Stephen A. Smith has cautioned President Donald Trump that deploying ICE agents to the upcoming Super Bowl could lead to a ‘disaster’.
Fans are gathering in the Bay Area as the Patriots prepare to face off against the Seahawks, amidst rising tensions across the nation. The unrest has grown, especially after the shooting of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, which occurred just weeks after Renee Good, 37, was fatally shot by an ICE officer while in her car.
Concerns about further disturbances at the Super Bowl are heightened, particularly with Bad Bunny, a vocal critic of ICE, slated to perform during halftime. Kristi Noem, Secretary of Homeland Security, had previously stated: ‘We’ll be all over that place.’
However, recent reports indicate that ICE will avoid the high-profile event on Sunday, and Smith has advised Trump that persisting with the immigration crackdown near Levi’s Stadium would be a grave mistake.
The $100 million ESPN personality, who has hinted at a possible presidential run himself, suggests that such actions on America’s biggest sporting day could have significant political repercussions for Trump.
In a conversation with the Daily Mail in San Francisco, Smith remarked: ‘There’s absolutely no justification for having ICE at the Super Bowl. Should that occur, I believe it would spell disaster for the President and his supporters. I foresee it backfiring in a significantly negative manner.’
Stephen A. Smith warned Donald Trump it would be a ‘disaster’ to send ICE to the Super Bowl
Bad Bunny used his Grammys speech to blast Trump and ICE ahead of the Super Bowl
There have been warnings that ICE agents could continue their crackdown in the Bay Area
Noem previously urged people to avoid the Super Bowl ‘unless they are law-abiding Americans who love this country,’ adding: ‘We’ll be all over that place… we’re gonna enforce the law.’
But earlier this week, the NFL’s chief security officer Cathy Lanier said she is ‘confident’ that ‘there are no planned ICE enforcement activities’ around the Super Bowl.
But Smith previously revealed to the Daily Mail how Trump called him during one of his failed attempts to own an NFL team. ‘His exact words to me were – excuse my language: “If them motherf***ers get in my way, meaning the NFL owners, I’m gonna get them all back”,’ Smith said. ‘”I’m going to run for president.”‘
And the ESPN star believes that if the president decides to deploy federal agents, it would not be borne solely out of a desire to weed out illegal migrants.
‘Super Bowl Sunday is about the game – it’s about sports, it’s about bringing folks together. It ain’t about bringing people apart,’ Smith, who is backing the Seahawks in Super Bowl LX, explained.
‘So there’s no room for that. And if he did something like that, it’s not just because of immigration, it’s because of his feelings about some of the folks in the NFL… we all know that he’s had an axe to grind.’
The First Take host continued: ‘So it’s not just about ICE it’s not just about deportations. It’s about being an inconvenience to a sports league on their biggest day of the year. And you cannot sit idly by and be quiet if he does something like that, that would be very, very wrong.’
Smith also took aim at former president Joe Biden, accusing him of making a ‘huge mistake’ by ‘opening the borders’ which prompted Trump to shut the door.
Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem previously vowed: ‘We’ll be all over that place’
Smith said ‘there is no reason on earth to have ICE’ around Levi’s Stadium on Sunday afternoon
‘But in the same breath, that doesn’t mean that you have to use such an incredibly celebratory moment like Super Bowl Sunday to have federal agents waiting outside of a stadium trying to arrest and incarcerate and ultimately deport folks,’ he said.
It was ahead of last year’s Super Bowl in New Orleans that Smith hinted that he could launch a bid for the White House and, since then, he has continued to weigh in on political issues.
The ESPN star, who last year agreed to a $100million deal with the network, maintains that he has ‘no desire’ to be a politician.
But Smith vowed to ‘leave his options open,’ telling the Daily Mail: ‘Who knows what God has planned? 2027 is a long time away.’
The 58-year-old said that as a ‘conscientious observer, an American citizen, [and] a voter,’ he ‘doesn’t like a lot’ of what he is seeing from both the Republicans and Democrats.
‘And I believe that if I decided to run, I’d have a shot to win. So because of that, I keep my options open,’ he said.
‘I’m not about going out and asking for campaign dollars. I’m not good at that. But you put me on that debate stage, and I got to go up against people that have been elected officials in this country, and you have to stand across from me trying to explain why you’ve done some of the things that you’ve done to divide us as a nation,’ he said.
The $100million ESPN star is pictured on Radio Row in San Francisco ahead of Super Bowl LX
Federal agents detain a person in Minneapolis, where tensions have run high in recent weeks
‘We didn’t do that… we’re not sitting up there talking about people, calling them everything but the child of God.
‘And then the next thing you know, you expect us to believe that you all get along and you negotiate with each other to do what’s in the best interest of the American people?’
Smith continued: ‘You’re going to stand across from me on a debate stage with millions of people watching and justify doing that? Good luck… I don’t think I’d ever want to be a politician. I don’t think I’d ever want to be in office.
‘But I have to admit, there is nothing that excites me more than the possibility of me standing on a debate stage against anybody from either side of the aisle, listening to them try to justify what they’ve done to this country to divide us, when everybody knows, if you talk with one another, you find that you have far more in common with each other than you have things that you differ about.’
