The Super Bowl will be staged at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif. Aaron M. Sprecher / Getty Images
SAN JOSE, Calif. — The Bay Area Host Committee told local officials in San Jose, Santa Clara and San Francisco that there are no U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations planned for Super Bowl LX at Levi’s Stadium on Sunday, according to a memo sent by the committee to elected officials and obtained by The Athletic.
Members of the host committee held calls on Friday with the NFL’s security and events teams as well as federal and local law enforcement before relaying the plan to local officials, telling them that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security will have federal agents at the Super Bowl for fans’ safety. The federal security presence will be in line with how DHS has served other major sports events, such as the Olympics, the World Cup and previous Super Bowls.
In October, shortly after Puerto Rican rapper and singer Bad Bunny was announced as the Super Bowl halftime performer, top homeland security adviser Corey Lewandowski said on “The Benny Show” that ICE will be at the game, saying it was a “directive from the president.”
“There is nowhere that you can provide safe haven to people who are in this country illegally. Not the Super Bowl and nowhere else,” Lewandowski said on the podcast. “We will find you. We will apprehend you. We will put you in a detention facility, and we will deport you.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said a day later that there was “no tangible plan” for ICE agents to be at the Super Bowl.
Tricia McLaughlin, a DHS spokeswoman, said in a statement to The Athletic on Monday that the group’s “mission remains unchanged” and that DHS “will not disclose future operations or discuss personnel.”
She added: “Super Bowl security will entail a whole of government response conducted in-line with the U.S. Constitution. Those who are here legally and are not breaking other laws have nothing to fear.”
Bad Bunny, whose real name is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, has been openly critical of the ICE raids, telling i-D magazine for a story that published in September that he decided to leave the U.S. off his tour out of concern about the mass deportations of Latinos.
On Sunday, a day before NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell gave his annual Super Bowl address, Bad Bunny’s “Debí Tirar Más Fotos” was named the album of the year at the Grammys, making him the first Latin artist to win the Recording Academy’s top award.
Bad Bunny, 31, also won the awards for best música urbána album and best global music performance. He used his acceptance speech to directly address ICE raids.“Before I say thanks to God, I’m going to say ICE out,” he said, garnering applause from the crowd. “We’re not savage, we’re not animals, we’re not aliens. We are humans, and we are Americans.”
He closed with a plea for Americans “to be different.”
“If we fight, we have to do it with love,” he said. “We don’t hate them. We love our people. We love our family and there’s a way to do it, with love, and don’t forget that.”
Asked Monday what sort of political statement he expects from Bad Bunny or other Super Bowl performers, Goodell said the Grammys demonstrated again that Bad Bunny is “one of the great artists in the world, and that’s one of the reasons we chose him.
“But the other reason is he understood the platform he was on, and that this platform is used to unite people and to be able to bring people together, with their creativity, with their talent,” Goodell said. ” … And I think artists in the past have done that. I think Bad Bunny understands it, and I think he’ll have a great performance.”
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