HRW urges minute’s silence at World Cup final for ICE killings

FIFA should stage a minute’s silence before the World Cup final for the two people shot dead by US immigration agents this month, Human Rights Watch said Thursday. (Reuters/File)

• “It would be entirely appropriate for FIFA to stage a minute of silence before the World Cup final,” Worden told AFP
• “When we think of this World Cup, the world is going to think of the ICE killings”

NEW YORK: FIFA should stage a minute’s silence before the World Cup final for the two people shot dead by US immigration agents this month, Human Rights Watch said Thursday.
A Colombian man was killed in Maine on Monday, while a Mexican man was killed in Houston last week, both during traffic stops as part of President Donald Trump’s immigrant crackdown.
“It would be entirely appropriate for FIFA to stage a minute of silence before the World Cup final at MetLife Stadium,” Minky Worden, director of global initiatives at Human Rights Watch, told AFP in an interview.
“There is an ICE detention facility only nine miles away, and it is an opportunity that FIFA has to make good on its promises that this World Cup would uphold human rights,” she added.
The 2026 World Cup was the first to include human rights criteria in the bidding process, and follows complaints over previous tournaments held in Russia and Qatar.
Worden said the tournament hosted primarily in the United States, with games also in Canada and Mexico, would be remembered as a “MAGA World Cup,” referencing Trump’s Make America Great Again movement.
“When we think of this World Cup, the world is going to think of the ICE killings, the ICE deportations that happened at the same time the World Cup was going on,” she said.
Worden also slammed the FIFA Peace Prize, gifted to Trump in December, as serving to “cover up the abuses of the Trump administration, which were chiefly targeting migrants and their families.”
Worden spoke after several rights groups held a media briefing in New York ahead of the World Cup final on Sunday between Spain and Argentina.
Daniel Norona, Americas advocacy director for Amnesty International, told reporters that FIFA had failed to deliver on promises to produce an inclusive World Cup.
“FIFA hasn’t used its leverage for this tournament,” he told reporters, saying that Trump’s deportation policies had forced immigrants “into the shadows.”