“There’s no El Tráfico without the supporters,” says Gloria Jiménez, leader of the Angel City Brigade and a decades-long LA Galaxy fan. On Saturday, when the Galaxy face LAFC in Major League Soccer’s fiercest rivalry (or El Tráfico, to the teams’ perpetually gridlocked fans), the stands will be quieter than usual. Two of the Galaxy’s most passionate and visible supporter groups — the drum-pounding, flag-waving Angel City Brigade and L.A. Outlawz — won’t be in the stands. The groups will be staging a protest in response to how the team has handled in-game demonstrations against ICE‘s attacks on Latino communities across the country, as well as the team’s failure to release a statement amid the raids and the stadium’s recent ban of a member of one of the fan groups.
Saturday’s game, and the Galaxy protest around it, comes weeks into President Donald Trump’s latest wave of immigration crackdowns, targeting predominantly Latino communities. In late May and early June, ICE swept through cities like Los Angeles, Nashville, and Chicago, leaving Latino soccer fans rattled, with some fearful that attending a major sporting event might put them at risk of detention and deportation.
In May, a Latino-led supporter group of Nashville SC was the first to announce they wouldn’t be attending a game following a wave of raids in the city. “Our community is being terrorized right now,” La Brigada de Oro founder Abel Acosta told The New York Times. “We’re being hunted. That’s how we feel.” And since then, fan groups of Austin FC, LA Galaxy, LAFC, Chicago Fire, and several other teams have voiced their support for their large Latino fanbase and their anger toward ICE.
“To us, it’s obvious. Soccer culture in America is inseparable from Latino culture. When the government is coming for our neighbors, it’s insane not to speak up,” Zach Lyons, a leader of Austin FC’s Los Verdes, says of the “Abolish ICE” banners they waved last month. “This is an attack on people who are part of our community. There was no hesitation. We knew we had to do something.”
The Angel City Brigade holds up a section-wide tifo in support of immigrant fans after the Galaxy did not address concerns over ICE raids
Bruce Martin
Out of the entire league, only one team — LAFC, the Galaxy’s crosstown rival — spoke out in support of its immigrant fanbase. While it avoided mentioning ICE directly, the club said it stands “shoulder to shoulder with all members of our community.” Beyond the Black and Gold of the LAFC, however, the league and its franchises have remained silent. Multiple sources within Major League Soccer tell Rolling Stone that both the league and teams fear retaliation from the Trump administration, including treatment similar to that faced by the Los Angeles Dodgers, who were sued over alleged DEI practices by a conservative legal group founded by Trump immigration hawk Stephen Miller shortly after pledging $1 million to support L.A.’s immigrant community.
Instead, teams have cracked down on fans who have pushed back at games, banning at least three in Chicago and one in L.A. for what the league labeled unauthorized political speech at games.
“The MLS Fan Code of Conduct prohibits fans from displaying signs, symbols, or images used for commercial purposes or to advocate for or against any political candidate, party, legislative issue, or government action,” reads a statement sent to Rolling Stone by an MLS spokesperson. ”These policies are intended to keep the focus on the match and help avoid disruptions that could impact the fan experience.”
The Brigade Walks Out
For the Angel City Brigade and other fans of the Galaxy, the frustration stems from the team’s silence around the ICE raids that rocked Southern California in early June. Throughout that month, fans expressed their frustration online and collectively decided not to attend their rivalry game against the San Jose Earthquakes in the Bay Area, in solidarity with fans who were fearful of traveling across the state.
“That’s our biggest trip of the season,” says Jiménez of the ACB. “The team hadn’t offered any support: If something happens at the stadium, what’s the next step?”
The group then used the Galaxy’s first home game since the raids, held on the Fourth of July, to stage a protest against the team for their continued silence. For the first 12 minutes of the match, the ACB skipped their typical chants and stood silently in the stands behind a tifo, a large banner display that covered much of the section, that read “Fight Ignorance, Not Immigrants.” Then, they walked out of the stadium.
