“The world will stand still, and the eyes of the world will be focused on North America,” the 56-year-old Swiss president of FIFA, Gianni Infantino, said a few days ago from the United Nations headquarters in New York. With four days to go before the ball starts rolling, the three host countries — the United States, Mexico, and Canada — say they have everything ready. Or, more precisely, almost everything. The biggest soccer tournament in history — 48 national teams playing a total of 104 matches — takes place amid various circumstances that complicate organization: the United States remains at war with Iran, President Donald Trump’s strict immigration policies are frightening away many supporters, and FIFA’s dynamic-pricing ticket system has put seats out of reach for much of the fan base.

“78 Super Bowls in 38 days”

The United States has been preparing since 2018, when FIFA decided in a cold Moscow room that it would host the tournament together with its two North American neighbors. Since returning to the Oval Office, Trump has poured resources into ensuring that his close friend Infantino presents the World Cup as a success. But the world’s wealthiest country does not have a deep passion for soccer. Americans are more focused on the NBA finals, between the New York Knicks and the San Antonio Spurs, than on the tournament’s opening — soccer remains a minority sport in the U.S., where baseball, NFL, basketball and even ice hockey have greater followings.

To make matters worse, the White House also appears more engaged in the celebration of the 250th anniversary of the United States’ independence from the British crown in 1776, which takes place on Saturday, July 4 — when the World Cup’s round-of-16 matches will be underway.

The major issue surrounding the World Cup will be security and the role of ICE, the U.S. immigration agency. U.S. authorities have threatened to deploy agents around stadiums and carry out raids to detain immigrants without proper documentation. Trump’s aggressive immigration policy has drawn harsh criticism from various sectors over the brutality and impunity of these agents, who have deported nearly 600,000 people in the past year.

More than 100 nonprofit organizations have recently protested to warn visitors about “serious human rights violations” occurring in the country. immigrant-rights groups are mobilizing: in Los Angeles, the hospitality union representing more than 2,000 workers and present at SoFi Stadium — which will host eight World Cup matches — is considering striking if immigration agents are spotted around the stadium. In Miami, Atlanta, Seattle, Philadelphia, and other cities, groups are preparing activities in response to ICE abuses. Nearly two-thirds of Americans — 65% — oppose immigration agents patrolling stadiums during this summer’s World Cup, according to a poll published this week by The Washington Post.

The competition is also being held under heavy security measures. The United States is engaged in a war with Iran, whose national team, incidentally, will have to travel to Los Angeles and Seattle for its three group-stage matches. And although the White House says it will issue visas for the athletes, the Iranian delegation has not yet received authorization to travel.

In addition, the war has driven up inflation, with gasoline prices at highs not seen since the start of the war in Ukraine. U.S. household budgets are strained by rising prices, and many view a competition they don’t fully understand with skepticism.

Beyond concerns over visa processing, security, and rising travel, accommodation and ticket costs, limited access to public transportation in some host cities adds to uncertainty about World Cup logistics. Getting to stadiums will be expensive and chaotic. Some cities lack subway or commuter-rail connections. Bus services are scarce and suffer frequent disruptions. Although all cities have bolstered transport services, authorities recommend planning journeys in advance.

Still, there are cities where hotel room quotas have not been filled, many tickets remain unsold for lower-interest matches, and travel bookings suggest fewer visitors may arrive than expected — a prospect that has organizers, who raised expectations for the world’s biggest sporting event — on edge.

Federal and state authorities have worked hard to have everything ready. But the political climate has not helped. Differences between the two major parties kept the Department of Homeland Security — which oversees national security, airports, ports and more — effectively closed and unable to spend for nearly six weeks. That congressional impasse, from February to April, caused delays in planning airport security and immigration screening for visitors.

Despite that, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said this week his department will be ready for the unprecedented security operation for the 2026 FIFA World Cup. “We are going to be prepared and we’re working every single day on it and we’re locking down stadiums with sweeps, we’re pushing out perimeters, we’re killing choke points, creating traffic control,” he said at a Capitol Hill hearing. Mullin, who has been in office for barely three months and has acknowledged he has never watched a soccer match, said he is coordinating with the states and with the 11 U.S. host cities. “We have 78 Super Bowls in 38 days, and hopefully we’ll pull it off with complete safety.”

Mexico pushes preparations to the last minute

Like its northern neighbor, security is one of the challenges facing President Claudia Sheinbaum’s administration and the governments of the three Mexican host cities. Just four months ago, the army killed El Mencho, the world’s most-wanted criminal, and the globe looked at Mexico with distrust because of the ensuing violence and cartel roadblocks, especially in Guadalajara, which will host four World Cup matches.

