Houston

Houston is the largest city in Texas and the fourth-largest in the United States, with a population of roughly 2.3 million in the city proper (7.3 million in the greater metropolitan area). It is one of the 16 host cities for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, hosting matches at NRG Stadium from June 2026. It is also home to NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC), which serves as Mission Control for all US human spaceflight including the Artemis II mission currently in progress.

Amnesty International's March 2026 report "Humanity Must Win" identified Houston as one of three US host cities to have signed an ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) collaboration agreement with local law enforcement, alongside Dallas and Miami. Amnesty's report, published on 31 March 2026, upgraded overall tournament risk to medium-to-high and noted that no host city with an ICE agreement had published a human rights plan addressing immigration enforcement.

Houston has one of the most diverse populations of any major US city, with large communities from Latin America, South Asia, and the Caribbean. This demographic context makes the ICE agreement particularly significant: communities with strong ties to countries affected by US travel restrictions and immigration enforcement are well-represented in the Houston metropolitan area, meaning fans from those communities face elevated risk at World Cup matches in their own city. JSC's role as flight control for Artemis II gives the city a simultaneous presence at opposite ends of the 2026 news cycle: hosting football's biggest tournament while guiding the first crewed lunar mission in over fifty years.