By Steve Gillis
March 5, 2026

Antiwar and human rights activists in 10 U.S. cities — Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, Houston, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Philadelphia and Seattle, and also New Jersey and the San Francisco Bay Area— are gearing up for a campaign to demand that Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) move World Cup soccer games out of the U.S. because of its war crimes around the world.

For the world’s peace-loving peoples, the call to “Boycott the U.S.!” is especially poignant while marauding, masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other Department of Homeland Security storm troopers continue their war at home against the world’s immigrant workers, foreign-born students and tourists.

Forgotten in the war fog of U.S. media propaganda during the opening barrages of Raytheon and Elbit Systems-made missiles slaughtering hundreds of Iranian government leaders and school children alike is the incongruous “FIFA Peace Prize” presented by FIFA President Gianni Infantino to U.S. President Donald Trump on December 5, 2025. Also left out in the media is FIFA’s “strategic partnership” with Trump’s imperialist “Board of Peace,” announced Feb. 19, to build football stadiums in Gaza on top of the rubble of Indigenous Palestinian homes and graves to promote the Zionist vision of turning Gaza’s stolen, genocided land into a seaside resort. (inside.fifa.com, Feb. 19)

Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) initiated the call for a global boycott of the U.S. targeting FIFA, its World Cup games and the International Olympic Committee on Jan. 24 — the day U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents publicly executed nurse Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. BAP explained that this same rogue U.S. government kidnapped Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro and First Combatant Cilia Flores on Jan. 3 and has been directing and supplying the Zionist Israel Occupation Forces’ genocide against the Palestinian people for over two years. The U.S. should rightfully now be the target, like Israel, of a global Boycott, Divest, Sanctions (BDS) movement. (workers.org/2026/02/90608/)

Anti-Fascist Football Coalition

The campaign has developed into the Anti-Fascist Football Coalition, a North-South Project for Peoples Centered Human Rights against war, repression and imperialism. (peoplescenteredhumanrights.com) To join the campaign, start by spreading the coalition’s petition at bit.ly/BANFIFA demanding that FIFA and the IOC [International Olympic Committee] ban the U.S. and Israel from hosting or participating in international sporting events.

As Camila Escalante of Sovereign Media describes the growing coalition: “It’s not just ICE abductions, disappearances and killings. The U.S. regime is openly sponsoring genocide, occupation, terrorism and waging wars abroad. Calls are mounting internationally for a FIFA World Cup boycott.” (YouTube, Feb. 11.)

Football journalist Nima Tavallaey is among the many voices to point out that the Trump administration’s racist travel bans should automatically disqualify the U.S. from hosting any international games. In Boston, for example, where FIFA has scheduled games in June with teams from Haiti, Morocco and Ghana, fans and even team members are subject to Homeland Security and State Dept. travel bans. The Haitian community of 70,000 in Boston is mostly immigrants, many on precarious Temporary Protected Status, who now experience ICE terror as part of daily life.

A Feb. 21 article in The Guardian describes the ordeal of a white tourist on vacation traveling on a British passport and U.S. visa who was arrested in July 2025 by ICE at the Canadian border — for no reason it turned out other than that the ICE agent got a quota bonus. The article’s headline makes the boycott case: “‘Don’t go to the U.S. – not with Trump in charge.’ The UK tourist with a valid visa detained by ICE for six weeks, Karen Newton, was in America on the trip of a lifetime when she was shackled, transported and held for weeks on end.”

11 million fewer tourists

In fact, as a Feb. 20 New York Times article highlights, the barbaric war conditions that the imperialist U.S. police state has created at home and abroad has spawned a natural boycott reverberating in massive economic losses. “When 11 million international visitors aren’t showing up, the result is billions of dollars in economic losses to the travel industry,’ said Erik Hansen, a senior vice-president at the U.S. Travel Association, a trade group that promotes travel to and within the country.” (“11 Million Visitors Short: Inside America’s Continuing Tourism Slump”)

Even global football business executives can’t avoid the call to “Boycott the U.S.” A Jan. 21, 2026, article in The Athletic, the New York Times’ sports section — headlined “World Cup boycott? With people ‘dying on the street,’ a German soccer exec wants a discussion” — reports that Oke Goettlich, one of 11 vice presidents of the German Football Association, has raised the U.S. boycott discussion to his wealthy peers.

In Florida, a coalition of civil rights organizations — including the Florida Immigrant Coalition, the American Civil Liberties Union and American Friends Service Committee — held a press conference Feb. 5 at FIFA’s Miami offices to issue a travel advisory for people considering trying to enter the U.S. for World Cup games there, warning of immigration enforcement tactics and detention risks for foreign tourists. “Recent reporting and civil-rights litigation document growing instances in which visitors, tourists, lawful residents, and even U.S. citizens have been detained, questioned, held in immigration custody, or removed from the United States following encounters with federal immigration enforcement and local law enforcement acting under expansive immigration partnerships,’ the alert said, citing enforcement actions in Florida and Gov. Ron DeSantis’ moves to have local police partner with federal immigration officials.” (foxnews.com, Feb. 5)

BDS the U.S.!

The Boston Coalition for Palestine (BCFP) — itself composed of over 40 pro-Palestine, anti-Zionist constituent organizations — has taken up the call to demand that FIFA and its World Cup games be moved from their city. There, where the Chamber of Commerce is promoting tourism for the 250th anniversary of the colonists’ 1776 declared war with England to maintain chattel slavery, Democratic Party-controlled city and state politicians have been heralding the FIFA games as a savior of the local tourist economy, hit hard by Trump’s travel bans and international disrepute.

Boston city administration has turned over to FIFA the public property of City Hall Plaza for the month of June to hold a for-profit festival. BCFP is preparing press conferences and protests to demand that the “FIFA Fan Festival” and World Cup be removed from Boston and the U.S. and that the games be globally boycotted in the U.S. while the U.S.-Israeli genocide in Palestine and the illegal war against Iran continue with impunity.

In addition, the Massachusetts State Police, the Boston Police Department, local sheriffs and county jailers have joined the U.S. Department of Homeland Security on a spending spree for billions of dollars’ worth of drones, counter-drones, surveillance and crowd control technology. They claim alleged “terrorist threats” to the FIFA festival and World Cup games at Gillette Stadium to justify turning a U.S. city into an occupied armed camp so the games can go on free of people protesting about genocide and war. (binj.news, Feb. 26, 2026)

The call by the Anti-Fascist Football Coalition from inside the U.S. to essentially “BDS the U.S.” has its historical precursor in the African National Congress’s call in the 1980s to boycott and divest from all economic, cultural and educational activity with apartheid South Africa. In that era, “I… I… I… Ain’t gonna play Sun City!” by Artists United Against Apartheid became an international battle cry that helped put the criminal apartheid state into the dustbin of history. The call also builds on the Palestinian-led international Boycott, Divest, Sanctions Movement launched in 2005 to combat the genocidal, U.S.-sponsored settler colony of Israel.