This weekend, tens of thousands of people will make their way to the Bay Area city of Santa Clara, ready to celebrate a weekend at the Super Bowl.
Beneath the jubilant mood, some residents and officials have been grappling with the possibility of ICE enforcement operations during the game, and taking steps to prepare.
Both Kristi Noem, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) secretary, and her adviser Corey Lewandowski announced in the fall that agents would conduct operations during the nation’s largest sporting event. While Homeland Security Investigations teams that are focused on preventing human trafficking and the sale of counterfeit goods have long worked the event, immigration operations would be unusual.
In the city of Santa Clara, where nearly half of residents were born outside the US, fear was building as the game approached, said Lisa Gillmor, the mayor.
People were afraid of being targeted simply for having brown skin, she said: “They’re afraid to send their kids to school. There’s fear that maybe they should leave during the Super Bowl if the city is going to be inundated with ICE agents.”
This week, however, the NFL, which has long partnered with the DHS, said there would be “no planned ICE enforcement activities”. “We are confident of that,” said Cathy Lanier, the league’s chief security officer.
Gavin Newsom, California’s governor, said on Thursday that his office had been “assured there will be no immigration enforcement tied to the game”.
In a statement to the Guardian last week, the DHS declined to confirm reports about operations around Levi’s Stadium, writing that the agency does “not disclose future operations or discuss personnel”.
“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,” said DHS assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin.
The announcement from the NFL has brought relief, but residents are still on edge, said Otto Lee, the president of the Santa Clara county board of supervisors.
“It helps alleviate some fear in the community, but at the same time, we certainly need to prepare for the worst,” Lee said.
Officials in Santa Clara county were already anticipating a demanding year ahead as the area prepared to host some six World Cup games this summer and the Super Bowl.
The threat of an ICE presence added new challenges.
As the Trump administration has implemented its mass deportation agenda and staged aggressive operations in which agents have killed two US citizens, alarm has spread across the US.
Although northern California has had low ICE arrest rates, communities there have been readying themselves. Last fall, the Trump administration was expected to deploy more than 100 immigration agents to San Francisco, but the president ultimately called off the operation after conversations with the city’s mayor and tech leaders.
Santa Clara county has a rapid response network that tracks ICE activity and provides verified information to residents.
Lee said at a recent board of supervisors meeting that ICE agents don’t have “absolute immunity”, and that local law enforcement would arrest anyone who “comes into our county masked, spreading terror, breaking laws or threatening our residents”.
Lee and other officials were outraged by the possibility of ICE activity at the Super Bowl. The county is focused on ensuring it will be a safe event, and enforcement activities would bring chaos. ICE activities in Minnesota created havoc, Lee said, with “incompetent chaos [and] trigger-happy gunmen”.
“That truly endangers everybody’s lives. And certainly does not make our community safer,” he added.
On Monday, the US representative Ro Khanna, whose district includes Santa Clara, and some 21 other members of Congress sent a letter to Noem demanding that the DHS not deploy immigration enforcement personnel.
“This should be a moment of celebration, unity and economic opportunity, not a flashpoint for fear, polarization and violence,” they wrote.
This week, the Santa Clara city council passed an ordinance banning federal authorities from using city property for immigration enforcement. Protests are expected outside the game, and volunteers plan to patrol near the stadium around the community looking out for ICE.
Gillmor hopes that the NFL’s announcement will hold true, and she suspects that it will, given that the administration likely doesn’t want to disrupt the day for wealthy ticket holders. If there were an ICE presence, she said, local law enforcement would not cooperate with the federal agents, as state law mandates.
“I’m trying to calm the waters here to let them know that we have their back in Santa Clara,” she said. “In the event [ICE] did come, we’re going to uphold the law no matter what, but they’re not going to get any assistance from us.”
But the issues go beyond the Super Bowl, she said, and anxiety will surely escalate in the coming months as the community prepares for the World Cup and visitors from around the world.
“The core issue is ICE and the way that they’ve conducted their operations,” she said. “Fear is at a crescendo now, but I think that the underlying issue has been building a long time. And it’s not going to stop. After this game, it’s going to reappear again no matter what.”