“We wanted to match their silence,” says Jiménez. “They didn’t announce any proactive plans to protect our immigrant fans or tell us which charities they were supporting. So we left the game. Just like they left us.”
Someone snuck a “Smash ICE” into that game, as well, while some fans wore shirts featuring a crossed-out ice cube. Tucked above the pro-immigrant tifo was a banner that read “AEG loves immigrant dollars but not immigrants,” specifically calling out the conglomerate owner of the team, who donated nearly $2 million to Republicans running for re-election last year, according to Billboard. The banner targeting AEG led to the indefinite ban of Bruce Martin, a photographer for the Angel City Brigade, over the alleged misuse of a credential to bring in the unapproved banner.
The LA Galaxy alleged a fan misused a credential to sneak this banner, targeting the team’s owner, into the stadium
Bruce Martin
The Galaxy spokesperson emphasized that the team had worked with ACB during their walkout “to ensure they felt heard and seen,” but said they had to ban Martin over for disobeying the rules.
“While we know fans may bring in unapproved banners, this is the first time that to our knowledge, a non-employee with credential access has used their credential to deliberately circumvent stadium protocols,” the Galaxy spokesperson tells Rolling Stone. “The abuse of that access is a serious breach of trust. As part of our regular process, an indefinite ban was issued while we reviewed the situation and his case.”
Jiménez thinks that Martin was a scapegoat for the group’s protests overall, and the AEG-directed messaging was part of it. Martin, for his part, thinks he was targeted for speaking to the Los Angeles Times about the team’s silence in an interview leading up to that game.
“The main frustration for us is that they’ve used the Hispanic culture in advertisements to make money, but when something is affecting the culture, they’re quiet,” he tells Rolling Stone. “At the Fourth of July game, I came to the realization that this might be the last time I set foot into that stadium. … This feels like a breakup or a death. It would take a lot for me to come back.”
Jiménez says that at least 100 of the nearly 800 season ticket holders in the section where the ACB stands have canceled their tickets for the season over the Galaxy’s inaction. (The team didn’t confirm the number, but stated that they’ve made exceptions to allow fans to cancel their season tickets.)
“I don’t see myself going to games anytime soon,” says Rebecah Jacobs, one fan who requested a refund for the remaining games of the season. “I know that the Galaxy is very online and seeing all the chatter going on so it’s not about not knowing what’s going on. … I’d need them to speak out. Being silent is not something I can support.”
The Angel City Brigade skipped this past Wednesday night’s game altogether and instead staged a protest outside of the stadium, slamming Martin’s ban and the continued silence from the Galaxy. One fan held up a printout of the description for one of the team’s jerseys, which to the fans now seems ironic: “Coated in our city colors, the kit represents all different Angelino cultures, no matter what border or bridge you crossed to get here. This will forever be your home.”
But the Galaxy tells Rolling Stone, in the first statement of its kind, that it will stick to league policy, and not address the political nature of the ICE raids directly, despite fan clamors.
“We have not issued a statement. We recognize the impact that recent events and actions have had on our community. For decades, we have honored the rich backgrounds, cultures, and experiences of our fans and staff. Our purpose as a professional sports organization is to unite and support our community around a shared love of this sport,” Jamie Alvarez, the Vice President for PR and Communications of the Galaxy, says in a statement the team asked to be published in full. “We are focusing on prioritizing the safety, well-being, and sense of belonging for our staff and for our fans.”
Separately, a Galaxy source says that working alongside AEG, the team will continue to support its longtime community partners, including Latino-focused orgs CARECEN, Heart of Los Angeles (HOLA), and All Peoples Community Center.
Banned in Chicago
Latino fans of the Chicago Fire faced an eerily similar situation with their team. Three fans — Nate Cubeta and Edith and Julio Lopez — were banned for a year from Soldier Field and all MLS-sanctioned events over an unauthorized anti-ICE banner they refused to take down.
