Tens of thousands of people from across the globe are set to travel to the United States, Canada and Mexico for the 2026 Fifa World Cup tournament (11 June-19 July). But with the potential presence of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents at matches casting a pall over proceedings, a new initiative is using art to kick back at the situation.
Artists from ten of the 11 World Cup host cities in the US have contributed poster designs to No Ice in the Cup, an initiative that seeks to keep the agency away from the World Cup and protect the vulnerable communities that may attend. Launched on 6 May by the Horizons Project, a team of organisers linking pro-democracy movements and networks throughout the US, the initiative aims to “motivate people through art” according to lead organiser Paola Mendoza.
“We wanted to take a moment that the world would be watching,” she says, “and take a stand against the injustice, violence and indignity that Ice has been perpetrating on our immigrant communities, and we wanted to do that very clearly by centring both those communities that have been affected and also the love of the game, which is soccer, which is the world’s sport.”
The posters are available to download for free from the No Ice in the Cup website, with the organisation encouraging the public to “download, remix, adapt and put this art into action in your efforts to combat Ice this summer”. Each artist utilised a distinctive style and applied locally-relevant themes in their work. Chris Stewart of Los Angeles painted a man wearing a Mexico jersey being pulled at by two pairs of arms, while Hana Natsuhara of Seattle riffed on the city’s status as the hometown of Starbucks with a coffee-inspired design. Johann C. Muñoz-Tapasco of Miami created a text-heavy poster with a blue-outline illustration of an alligator crushing a football in its jaw and the slogan “No Ice in Our Waters”.
No Ice in the Cup campaign posters designed by Chris Stewart of Los Angeles (left) and Hana Natsuhara of Seattle (right) Courtesy the artists and No Ice in the Cup
New York’s poster, showing a squad of soccer players facing off against Ice agents in tactical gear, is by Cristy Road Carrera, a New York-based illustrator and a first-generation Cuban American. A self-professed fan of the tournament since the 1990s, the artist says she appreciates the World Cup as a space of community, joy and empowerment, particularly for immigrant communities who do not necessarily favour more traditionally US sports.
“Being asked to do art to elevate the power of the game and the beauty of the community that it upholds was so important to me,” she says, “because the idea of Ice complicating and targeting these spaces almost destroys the sanctity of what made them special and different from American football and baseball.”
The initiative comes as Ice faces an intense public backlash over violent raids and occupations of cities across the US. A Washington Post-University of Maryland poll from 4 June found that nearly two thirds of Americans oppose Ice agents being present at World Cup stadiums. And on 23 April more than 120 civil society groups issued a travel warning to visitors about “serious rights violations” in regards to the agency’s conduct, such as “arbitrary denial of entry and risk of arrest, detention and/or deportation”, Those fears are corroborated by reports of travellers from Canada and European countries being imprisoned for days, even weeks in Ice detention centres. Ice operations such as Operation Metro Surge in Minneapolis have also led to the killing of civilian bystanders such as Renée Good and Alex Pretti, whose shooting deaths at the hands of agents was caught on video, sparking national outrage.
Amid this climate of violence and fear, it is unsurprising that fans are not flocking to the US. Last month the American Hotel & Lodging Association cited the risk of Ice detainment as a contributing factor in lower-than-expected hotel bookings in host cities, according to Forbes. Though Ice has seemingly backed off since Minneapolis—federal officials have stated that it will not conduct enforcement operations during the tournament in Los Angeles, which has already seen intense raids—Mendoza argues that Ice’s World Cup presence is a prelude to more politically disruptive deployments in the future, such as at polling places during the 2026 midterm elections.
“The next demand after the World Cup, obviously, is to say we don’t want Ice in our polling places, we don’t want Ice meddling in our elections in any kind of way,” she says. “As the administration ramps up their threats of what Ice is going to be doing in this country, we as a people have to organise and change our strategies and continue to protect one another as best we can.”
