WASHINGTON – Inside the Kennedy Center, FIFA President Gianni Infantino was hanging a gold metal around the neck of his “close friend” Donald Trump and giving him a hefty golden peace trophy.
“The FIFA Peace Prize is awarded annually,” Infantino said of the new award nobody has ever won before from his supposedly apolitical organization. The pair were at the landmark arts venue for a floor show–like event before officials drew brackets of teams to play this summer’s World Cup tournament, to be held in Canada, Mexico, and the United States. FIFA took over the building for free and displaced scheduled National Symphony Orchestra concerts, according to The Washington Post; it closed down nearby streets for multiple blocks and forced drivers into inconvenient detours.
“This is truly one of the great honors of my life. And beyond awards, we saved millions and millions of lives,” Trump said in a kind of acceptance speech, referring to a series of conflicts around the world he likes to say he stopped, despite contradictory statements from the people involved in the conflicts. “The fact that we could do that, so many different wars that were able to end in some cases right before they started, it was great to get them done,” he continued, claiming without proof that “the world is a safer place now.”
Outside was an entirely different scene. Dozens of protesters had gathered as close as they could to the Kennedy Center, holding up soccer-style red cards that said, “deadly sanctions,” “bombing boats,” and “racist travel bans.” They flew a giant Palestinian flag and mourned the at least 437 Gazan soccer players murdered in the ongoing U.S.-backed Israeli genocide, according to the Palestinian Football Association. The dead include Suleiman al-Obeid, the Pele of Palestine, whom Israeli soldiers murdered as he waited in line for food in Rafah.
Protesters had a cartoonishly huge soccer ball, which they pushed into a stack of oversized cardboard ice cubes. “No ICE in my cup!” another series of signs said. Big snowflakes showered down. A phalanx of cops stood within throwing distance. Protesters set up a table with hot cocoa.
The protest, organized by activists and soccer fans, including the group Get Free, want white supremacy out of soccer. Trump colludes with FIFA billionaires, the group argues, and is using “the beautiful game” to promote his message and vision ahead of America’s 250th birthday. It’s one of the many protests that are expected ahead of next summer’s World Cup games, said political observers who study sports. The way FIFA conducts itself amid Trump’s immigration terror campaign and the GOP’s decision to slam the doors shut on immigration of all kinds, including tourism, will act as a preview for how the administration will treat the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles in 2028, they said.
“Soccer is about equality and freedom of movement,” said Anthony Torres, a spokesperson for Get Free. But Trump, he said, is erasing that, just as he’s erasing the history and presence of Black and brown people in the U.S., filling up his detention gulags and “bringing us back to the heyday of Jim Crow.”
Get Free is calling for the World Cup to be a platform for humanity, Torres said, and for World Cup leadership to stand up against white supremacy. Protesters from other organizations turned out, too.
“We’re here to send a clear message to Trump that you can’t reconcile ICE with soccer culture,” said Slobodan Milic, a protester with Free DC and avid fan of D.C. United, the local MLS team. “Soccer is the most democratic game there is. Everyone tries to hit the ball.”
After chatting briefly about PSV Eindhoven’s recent upset win over Liverpool—“It was on Liverpool’s own turf!”—Milic returned to politics. Along with his fellow D.C. United fans, he said, he spends the 51st minute of every game chanting, “Free D.C.!” in reference to the long-standing push to make D.C. the 51st state. Sometimes, the chant takes over the whole stadium. Now he’s directing his energy toward keeping ICE away from the World Cup. The goal, he said, is to “abolish ICE during the World Cup and get them out of all of our cities.”
World Cup matches will be played in 11 U.S. cities, including Los Angeles, Miami, and New York, all of which have large immigrant populations. Earlier this year, Los Angeles was the site of major ICE operations and counterprotests, and advocates worry that Trump could use the World Cup as a pretense to incite more raids and violence. Protesters like Milic fear that residents without citizenship could be targeted as they try to enjoy the festivities and games next summer.
Those fears are well-founded: Just this July, an asylum seeker was arrested and handed over to ICE after bringing his two children, aged 10 and 14, to watch FIFA’s Club World Cup final in New Jersey. After three months in immigration detention, the man decided not to appeal when a judge rejected his asylum claim, prioritizing leaving detention above all else. He was returned to his country of origin, according to Human Rights Watch.
Closer to the Kennedy Center, soccer fans lined up for hours to get inside, and by noon a few were still making their way through the snow to get in. They, too, were concerned about the upcoming event. One fan, who declined to share his name and who planned to watch the draw at a coffee shop nearby, said he was supporting the team from Iran.
Under Trump’s travel ban, Iranian officials have been barred from coming into the U.S. since June. Trump’s executive order made exemptions for athletes, support staff, and immediate relatives for the World Cup event, but not necessarily for Friday’s draw. Iranian officials had planned to boycott the draw, but Iranian media on Thursday reported that the team’s coach would attend, according to the Associated Press.
The fan stood outside the security line, holding hands with a woman as snowflakes gathered on their thick jackets. If “softer” forms of diplomacy, like international sporting events, have the exact same goal as “harder” forms, “then I’m not sure it’s such an amazing goal,” he said before heading indoors. “But if it’s in the spirit of brotherhood, then that’s great.”
Jules Boykoff, professor and department chair in the department of political science at Pacific University and an ex-professional soccer player, said in a phone interview that among the open questions for the June matches are not just whether Trump’s anti-immigration policies will affect players. It’s also unclear how those policies will affect international fans.
He said he didn’t know how someone from Latin America could come into a U.S. sports event, given that the Supreme Court just ruled that Immigration and Customs Enforcement can use race as a reason to disappear someone. “You gotta be a real sports nut to do that,” he said.
Boykoff added that he doubted whether FIFA would take any steps to meet the kinds of demands demonstrators were making.
“Gianni Infantino has been Trump’s number one enabler. FIFA is not going to engage in anything resembling isolating Trump,” he said. “The fact that the World Cup draw is in D.C. is a testament to that. They made it as easy as possible for Trump to be there.”
The protesters kept chanting even as the event got under way and the snow came down heavier. They took turns kicking the massive inflatable soccer ball into the paper blocks of “ICE,” which went tumbling down onto the concrete.
They cheered. “Gooooooooaaaaal!”
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Whitney Curry Wimbish is a staff writer at The American Prospect. She previously worked in the Financial Times newsletters division, The Cambodia Daily in Phnom Penh, and the Herald News in New Jersey. Her work has been published in multiple outlets, including The New York Times, The Baffler, Los Angeles Review of Books, Music & Literature, North American Review, Sentient, Semafor, and elsewhere. She is a coauthor of The Majority Report’s daily newsletter and publishes short fiction in a range of literary magazines.
Emma Janssen is a writing fellow at The American Prospect, where she reports on anti-poverty policy, health, and political power. Before joining the Prospect, she was at UChicago studying political philosophy, editing for The Chicago Maroon, and freelancing for the Hyde Park Herald.
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