Mexico responded with Plan Kukulkán, a World Cup–specific strategy led by Secretary of Security Omar García Harfuch that deploys 100,000 police and military personnel, aircraft and anti-drone systems to protect stadiums, hotels, airports and fan zones “from any threat.” Homicide figures have fallen by half under the current administration, while operations against and arrests of cartel leaders continue. “From my side, and on behalf of FIFA, there is absolute confidence in President Sheinbaum; we are in regular contact with the presidency and the authorities, and we continue to follow the situation. The World Cup will be an incredible celebration,” Infantino said after El Mencho’s death.

FIFA, however, has acknowledged concerns about mobility in Guadalajara, Monterrey, and Mexico City. The three cities suffer serious traffic problems and conflicts over the use of ride-hailing apps at airports. Works to connect air travelers with the cities are being rushed or have been postponed until after the World Cup.

Mexico City, with 21 million people in its metropolitan area, is the most strained. In connectivity terms it is easy to move by public transport, but deterioration and overcrowding complicate operations. Mayor Clara Brugada’s government has focused on bike lanes and last-minute improvements. But the real strategy is to keep people at home on match days: classes have been suspended and Brugada has asked public and private employers to promote remote work. Mobility plans for the opening game this Thursday include closing major roads and using FIFA’s special transport to move attendees to the Estadio Azteca. The first trial was staged during the stadium’s reopening for Mexico’s friendly against Portugal, when only local residents could access the vicinity on foot or by car.

The weather and possible protests do not help. The short World Cup period will coincide with the rainy season, which last year caused severe flooding in some states. In the past week, the National Union of Education Workers has staged nonstop protests across the city demanding better pay and pensions. All kinds of organizations and collectives have also warned they may impose blockades: relatives of the disappeared, transport workers, students, and sex workers. Governments and organizers have said they will respect the right to protest, while expressing confidence that agreements can be reached.

All of the above comes at a time when Mexico–U.S. relations are at their worst under Sheinbaum and Trump. The deaths of two CIA agents on Mexican soil, and the U.S. accusation against nine Sinaloa officials of collusion with drug cartels, have sparked a crossfire of actions and statements. Former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador — who said he would only leave political retirement in cases of threats to national sovereignty — published a letter criticizing U.S. interference and strongly questioning Trump’s pressure on Mexico under the banner of fighting “narco-terrorism” and illegal migration. The photograph that will symbolize the state of relations among the three host countries will probably be taken at the opening match: it will be the first time the World Cup opening ceremony has been held without the presence of all the heads of state involved.

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Teachers in Mexico have launched a nationwide strike that is bringing mounting pressure on President Claudia Sheinbaum’s government ahead of the start of the soccer World Cup.

On the second day of the walkout, there has been no progress — only rising tensions across Mexico City, where the first groups of teachers began arriving last week. Educators affiliated with the CNTE teachers union are stepping up pressure on the government in an effort to extract concessions before the tournament kicks off on June 11. So far, the Sheinbaum administration has failed to calm the protests.

The sporting event is drawing closer, and Tuesday’s negotiating table with officials from the Interior Ministry, the Education Ministry, and the Institute for Social Security and Services for State Workers (ISSSTE) ended without major progress. The protest camp, a semi-permanent encampment of tents and tarpaulins that are blocking key streets, continues to spread across the main arteries of the city center and by this afternoon had reached Belisario Domínguez Street. Some 12,000 teachers, according to union estimates, are now camped in Mexico City with a set of demands that remain unchanged: repeal of the 2007 ISSSTE law (which weakened pensions and increased retirement age) and the education reform, and a 100% wage increase.

These are, in fact, the same demands as a year ago, when they set up the first protest camp of Claudia Sheinbaum’s administration.

“We are just as — or even more — outraged than we were 18 months ago. We are in the same situation: there has been no response to our demands, and the president has not said when she will meet with the Single Negotiation Committee,” said Marcelino Hernández, the general secretary from Zacatecas, after the first meeting, which resumed on Wednesday morning.

“They tell us they have the political will, but that the president cannot meet because supposedly we stood her up on May 8 of last year. They’re still repeating that same line,” added Elvira Veleces, from Guerrero.

May 8 had been set for the government’s first meeting with teachers after they succeeded in forcing the Mexican president to withdraw her own reform of the ISSSTE law. But the CNTE ultimately rejected the meeting so as not to demobilize workers ahead of the imminent nationwide strike.

The next attempt came two weeks later, but this time it was Sheinbaum herself who called it off, in protest at the blockades in the capital, which had already intensified following the declaration of an indefinite strike.

