Atlanta is an old pro when it comes to hosting mega sporting events, having hosted the 1996 Olympics, the World Series, and the Super Bowl among others. With the 2026 FIFA World Cup’s conclusion, Atlanta has now hosted all of the world’s top sporting events within the last 30 years. Though the city’s image as a haven for Black folks, young transplants, and capitalists paints a shining vision of abundance and social equality, a closer look reveals overpolicing, surveillance culture, and a surprising lack of immigrant protections. Whenever Atlanta has welcomed the world to its front door for mega events, immigrants and other vulnerable communities have always been the doormats.
On March 24, 2026, nearly a dozen movement organization leaders and public officials took to the steps of Atlanta City Hall to denounce Home Depot’s sponsorship of the World Cup because of its cooperation with ICE. The Defrost the Home Depot (DTHD) coalition formed with the demand for the Atlanta-based company to publicly stand against immigration enforcement activity and mass surveillance on its property. Michael Collins, director of advocacy at DTHD member organization, Play Fair ATL, said World Cup sponsors are sportswashing the beautiful game. Collins argued that corporations are laundering their images by hosting family-friendly events and activities, while supporting a violent entity that brutalizes children and has separated thousands of families.
“We wanted to take a stand against an organization that is kind of this trifecta where it’s a World Cup sponsor, it’s an Atlanta-based company, but it’s also complicit in these horrific immigration practices,” Collins said.
Businessmen Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank founded Home Depot in Atlanta in 1978. Since then, Home Depot has been a mainstay in Atlanta culture. The company previously sponsored the 1996 Olympics, where Blank ran in the Olympic Torch Relay with Evander Holyfield.
Sportswashing: the use of an athletic event by an individual or a government, a corporation, or another group to promote or burnish the individual’s or group’s reputation, especially amid controversy or scandal.
The DTHD coalition is putting pressure on Home Depot to: denounce ICE activity in its stores and parking lots; express support for customers, workers, and day laborers; and create policies to keep ICE agents from conducting raids or entering stores without warrants.
The coalition is made up of movement organizations and public officials, including Black Alliance for Justice Immigration, Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights (GLAHR), Atlanta City Council member Kelsea Bond, and state representatives Gabriel Sanchez and Eric Bell. The group has conducted actions inside Home Depot stores, on an I-285 overpass, and outside the company’s Atlanta headquarters.
Home Depot’s support of ICE contradicts the company’s widely known association with day laborers. Day laborers stand outside Home Depot stores across the country, where they’re hired by people as low-cost labor for construction, painting, landscaping, and other improvement projects. These skilled workers are oftentimes undocumented and rely on informal employment. The relationship between Home Depot and immigrant workers was largely symbiotic: as the popularity of home renovations rose, so did the company’s client base—and with it, the demand for low-cost labor. DIYers and professional contractors alike hire day laborers to save on costs.
The relationship between Home Depot and day laborers has been fraught for decades, but the tension has grown since May 2025, when White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller designated Home Depot stores specifically as target sites for ICE. A month later, ICE conducted raids at Home Depot stores in Los Angeles and Riverdale.
Home Depot has taken a hands-off approach to ICE activity on its property. A FAQ on its website says it doesn’t coordinate with any federal agencies, but complies with all local and federal policies. “We don’t necessarily think that there is coordination between Stephen Miller and the heads of Home Depot,” Collins said. “But their silence sends a message that the people that have existed on their property for decades now are fair game as we do this fascist immigration crackdown.”
Dr. Amir Ahmadi is director of policy and advocacy at 50501, a group that organizes same-day protests across all 50 states, and a member of the coalition. He used to frequent Home Depot when he worked on home renovations, but changed his shopping habits after ICE raided a Home Depot in Riverdale. Black and Brown workers “were forcibly taken by masked, unidentified agents in paramilitary-style gear,” said Eric Bell in a statement at the time.
Ahmadi has hand-delivered letters to associate managers at metro Atlanta Home Depots that never got a reply. In person, managers gave boilerplate responses about Home Depot’s corporate policies. But DTHD also heard from employees who were frustrated that they couldn’t do anything.
“One of our earliest steps was to go in and talk to stores and see how their staff felt about the company’s complicity with ICE,” said Al Solove, chair of DTHD member Indivisible ATL, a grassroots group that organizes against the rise of authoritarianism. “[Store associates] wanted to be able to do something … and felt their hands were tied.”
Beyond the Home Depot: A Call to Abolish Flock
Defrost the Home Depot is also demanding that Home Depot end its contract with surveillance company Flock Safety. Founded in Atlanta in 2017 by three Georgia Tech alumni, Flock uses cameras and drones to build “a connected system for evidence and response.”
