The 2026 FIFA World Cup came and went without a single major security incident at or around 11 match locations across the United States, and FBI Director Kash Patel appeared more than keen to celebrate that accomplishment.
“The American public should be proud of what the Trump administration accomplished during FIFA,” Patel told Epoch Times’ senior editor Jan Jekielek in an interview that will air on Aug. 8.
“To put it in perspective, we basically had 78 Super Bowls in 39 days across 11 different venues across the United States of America. We had … 6.8 million people visit and attend the games during that time span. On top of that, we had all the teams at different base camp locations where they lived for the duration of their time at the World Cup. We had all the fan zones. We had all the pop-up zones across the country.”
“It was really the largest sporting event the world has ever seen,” he added. “It was double FIFA’s prior World Cup record.”
To meet law enforcement demands, the director said his bureau upgraded its spaces and capabilities. Upgraded spaces included the Director Strategic Information Center, which the FBI used to coordinate and share classified information with interagency partners and its Five Eyes Partners—an alliance among the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the UK.
It was in this center, in fact, that Patel and Jekielek had their conversation.
As for upgraded capabilities, Patel specifically calls out his department’s decision to train state and local law enforcement partners on drone mitigation and counter-UAS (unmanned aerial systems) operations.
“Nothing we do at the FBI, especially with the World Cup, could happen without our state and local partner law enforcement relationships, and they just don’t have the capabilities on counter-UAS systems,” he said. “So what we did was we set up the first-ever counter-UAS school at our Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama, and we trained state locals over two-week periods and cycled them through from around the country until we ran into the World Cup.”
Patel recalled that the FBI’s ground intercept teams were deployed at every World Cup venue in the country, coordinating with the state and local partners and the Department of Homeland Security.
Ultimately, he said, around 740 drones were caught improperly or illegally flying over the venues and interdicted to ensure they didn’t pose a threat. If they were caught violating the law, the Department of Justice was brought in.
Other World Cup statistics included the arrest of 905 human trafficking suspects and the rescue of 180 victims—including 30 children—during the tournament by the Department of Homeland Security. This included 190 arrests in Miami-Dade County and the seizure of more than 1,000 internet domains caught illegally streaming World Cup matches in violation of U.S. Copyright law.
This level of nationwide execution marks just the latest statistical example of Patel’s performance as the FBI head.
Under his leadership, the bureau prevented 715 terrorist attacks from occurring on American soil in 2025, including four in December.
“That’s a pretty monumental achievement, especially during the holidays, but it’s because we were resourced and backed by the White House and the administration to get these sort of achievements,” he said during his interview with The Epoch Times.
