Houston
Texas megacity and fourth-largest US city; 2026 World Cup host; home of NASA Johnson Space Center.
NRG Stadium in Houston staged seven matches of the 2026 World Cup, the last Spain's 1-0 win over Portugal on 6 July, while the city's police worked under an agreement with immigration enforcement.
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What does Houston's ICE agreement mean for the World Cup's most diverse US host city?
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2026 FIFA World CupBackground
Houston is the fourth-largest city in the United States and the base of NASA's Johnson Space Center, which runs Mission Control for crewed flights. During Artemis II the centre handled the flight from launch on 1 April 2026, and the CREW returned there for their homecoming press conference on 16 April.
The city's public institutions carry national weight. The Houston Health Department runs a regional laboratory for 17 counties; its World Cup preparedness plan named a test panel able to identify Bundibugyo ebolavirus, and federal CDC was absent from the published coordination documents. Its police work under a 287(g) agreement with ICE, and Human Rights Watch counted 26,483 ICE arrests in the region between January 2025 and March 2026.
CenterPoint Energy, the utility that reported a cyber incident to the US stock-market regulator under a voluntary disclosure section, is based in the city.
NRG Stadium staged seven tournament matches
Houston's World Cup began on 17 June, when Cristiano Ronaldo, aged 41, became the oldest outfield player to start a World Cup match, against DR Congo at NRG Stadium. The Netherlands beat Sweden 5-1 there on 20 June, and on 23 June a crowd of 68,777 watched Ronaldo score twice against Uzbekistan.
The city then hosted knockout football. Brazil played Japan there on 29 June, and Morocco knocked co-host Canada out 3-0 on 4 July, with Azzedine Ounahi scoring twice. The last match came on 6 July, when substitute Mikel Merino scored in the 91st minute to give Spain a 1-0 win over Portugal and all but end Ronaldo's international career.
Local police act as ICE deputies
Houston went into the tournament with a 287(g) agreement that deputises local police as immigration agents. Amnesty International's report 'Humanity Must Win', published on 31 March, named Houston with Dallas and Miami as host cities that had signed ICE collaboration agreements.
Human Rights Watch counted 26,483 ICE arrests in the Houston region between January 2025 and March 2026; Dallas, the next host city in that 10 April audit, recorded 22,388. Houston was still one of only four host cities to publish a human rights plan by the 11 May Deadline. On 7 July an immigration officer shot dead Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, 52, as he drove a work CREW in the city; passengers dispute the federal account that he used his vehicle as a weapon.
Controllers briefly lost the crew's voice
NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston runs Mission Control. About 51 minutes after the Artemis II launch on 1 April, flight controllers in the city lost the ability to hear the CREW, although the astronauts could still hear them. A ground configuration error during a planned handover between TDRS relay satellites caused the one-way dropout, which was fixed quickly.
The same controllers ran the 2 April go/no-go decision on Orion's six-minute translunar injection burn, the irreversible firing that committed the CREW to the Moon. They weighed a G2 Space weather watch after an X-class solar flare on 31 March and a heat shield modification never flown with a crew.