The strategy of blockades has returned with the same intensity, but with time tighter than ever. Teachers cut off Paseo de la Reforma — the city’s financial hub — on Tuesday morning and toppled several of the large statues installed by the city government for the World Cup, representing “football giants.”

The Zacatecas branch of the left-wing union — split from the larger, more institutional SNTE teachers union, which is closer to the government — proposed extending part of the encampment onto Paseo de la Reforma. But the national assembly has, for now, ruled out relocating, preferring to remain united in the historic center, where the impact is already being felt.

Spain’s Economy Minister and First Deputy Prime Minister Carlos Cuerpo was forced to meet virtually with Sheinbaum after being unable to reach Mexico’s National Palace, the seat of government. The National Museum of Art (MUNAL) has closed until further notice, citing “circumstances beyond its control,” while vandalism in some areas has forced Mexico City’s local government to carry out rapid repairs ahead of the anticipated sporting event. FIFA has also canceled in-person volunteer training sessions in the Zócalo square, opting instead for online formats, according to El Financiero, for “security reasons.”

Tensions are also rising on the other side. The CNTE has announced that Proceso Columbo, a teacher from Guerrero injured in Monday’s clashes with police, has lost the eye that was struck by a projectile. It is not yet clear whether he has lost his sight entirely or may retain vision in the other eye, as he remains hospitalized awaiting surgery. Mexico City’s security minister, Pablo Vázquez, said Tuesday that authorities will investigate alleged “infiltrators” who took part in Monday’s protests, as claimed by the federal government. Vázquez declined to say whether they belonged to the teaching profession, stating only that they acted “in a manner contrary to that of the vast majority who mobilized.”

Secretary of the Interior Rosa Icela Rodríguez, Secretary of Education Mario Delgado, and Martí Batres, general director of ISSST, who are leading negotiations, reiterated their willingness to remain at the table to avoid further disruption, and reaffirmed the president’s commitment to eliminating USICAMM, the internal promotion system that has generated widespread opposition in the sector.

Although remarks from some regional representatives of the CNTE expressed disappointment with Tuesday’s meeting, they must now consult their bases and the national assembly before deciding on next steps. According to union sources, internal debate is intense. All indications suggest the blockades will continue, given that Sheinbaum’s government has yet to concede on any of the core demands — especially pensions, the sector’s main concern.

Teachers are seeking a return to the public pension model that existed before 2007, when the ISSSTE law governing public-sector retirement was reformed. Since then, pensions have been managed by private administrators known as Afores. While Sheinbaum opposed the reform at the time and is sympathetic to teachers’ demands, she argues that the state cannot afford a full return to the previous system, as the fiscal cost after so many years would be enormous.

Instead, the government, led by the Morena party, has opted to soften some of the reform’s harshest aspects. During the administration of Sheinbaum’s predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the Pension Fund for Wellbeing was created, through which the state tops up low private pensions. Under Sheinbaum, additional measures include a gradual reduction in the retirement age for part of the teaching workforce and a 9% pay rise. For teachers, however, this is not enough: they see these as partial measures that leave them vulnerable to future governments.

One year on, both sides find themselves back in the same streets, with the same demands on the table and no clear resolution to the central dispute. The countdown to the World Cup adds a new layer of pressure on all parties. The government does not want to welcome thousands of foreign visitors next week with a protest camp blocking the city center, but teachers are not entirely comfortable with the idea of spoiling the event for their fellow citizens either. They have eight days to reach a deal.

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The Mexican government’s campaign against foreign interference has reached U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Ronald Johnson. The U.S. representative this week clashed with President Claudia Sheinbaum after her Sunday speech, in which she protested U.S. interference in Mexico’s internal politics. Johnson, a former Green Beret appointed by Donald Trump to press for action against the drug cartels, replied with a social media post that the Mexican leader acknowledged almost immediately: “Ambassadors must be respectful of countries’ internal political affairs.”

The post that unsettled the president was published by Johnson on Monday afternoon, a day after the rally in which Sheinbaum marked two years since her electoral victory with a renewed defense of national sovereignty and a direct reproach to the United States for making public its claims of alleged ties to drug trafficking against Sinaloa Governor Rubén Rocha and nine other individuals. On Monday Sheinbaum sought to soften the tone by acquitting President Trump of responsibility for the supposed campaigns against Mexico, which she blamed on “sectors of the far right,” but the diplomat responded forcefully: “The fight against cartels should unite us, not divide us. People on both sides of our border want to live safely and in peace. They deserve freedom from the intimidation, corruption, and fear that the cartels inflict. Every moment spent turning this shared security challenge into a political dispute is a missed opportunity to strengthen our partnership and protect the people we serve.”