“When the ICE raids started to become more brutal in L.A., we thought we couldn’t go to the next Fire home game and not recognize what is going on. It didn’t feel right,” says Cubeta. “We came up with this design that was Spanglish and tied into the Fire.”
For three games in June, including on the day of the “No Kings” protests in mid-June, Cubeta and the Lopez siblings say they displayed a banner reading “Fire Contra ICE” — featuring an illustration of soccer legend Cuauhtémoc Blanco celebrating a goal by mimicking a dog urinating over the government agency’s logo — from within the Sector Latino section of the stadium. The first two games, they say, the Fire said nothing about the banner. (A Chicago Fire source says the fans were reminded of the policy.)
It wasn’t until a match on June 28 that Cubeta and the Lopez siblings were asked by the Fire to take down the banner. They refused, leading the team to ban them from Soldier Field for a year. In a statement to Rolling Stone, a Fire spokesperson says the banner had “violated” the league’s code of conduct, pointing to the terms of the rulebook displayed online. (“The Chicago Fire remain committed to providing a safe and enjoyable environment for all fans,” the statement reads.)
“The Fire will say we broke the political signage rules. We know we did. We felt compelled to disobey it at a moment like this,” says Edith Lopez. “We know that they’re going to find whatever way to sanitize things, because they want to be marketable and safe. But that’s not our responsibility as supporters.”
Cubeta and the Lopez siblings, who’ve been season ticket holders since 2009, have no regrets about their decision to stand their ground and keep the poster up. “We want immigrants to know we are behind them and there is always a space with us,” says Edith. “We aren’t intimidated.”
After news of the ban spread, Sector Latino and other Chicago Fire supporter groups protested the Fire at a game last Saturday, which ironically happened to be Mexican Heritage Night at the stadium. They turned their backs to the field and remained silent for the first 15 minutes of the match as they held up a new banner that read in Spanish: “We are always with you guys, but you are never with us.”
Austin’s Compromise
In Austin, fans have decided to compromise with the Austin FC front office to share pro-immigrant messaging and step away from the “abolish ICE” direct messaging they displayed earlier in the summer. They’ve gotten banners that read “Austin Is an Immigrant City” approved and have distributed “Know Your Rights” cards during games. And they’ve used their platform to display important messaging including a “Don’t Mess With Trans Texans” tifo that went viral earlier this year.
“We are unabashedly willing to speak politics when important, even if the league doesn’t allow us to be explicit on that,” says Ernie Luna of Austin FC’s Los Verdes. “Our community is what we focus on first, and in our negotiations with them, it’s always, ‘We want to be there for our community, so give us the space to do that.’”
Several sources with direct knowledge of league policy tell Rolling Stone that the nature of the protests makes it difficult for teams and MLS to speak out in support of its immigrant fans, even if they’d want to — and the league has suggested they not do so.
With an administration as volatile as Trump’s, it’s unclear what sort of punishment or retaliation he could take on teams for speaking in favor of its immigrant fanbases. Stephen Miller’s American First Legal already sued the Dodgers for “engaging in unlawful discrimination under the guise of ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion,’” and it isn’t hard to imagine the other conservative groups, or the government itself, taking action against teams they perceive to be condoning anti-ICE messaging.
“A lot of the teams are scared and being put in a difficult position where they want to say something, but there’s a worry of retaliation,” one source says. “It’s not how government should work but unfortunately it’s the climate we’re in and people are concerned about it.”
As the season drags on, fans are left dealing with silence from the teams — and waiting for a political storm that targets their communities to somehow pass. Wednesday’s Galaxy game had the worst turnout of the year so far, and no one in the supporter sections expects that to turn around anytime soon. The trust, for many, seems to already be broken.
“If we, as a group, have to dissolve because of this, we will,” says Gloria Jiménez, in tears. “There’s no way to go back for a team that doesn’t support us.”
