By Max A. Cherney
SAN FRANCISCO, Feb 3 (Reuters) – National Football League and federal law enforcement officials said on Tuesday there were no planned Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations for Sunday’s Super Bowl or the events leading up to it.
“There are no planned ICE or immigration enforcement operations that are scheduled around the Super Bowl or any of the Super Bowl-related events,” NFL head of security Cathy Lanier said at a press conference in San Francisco, confirming an earlier Reuters report.
Concerns about the potential for immigration enforcement operations had escalated ahead of Sunday’s game between the Seattle Seahawks and New England Patriots.
Department of Homeland Security agent Jeffrey Brannigan, who is coordinating security efforts among the different agencies, said federal law enforcement had a strict and specific purpose to support Super Bowl security.
Brannigan said in the days ahead there would be a significant increase in federal law enforcement across the region that would work directly to support security at the Super Bowl.
DHS will send a variety of different agencies to the Super Bowl that do not include ICE, Lanier said, adding that she had met with DHS leadership over the last week and was confident there would be no ICE operations.
“There is not ICE deployed with us at the Super Bowl and I don’t believe there has been in the last several,” Lanier said.
Planning for Super Bowl LX security began roughly 18 months ago and involves 35 federal, state and local agencies, Lanier said.
Officials expect about 1.3 million visitors for the Super Bowl and events surrounding it.
The NFL and various law enforcement agencies involved in Super Bowl security plan to use artificial intelligence to aid their efforts, Lanier said. Lanier declined to provide details about how the emerging technology would be deployed.
“There are very few technologies that we use that don’t have some element of AI,” she said.
President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement policies have come under scrutiny after the killing of two U.S. citizens in Minnesota last month by federal agents, sparking protests across the U.S.
The star of this year’s Super Bowl halftime show will be Puerto Rican rapper and 2026 Grammy winner Bad Bunny, who skipped performing in the continental United States on his recent concert tour, saying he feared federal agents would arrest his fans.
(Reporting by Max A. Cherney in San FranciscoEditing by Toby Davis)