Flock’s cameras snapshot and organize license plate data to determine a car’s make, model, and color; where the car is registered, and whether there is damage to the car. Flock doesn’t have direct contracts with ICE, but local law enforcement agencies and businesses with Flock contracts can choose to share their data with immigration enforcement officers. The Atlanta Police Department, for example, let ICE search its Flock data at least 15 times as of October 2025. Concerns over data security and ICE led the City of Dunwoody to delay renewal of its Flock contract and members of the Emory University community to ask the university to end its contract. Atlanta is already the most surveilled city in the country largely because of the Atlanta Police Department’s ConnectAtlanta system of 45,000+ body, residential, and business cameras. But Flock’s footprint across the state is poised to expand: the company opened a 97,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in metro Atlanta last year.
The atmosphere in Atlanta is ripe for anti-ICE protest: Georgia has the fifth highest rate of ICE arrests in the nation as of April 2026. ICE has arrested more than 13,600 in Georgia since the Trump administration returned to office. The agency has conducted raids all over the state. For over a year, people protested the detention of Rodney Taylor, a Gwinnett County barber and father of seven who had been held at Stewart Detention Center since January 2025. Taylor, who moved to the U.S. from Liberia as a toddler, is a double amputee. His family reported that he was denied regular meals, maintenance for his prosthetics, and adequate hygiene access. Taylor was released on May 1, 2026.
State Rep. Ruwa Romman represents Georgia’s 97th district, which covers much of Gwinnett County, one of the most ethnically diverse counties in the country. She’s also running for a state senate seat in the county.
During canvassing ahead of the May primaries, voters consistently named immigration enforcement among their top concerns, Romman said. Many voters said in particular that enforcement has gone too far and that something needs to be done to stop it. Romman said voter feedback tells her that ICE is still top of mind for residents and that “there is a deep need and hunger for active resistance to what we are seeing around us.”
Romman has cosponsored two bills to put checks on ICE. House Bill 470, introduced in 2025, seeks to ban law enforcement at every level from conducting immigration enforcement activities at schools, churches, and hospitals. This year’s HB 1561 would levy a tax on real estate sales to DHS.
Atlanta City Councilmember Kelsea Bond, a member of the DTHD coalition, is working to limit ICE by addressing incarceration at the local level. In March, they introduced a resolution urging APD to choose diversion over arrest for low-level crime. By doing so, offenders who are vulnerable to immigration enforcement won’t end up in the system nor have their immigration status flagged for federal agencies. Bond sponsored two other resolutions that passed in April: one that bans ICE detention centers in the City of Atlanta and another that requires APD to record ICE activities. “On the most basic level, I think people feel more safe and protected when they just see their elected representatives taking a firm stance,” they say.
Carmen*, an undocumented domestic worker, has lived in Atlanta for over 20 years but has never been more fearful of ICE. She’s heard from people around her that people are dying in detention centers and are “treated just like animals,” Carmen said through a translator.
The toll is both emotional and financial. Where Carmen used to take public transit to get around, now she only takes taxis out of fear that she might be detained. Others in her community do the same. A one-way trip can cost as much as $35. Carmen has also faced new challenges in finding stable work. She’s currently employed but worries about her future prospects.
Before Trump returned to the White House, Carmen organized marches for immigrants’ rights. Her advocacy even took her to Washington, D.C. Now, she said, she stays close to home.
“You only go out for the absolute basics. Just to work, to get groceries, and to the church you attend—and that’s pretty much it.”
Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests went up 88 percent in February 2026 compared to last year. The agency arrested more than 2,000 people in Georgia in the first two months of 2026 alone, some of them from Carmen’s own community. Despite her fears, Carmen still does what she can to advocate for immigrants.
“I have to be out on the streets, reaching out to people,” she said.
Elizabeth Zambrana, legal director at Sur Legal Collaborative, said the threat of ICE looms over the heads of folks “just trying to survive.”
Zambrana helps immigrant workers navigate and report labor abuse, like wage theft or unsafe working conditions, across poultry, domestic work, retail, and manufacturing. She used to spend most of her time informing workers about their rights and walking them through the process of reporting violations to federal agencies. Now that ICE has become more aggressive, immigrant workers with and without status are afraid to come forward.
“Pretty much none of them feel safe to file a complaint,” she said. “If an immigrant worker is unsafe in their workplace, it makes us all unsafe in our workplaces.”
Cop City Hosts the FIFA World Cup
Bond sees the energy of the Stop Cop City Movement (SCC) in Atlanta’s current protest atmosphere, from labor organizing to protests against data centers in Southwest Atlanta. In 2021, residents began a years-long campaign to stop the construction of the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center (aka “Cop City”), an 85-acre development that will “reimagine law enforcement training.” In June 2023, after 17 hours of public comment, the Atlanta City Council voted to fund the project. Organizers then spent three months collecting 116,000 residents’ signatures to put Cop City on the ballot. Again, city officials told organizers “no.” (An appeal to move the referendum forward failed in federal court this past January.) SCC radicalized many young people in Atlanta and galvanized them to act on local politics for the first time. Bond was one of them.
