Kristi Noem, the secretary of homeland security, confirmed what President Trump’s former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski said earlier in the week: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents will be attending the Super Bowl on Feb. 8. The event will feature Puerto Rican superstar Bad Bunny as the halftime show headliner.
In a recent The Benny Show video, Noem told right-wing podcaster Benny Johnson that ICE will be “all over” the 2026 Super Bowl.
“I have the responsibility for making sure everybody goes to the Super Bowl, has the opportunity to enjoy it and to leave, and that’s what America’s about,” Noem said in the clip. “So yeah, we’ll be all over that place. We’re going to enforce the law.”
Noem continued: “So, I think people should not be coming to the Super Bowl unless they’re law-abiding Americans who love this country.”
When asked if she had “any message to the NFL” regarding the organization naming Bad Bunny as its Super Bowl halftime performer, Noem said, “Well, they suck and we’ll win, and God will bless us and we’ll stand and be proud of ourselves at the end of the day, and they won’t be able to sleep at night because they don’t know what they believe. And they’re so weak, we’ll fix it.”
Earlier in the week, Lewandowski spoke to Johnson as well. He told the podcaster when asked if ICE would be at the big game, “There is nowhere you can provide safe haven to people who are in this country illegally. Not the Super Bowl and nowhere else,” Lewandowski said. “We will find you, we will apprehend you, we will put you in a detention facility, and we will deport you.”
Others in the president’s MAGA base also unsurprisingly had meltdowns when it was announced the Puerto Rican superstar would headline the Super Bowl halftime show.
Before Bad Bunny was revealed as the 2026 Super Bowl halftime show star, the musician told i-D why his upcoming Debí Tirar Más Fotos world tour does not include dates in the continental United States. The artist said the Trump administration’s recent mass deportations targeting Latinos informed the decision.
“There were many reasons why I didn’t show up in the U.S., and none of them were out of hate — I’ve performed there many times,” Bad Bunny said. “All of [the shows] have been successful. All of them have been magnificent.”
The singer, a vocal critic of Trump’s agenda, added: “But there was the issue of — like, fucking ICE could be outside [my concert]. And it’s something that we were talking about and very concerned about.”
Bad Bunny is set to host Saturday Night Live’s Season 51 premiere tonight, which features musical guest Doja Cat.
