Human Rights Watch published its review of the 2026 World Cup on 22 July, three days after Spain beat Argentina in the final, and led with 54 deaths in United States immigration custody before the tournament kicked off 1. HRW, the New York-based organisation that investigates rights abuses worldwide, counted the toll from the presidential inauguration to the 11 June opening match and called it the highest in many years. Two more people have died in the custody of ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the federal agency that polices immigration inside the country) since the tournament began 2.
Twelve of the sixteen host cities reached kickoff with no human-rights action plan , against a deadline HRW itself had set for 11 May. Minky Worden, who wrote the review, documents conditions at Fort Bliss, the largest US immigration detention site, as including "beatings, medical neglect, and conditions of confinement that may amount to enforced disappearance" 3.
HRW aims its remedy at FIFA (football's world governing body) rather than at Washington, on the precedent of the Qatar tournament four years ago, when FIFA's own advisers concluded the organisation owed compensation to migrant workers and their families. That precedent carries the whole of HRW's leverage, and FIFA never established the fund those advisers recommended. A rights organisation asking football to answer for a state's detention record has nothing to enforce with except the reputational cost, which is why the review lands as a document rather than a proceeding.