“There’s a recognition that Cop City was built, but that was such a massive movement that it politicized so many people,” they said. “It’s good to see that [the momentum] didn’t fade away.”
The Home Depot is part of the Cop City story, too. The company donates to the Atlanta Police Foundation (APF), and its vice president of technology sits on APF’s board. In 2023, two people were arrested at an anti-Cop City demonstration outside an Atlanta Home Depot. The Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation (AMBFF) also funded the project through donations to the APF. FIFA touts its arrival in the “City In the Forest,” but the destruction of crucial parts of said forest by the World Cup’s sponsors sits in the shadows. “It all fits under the same umbrella, and it’s part of the same message,” Bond said.
In recent years, the city has approved a number of urban renewal projects to turn Downtown Atlanta into a sports and entertainment destination. The Gulch has been transformed into Centennial Yards, an “urban revitalization project” that will span 50 acres near Mercedes-Benz Stadium. The development, greenlit in 2023, features the third location of Cosm, a 70,000-square-foot “immersive sports venue.” The chain’s other two locations are in World Cup host cities Los Angeles and Dallas. The Atlanta Constitution building is getting new life as The Folio, a mixed-use development, and The CNN Center reopened as a food hall called The CTR. South Downtown is also undergoing yet another revitalization push.
Atlanta’s public transit system, Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA), finally made much-needed upgrades in the year leading up to the tournament, introducing FIFA-branded Breeze cards, new fare gates, and mobile tap-and-go payment. New railcars with wireless charging stations and more inside space were slated to roll out before the World Cup but weren’t ready in time.
Zambrana said it’s frustrating to see the city, state, and philanthropic leaders hustle to prepare for the World Cup when they’re not doing the same to meet residents’ everyday needs. “I would love to see that kind of energy put toward workers, toward infrastructure, public transit, like so many things that the city desperately needs,” she said.
World Cup events, fan venues, and open spaces, watch-parties, and team games are not the place for Border Patrol or any draconian measures that deteriorate from the spirit of the World Cup and the societal connection it renders.
Among the most significant developments for the World Cup lies south of Atlanta: the new headquarters for U.S. Soccer, the Arthur M. Blank U.S. Soccer National Training Center. Since leaving the Home Depot in 2001, Blank has become a major player in Atlanta sports and philanthropy. In 2002, he bought the Falcons. He brought men’s professional soccer to Atlanta in 2017 with Atlanta United, and he is currently working on the National Women’s Soccer League’s expansion to Atlanta. Blank personally footed 60 percent of the bill for Mercedes-Benz Stadium, home to the Home Depot Backyard entertainment area. He promised $15 million to “revitalize” the historically Black neighborhoods affected by the construction of the stadium, including ones that were harmed by the initial development of the Georgia Dome. But just as with the Olympics in 1996, the communities saw few, if any, benefits and a new wave of gentrification began on Atlanta’s westside.
World Cup matches are scheduled to take place in Atlanta through the semifinals, which concluded in Atlanta on July 15. Public officials, advocates, and the DTHD coalition are continuing to support immigrants’ rights from all angles. Bond’s office has also been working with Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights (GLAHR) to let residents and business owners in their district know what to do if they encounter immigration enforcement. Bond encourages local elected officials to take harm reduction measures within their jurisdictions instead of deferring to state and federal legislators.
Immigrants’ rights advocates stress the importance of small businesses at this moment. Business owners have the power to protect their workers by putting up signage that requires law enforcement to have a warrant and marking areas as “employee only.” Small businesses are also good alternatives to corporate retailers, both for local economies and because they are more likely to respond to consumer feedback.
Romman and Zambrana encourage people to keep showing up and take collective action around matters like worker solidarity and pro-labor reform. Romman wants to see people put pressure on state legislators to improve worker health and well-being. “Repealing right-to-work would make it possible for workers to organize,” Romman said, noting that Georgia has one of the poorest records of worker protections in the country. Zambrana has seen a lot of success in building solidarity across worker populations. She said that unions have been especially supportive of immigrant workers, uplifting their issues and inviting advocates to participate in rallies and other actions.
The political issues plaguing Atlanta will remain well after the world leaves. (The city will host the Super Bowl again in a year and a half.) And organizers will continue their campaigns for a more just city and state. “I will never ever say that something is not worth it because if it wasn’t worth it, there wouldn’t be such a massive effort to shut down these efforts, right?” Romman said. “Where I’m personally leaning these days is that spiteful optimism of, if nothing else, I don’t want to give these people the satisfaction of my surrender.”
*Name has been changed for anonymity
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