An unintended consequence of U.S. immigration policy: Some fans are skipping the World Cup in the U.S.

CP24’s crime analyst Steve Ryan says people on public transit can expect to see an increased police presence ahead of the World Cup in June.

Steve Schwarzbach has attended every World Cup event since 2006.

He had no apprehensions about attending the games in countries such as South Africa and Brazil which can have a reputation — fairly or not — of being dangerous for tourists. Given the scale of the international event, he trusted that local police would protect World Cup visitors like himself.

“In South Africa and Brazil, I felt very safe because they had so many police, army and security that I didn’t have any fears of going out,” Schwarzbach tells CNN Travel.

But this year, the German national has made the conscious decision to boycott the games in the United States. Of all the host countries over the last two decades, the Frankfurt resident said he is most fearful about the prospect of traveling to the U.S.

“You see the ICE people going around and just pulling people from the streets just because they look foreign and you don’t get the feeling that anybody would protect me, you know?” he says.

Schwarzbach is also half Korean and half German, a profile he fears could make him a target. “I look more Asian than German,” he said. “I wouldn’t feel safe.”

As a Participating Member Association (PMA) Supporter, or superfan, Schwarzbach was able to score two tickets for US$1,600 to the quarter-final and semi-final matches, games that are scheduled to be played in U.S. stadiums.

PMAs are national soccer associations. Each soccer club sets their own eligibility criteria for establishing superfans, but usually, PMA Supporters have paid a membership fee and have attended both home and away games.

After seeing the ICE raids and learning that the U.S. government is considering vetting visitor social media activity from the last five years, he decided the trip wasn’t worth the risk. He eventually declined the credit card transactions.

Schwarzbach is one of several international soccer fans who spoke to CNN Travel about their decision to skip the World Cup games in the U.S., amid violent ICE raids in immigrant communities, the killing of two Americans by federal agents, and a long, controversial list of American foreign policies.

But the sporting event held every four years is no stranger to controversy. Much remains to be seen about how the tournament unfolds in the United States, which is co-hosting the World Cup with Canada and Mexico.

Mixed feelings around the games

Calls to boycott the games, which run from June 11 to July 19, have grown louder over the last few months. An online petition in the Netherlands urging the national soccer team to withdraw from the games drew more than 174,000 signatures. On Facebook, a “Boycott FIFA World Cup 2026 in USA” group has more than 25,800 members, while discussions across social media platforms and online forums are replete with pledges to boycott matches in the U.S. — and some vow to not even watch the televised matches.

Earlier this year, ex-FIFA president Sepp Blatter endorsed the idea of a fan-led boycott movement, while Oke Göttlich, president of the German club FC St. Pauli and one of the vice presidents of the German Football Association, spoke openly about considering a team boycott.

Aside from political beliefs and safety concerns, President Trump’s travel ban on 39 countries — mostly non-White, African or Muslim-majority countries — also excludes huge groups of international soccer fans.

Canadian software developer Omar Hassan, 34, has tickets to two matches in Boston and New York. The Montrealer was originally going to go with a friend and a cousin who lives in Dubai. But his cousin is a Tanzanian national, one of the countries under a partial travel ban.

At the time of writing, Hassan said the trio is likely to resell the tickets, forgoing the U.S. matches altogether and sticking to Toronto, where he also has game tickets. The group had originally budgeted $3,000 to $4,000 for the road trip.

“It’s scary hearing what’s happening at the border,” Hassan said. “I’ve had friends who were forced to give up their passwords and who got their phone taken away.”

As someone who is vocally critical of Trump’s policies in WhatsApp group chats, Hassan said he believes he risks being turned away at the border and having his phone confiscated.

He also echoed Schwarzbach’s fears of being racially profiled by federal agents.

“People who are brown-skinned like myself, that’s an extra risk. What happens if you disappear for two weeks? It’s not something that is worth the risk.”

Like Schwarzbach, Briton Peter Holmes also said he’s more afraid of attending the games in the U.S. than he ever was traveling to Brazil or Russia, and has bought tickets for matches in Mexico instead. The red line for him was the shooting in Minneapolis of Renee Goode, who was killed by a federal agent.

“That was bad enough. But the contortions the government went through to deny it and insinuate that she was some kind of terrorist, I thought, well, they could call me a terrorist and shoot me,” he said. “I was just sickened, absolutely sickened.”

But not all soccer fans share the same anxiety. Arjun Modhwadia, 34, said he is looking forward to traveling to Kansas City for the quarter-final game, where he hopes to see a match-up between Argentina and Portugal, and two legends of soccer on the pitch: Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo.

“I’m very excited because it could be the biggest game ever,” Modhwadia tells CNN.

The Calgary resident paid $1,300 for his ticket and has already booked his flight and hotel for Kansas. His overall budget is around $2,000 for the weekend trip.

