nations that criminalize homosexuality. Egypt’s soccer federation sent a letter to FIFA in December “categorically rejecting any activities related to supporting homosexuality during the match.” Amid their country’s ongoing war with the United States, Iran’s soccer authorities have also demanded a ban on rainbow Pride flags in the stadium.
[Read: The quintessential Trumpian sport]
Federal aviation authorities have banned unauthorized drone flights over the stadiums, and Andrew Giuliani, the director of the White House’s World Cup task force, has described drone incursions as a leading threat. DHS has been issuing grants to cities and states—not only those hosting World Cup games—to stop illegal drone flights, and Trump officials organized a conference last November for cities and states to meet with private companies that manufacture counter-drone technologies. But two DHS officials told me that the decentralized approach to drone response creates a risk that some stadiums will be better prepared than others.
Trump officials say they’re preparing for a possible surge in sex-trafficking cases during the tournament. On Monday, the Treasury Department issued a bulletin through its financial-crimes division warning that “individuals visiting or residing near host cities may be vulnerable to sex or labor trafficking” amid “the surge in economic activity” created by the World Cup. ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations division, which leads anti-trafficking efforts and seizes counterfeit merchandise, is preparing to deploy around the games, but any mention of an ICE presence at the World Cup may leave some foreign-born fans on edge.
DHS officials say that ICE’s immigration-enforcement officers have no plans to target the tournament. “Routine immigration enforcement operations will continue consistently with longstanding DHS policy,” Lauren Bis, a department spokesperson, told me in a statement. “At this time, there are no plans for large-scale immigration enforcement operations specifically targeting World Cup venues or attendees.”
It is an irony of the “America First” era that the Trump administration gets to host the two biggest sporting events in the world within a span of two years. The 2026 World Cup has been talked about as a security test run for the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, but in many ways, the cup is the bigger challenge. It involves 11 cities, rather than one, posing a greater risk of stretching federal resources too thinly. The crowds at the stadiums will be much bigger, and the money will be too.
Some host cities seem to be preparing with the same degree of trepidation that Mullin has conveyed. Mike Sena, the executive director of the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center—a fusion center for law-enforcement agencies—testified to Congress earlier this year that the delayed delivery of $51 million in grant funding to the Bay Area as a result of the shutdown left agencies little time to get ready. Both San Francisco and New Jersey have canceled plans to set up a large outdoor “fan fest” showing matches on giant TVs for thousands of spectators. Local organizers said they’re now planning to hold viewing parties at smaller venues, and although they did not specifically cite security concerns for the move, those outdoor “soft” sites can be challenging and costly to secure.
[Read: Here’s another way America will choke at the World Cup]
FIFA’s 2018 selection of Canada, Mexico, and the United States to host the World Cup was celebrated at the time as a crowning achievement of North American economic integration. Since then, Trump has scrapped the NAFTA treaty that was the foundation of that vision. Later this year, once the games are over, the three countries are due to renegotiate the USMCA, the successor to NAFTA. Trump is threatening to withdraw entirely and is feuding with Canada over tariffs and threatening unilateral military strikes on cartel targets in Mexico. The White House spokesperson Davis Ingle told me in a statement that Trump is “focused on ensuring that this is not only an incredible experience for all fans and visitors, but also the safest and most secure in history.”
Politics will loom over the games nonetheless. Immigrant fans, especially from Latin America and Africa, are pillars of the U.S. soccer-going public. They have also been prime targets for Trump’s mass-deportation campaign. Immigrants often root for the nation of their birth, even if they have little or no desire to live there again, and it seems safe to expect the matches to fire up culture-war battles over “divided loyalties” and what it means for immigrants to successfully assimilate.
The best scenario, and one that has played out in other host nations as anxieties increase during the countdown, is that the on-field drama of the games is compelling enough to keep attention on the players and their teams. That outcome will also require competent American security, and possibly some uncharacteristic deference from a U.S. president who enjoys being the center of attention. FIFA’s leaders have been cultivating Trump seemingly for this very reason, awarding him their inaugural “peace prize” last year. They’re hoping the American president will be happy as a successful host even if he can’t be the star of the show.
Michael Scherer contributed to this report.
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