The remarks by Johnson, a retired colonel with extensive experience in the U.S. intelligence apparatus, were not well received at the National Palace. It is not the first time the ambassador has stirred tensions in the bilateral relationship, with messages touching on the two most sensitive current issues: Chihuahua and Sinaloa. In Mexico they have sparked a bitter debate between the government and the opposition, who accuse each other of encouraging interventionism and covering up narco-politics.

Johnson’s messages

It was U.S. Ambassador Johnson who announced on Sunday, April 19, 2025, the deaths of two U.S. agents in a car accident in Chihuahua. “We are deeply saddened by the tragic loss of two U.S. Embassy personnel, the Director of Chihuahua’s State Investigation Agency (AEI), and an AEI officer in this accident. We honor their dedication and tireless efforts to confront one of the greatest challenges of our time,” he wrote. What appeared to be a conventional message of condolence turned into a delicate disclosure instead: the involvement of CIA agents in dismantling a drug lab in the Sierra Tarahumara, which put Chihuahua Governor Maru Campos, a member of the opposition PAN party, under fire from the federal government and the governing party Morena for allegedly authorizing foreign agents to operate on national territory.

The Chihuahua case prompted the Mexican government to send a diplomatic note to the United States requesting an explanation, and to summon the ambassador to a meeting with officials from the Security Cabinet. The Attorney General’s Office also opened an investigation that remains ongoing, and Morena threatened to push for an impeachment proceeding against Maru Campos, a process it later chose not to pursue.

Just four days after the Chihuahua incident, the U.S. ambassador visited Sinaloa to witness the launch of a project called Mexinol — a low-emissions methanol production plant — and used his remarks to launch a couple of barbs at an event that the then-governor of Sinaloa, Rubén Rocha, did not attend. “No company will commit resources where the rules are unclear, where there is no transparency, or where accountability is optional. If we want projects like this to succeed, if we want our shared future to be as promising as it can be, corruption and extortion must have no place,” the ambassador said in a state governed by Morena since 2021 and long suspected of protecting the Sinaloa Cartel dating back to Trump’s first presidency (2016–2020).

A week later, on Wednesday, April 29, Johnson posted on his social media a message reporting the filing of criminal charges against Governor Rubén Rocha and nine others by the U.S. federal prosecutor’s office in the Southern District of New York. While the ambassador again highlighted the “close coordination” and the fight against corruption as a “shared priority” of both governments, he also stressed: “The corruption that enables organized crime and harms both our countries will be investigated and prosecuted wherever U.S. jurisdiction applies.” At the same time, the Department of Justice released the grand jury indictment against Rocha; Morena senator Enrique Inzunza, Culiacán Mayor Juan de Dios Gámez and other officials. The political storm was only beginning.

In the days that followed, the Sheinbaum administration rebuked the United States for making the Rocha case file public, despite the existence of diplomatic channels and the confidentiality obligations that should govern communications between the justice systems of both countries. Sheinbaum personally questioned the arrest-with-a-view-to-extradition request, saying there is no conclusive evidence implicating Rocha and other Sinaloa politicians who are members of Morena. Since then the president has placed defense of national sovereignty at the top of her government’s and party-movement’s public agenda. “In the face of external attacks there must be national unity,” she said on May 1. “Mexico is nobody’s piñata,” she declared at the end of the month in her message marking two years since her electoral victory, by which time bilateral relations had already been strained by this episode.

For international relations scholar Érika Ruiz Sandoval, the latest dispute between the president and the U.S. ambassador shows that the government has not understood that the terms of the Mexico–United States relationship changed when Trump took office for a second time. The coordinator of the international relations degree at Universidad Iberoamericana believes that the National Palace grew used to the rhythms of Ken Salazar, the ambassador during President Joe Biden’s administration, who frequently visited President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, always wearing his cowboy hat and a broad smile.

“They don’t realize that the ambassador is acting as a harbinger of what’s going to happen to you; Ambassador Johnson is being clearer than ever that the terms of the relationship are different, and not negotiable. They are different because they can be, and because they caught you with your fingers in the door and you have no room to maneuver, no international political capital, and no reputation to defend,” Ruiz Sandoval says. The relationship between Salazar and López Obrador, however, soured when the diplomat and former cabinet member under Barack Obama criticized Morena’s judicial reform.

This expert considers it a mistake to defend sovereignty at all costs at the expense of the relationship with the United States, at a delicate moment in negotiations over the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement (USMCA), without gaining anything in return and solely to protect Morena politicians. “It’s a very short-sighted, poorly considered stand that risks what is ultimately this country’s lifeline, which is the USMCA,” she adds.

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