As thousands of fans poured into the stadium for Arlington\u2019s first FIFA World Cup game Sunday, Rick Majumdar stood on a corner outside the venue, speaking into a microphone: \u201cICE out of the World Cup.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Arlington resident said he wanted to raise awareness about the potential presence of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Arlington as the city welcomed soccer fans from across the world for the match between the Netherlands and Japan.<\/p>\n
Majumdar, 33, was one of about a dozen demonstrators outside AT&T Stadium \u2014 renamed Dallas Stadium during the World Cup \u2014 as part of a protest organized by the Dallas chapter of National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, or NAARPR.<\/p>\n
As fans trickled past in the humid heat, demonstrators gathered at the corner of North Collins Street and East Randol Mill Road, chanting in Spanish: \u201cEl pueblo unido jam\u00e1s ser\u00e1 vencido\u201d \u2014 \u201cThe people united will never be defeated.\u201d<\/p>\n
The group wanted to show visitors and residents they don\u2019t accept ICE\u2019s presence at the World Cup or throughout North Texas, Majumdar said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t need ICE. We\u2019ve seen how repressive they\u2019ve been to people,\u201d Majumdar said.<\/p>\n
Federal officials said they are not planning<\/a> large-scale immigration enforcement actions during World Cup games. However, the Trump administration\u2019s emphasis on curbing undocumented immigration, as well as local examples of immigrants detained by ICE, have driven anxiety and unrest around whether ICE would patrol Arlington streets.<\/p>\n At a news conference in Dallas this month, federal authorities did not directly answer<\/a> whether they were planning immigration enforcement during Arlington\u2019s nine World Cup matches.<\/p>\n \u201cFIFA wants it to be a fantastic event for the fans from all over the world. If someone is here and (has) gone through the legal process to be here to see the games, there\u2019s nothing \u2026 to be worried about when it comes to any additional expectation,\u201d said Christina Foley, the U.S. Secret Service agent in charge of the Dallas field office and the region\u2019s federal World Cup coordinator.<\/p>\n A spokesperson for the Arlington Police Department did not immediately return a request for comment on whether the department arrested protestors Sunday or were aware of any ICE detainments.<\/p>\n Immigration enforcement has already made an impact at World Cup matches outside of Texas, due to the Trump administration\u2019s 39-country travel ban<\/a>. World Cup referee Omar Abdulkadir Artan, from Somalia, was deemed inadmissible because of \u201cvetting concerns\u201d and was denied entry<\/a> into the U.S. at the Miami International Airport.<\/p>\n Team Iraq faced hours of questioning<\/a> at Chicago O\u2019Hare International Airport, with a team photographer denied entry due to \u201cvetting concerns.\u201d Team Iran relocated its base camp<\/a> from Arizona to Mexico after being denied an overnight stay and visas. The U.S. is currently in conflict with Iran.<\/p>\n Dallas resident Xavier Velasquez, 35, said he wanted to remind people \u201cICE is still here.\u201d After the fatal ICE shootings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good<\/a> in Minnesota, Velasquez helped the NAARPR organize anti-ICE demonstrations that drew thousands of supporters, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cEver since then, we’ve kind of seen the awareness kind of slowly coming down, and so we felt like coming to something big like this would kind of put it back into the public\u2019s awareness,\u201d Velasquez said.<\/p>\n Arlington resident Ya\u2019akub Ira Vijandre was detained by ICE in October and has been held in ICE custody since. Friends and family of Vijandre have spoken out in support<\/a> of his release at multiple Arlington City Council meetings, but he remains detained at the Folkston Detention Center in Georgia.<\/p>\n Local stories of immigrant detainments hit close to home for Velasquez, who said his mother was formerly an undocumented immigrant.<\/p>\n \u201cBeing children of immigrants, we see our families in that because that could be our grandma, it could be our uncle, it could be our dad or mom,\u201d Velasquez said.<\/p>\n Down the street from Velasquez, Esperanza Tomeo and Anua Whitlock \u2014 members of the Brown Berets DFW, a Chicano advocacy group \u2014 led a small demonstration between the stadium and the nearby Walmart Supercenter on East Randol Mill Road. As the group chanted toward the stadium, Tejano music played from their speakers.<\/p>\n Tomeo, a Dallas resident, said she wanted to educate international visitors about ICE in North Texas.<\/p>\n \u201cThe world needs to see what\u2019s going on. At this time, everybody\u2019s being censored,\u201d Tomeo said. \u201cIt\u2019s our responsibility and our obligation to be able to let the world know what\u2019s going on.\u201d<\/p>\n Alongside the ICE demonstration at North Collins Street and East Randol Mill Road, Pastor Joel Haynes of Arlington\u2019s Trinity Baptist Church preached into a microphone headset as congregants from the church handed passersby flyers that read: \u201cDon\u2019t miss the goal that matters.\u201d<\/p>\n Sharing that his wife immigrated from Mexico as a child, Haynes was clear that he wasn\u2019t trying to \u201cwork against\u201d the anti-ICE demonstrators. However, he emphasized that \u201cour efforts are best used going to the source of the problem, which is the sin that\u2019s in every heart.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cTruly, if people get saved, there wouldn\u2019t be a need for a demonstration like this,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n Lili Macedo, 35, held a sign reading \u201cHands off our constitutional and civil rights.\u201d The sign featured a photo of Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff for policy, his image circled and crossed out. \u201cStephen Miller, you\u2019re fired,\u201d was written underneath the image.<\/p>\n Macedo said she felt the need to come out to properly support vulnerable communities who could be targeted by ICE. The agency\u2019s presence directly challenged what the global sporting event represents, she said.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s what the World Cup is about: uniting the world, bringing different countries together, different people.\u201d<\/p>\n Cecilia Lenzen is a government accountability reporter for the Fort Worth Report. Contact her at cecilia.lenzen@fortworthreport.org<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Bianca Rodriguez-Mora is a reporting fellow for the Fort Worth Report. Contact her at bianca@fortworthreport.org<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n At the Fort Worth Report, news decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy here<\/a>.<\/p>\n This article<\/a> first appeared on Fort Worth Report<\/a> and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As thousands of fans poured into the stadium for Arlington\u2019s first FIFA World Cup game Sunday, Rick Majumdar…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":338709,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[150,152,151],"class_list":["post-338708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arlington","tag-arlington","tag-arlington-headlines","tag-arlington-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=338708"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338708\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/338709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=338708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=338708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=338708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}