Like his friend Hassan, Modhwadia is also brown and of Tanzanian heritage. But he said he’s confident that his Canadian passport, acquired last year with his Canadian citizenship, his Hindu background, and his apolitical social media presence, will protect him.

“I don’t foresee anything bad happening, it’s going to be a festive atmosphere with the games,” he said. “I don’t think the U.S. government would be that stupid not to take care of the people coming over because it’s a big source of revenue as well. All the measures will be in place, so I’m not concerned.”

FIFA: No stranger to controversy

In 2014, locals protested the games in Brazil after people living in slums were evicted and displaced. Calls to boycott the Russian games, which went ahead in 2018, four years after the country annexed Crimea, also went largely ignored.

For perspective, soccer historian and writer David Goldblatt, who teaches a course on the history of world soccer at Pitzer College in Los Angeles, draws comparison between this year’s games and the 2022 games in Qatar, which were dogged by allegations of abusive treatment of migrant workers, some of whom died while working under exploitative and dangerous conditions. Homosexuality is also illegal in the emirate, which angered the LGBT community.

“I would say there was probably as much, if not more, noise around Qatar,” Goldblatt says. “But it all came to nothing. Fewer Europeans traveled, and that may well be true of the World Cup 2026, but the stadiums were all pretty much full.”

The soaring price of tickets, however, means the stands will be filled with a particular kind of demographic, he adds.

“I think what we will probably end up seeing is a World Cup for the one percent.

“There’s lots of very wealthy people in the U.S.,” Goldblatt says. “I think there will be lots of folks there who may never have been to a soccer game and who are there because it’s like going to the Super Bowl or a show on Broadway. And I think it will probably be a very White audience as a consequence. These things become visible at World Cups.”

Holmes, a retiree who lives in northern England, is a lifelong soccer fan who attended the World Cup games in Brazil and Russia back when tickets could still be had for between $70 and $100. He decided against attending matches in the U.S. in favour of Mexico this year and slammed FIFA for making the games inaccessible for their core fans.

“Football is traditionally in Europe and South America for the working class,” he says. “It’s a game for the masses, for keen supporters who love football, the passion, the excitement, even the boring games. It’s very disappointing that they’re effectively going to be excluded through pricing and I think it will devalue the World Cup a lot.”

Seats will not be empty

On April 1, FIFA released the final batch of tickets that will be sold on a first-come, first-served basis. In a press release, the organization says it expects to surpass the all-time attendance record of 3.5 million tickets set during the 1994 World Cup.

But they fail to mention that in the 1994 edition, which was also held in the U.S., only 24 teams competed. This year’s tournament sees 48, the largest number of teams — and therefore matches and tickets — in FIFA history. The 2026 games will host a total of 104 matches, 40 more than the previous edition in Qatar when 32 teams competed.

CNN’s request to FIFA organizers for more information about ticket sales was not returned.

FIFA organizers had also hailed the games as an economic windfall, predicting in a report last year that the games could generate $47.7 billion in economic output for the U.S.

But an industry post from commercial real estate analytics firm CoStar cites geopolitical conflict and high ticket prices for weakening demand and hotelier optimism.

“The overall numbers are likely going to be a little bit disappointing if the trends hold that we’re talking about today,” said Jan Freitag, national director of hospitality analytics at CoStar.

Market research from hotel data tracker Lighthouse Intelligence also shows that hotels are slashing room rates in cities like Dallas, Kansas City, Miami, Atlanta and San Francisco. Average advertised room rates in Dallas, for example, peaked at $387 a night about six months out from the games, dropping to $250 a night earlier this month.

FIFA itself has dealt a blow to the industry, canceling thousands of room bookings for staff, media organizations, athletes and sponsors in host cities like Philadelphia, Atlanta, Toronto, Vancouver and Mexico City. And while industry experts say it’s not unusual for major event organizers to overbook hotel rooms and adjust reservations later, the volume of cancellations is raising eyebrows.

“As the tournament approaches, it appears likely that FIFA won’t use nearly as many rooms as anticipated, which will leave hoteliers scrambling to fill the rooms,” the CoStar report reads.

To get an early sense of international travel to the U.S., CNN Travel also reached out to several host cities.

Two months out from the start of the games, Houston’s tourism office tells CNN that hotel bookings are up 30% for June, compared to the same time last year, and up 70% for the first week of July compared to the previous period. As of April 2, the majority — 85% — of bookings are domestic, and 15% are international. The biggest international source market is the UK, followed by Mexico and Canada.

In Atlanta, the majority of hotel reservations for the World Cup as of April 1 are also domestic, though the number of international visitors is higher than what the city typically sees, the tourism board tells CNN Travel.

By Vivian Song