Trump official explains Houston’s $500 million World Cup grant

Houston has hosted the Super Bowl on two different occasions, in 2004 and 2017. Andrew Giuliani insists the 2026 FIFA World Cup is a whole new ballgame for officials in the Bayou City. 

Houston is a major hub for this year’s World Cup, hosting seven matches featuring 13 different countries between June 14 and July 4. Add in a 39-day FIFA Fan Festival in East Downtown, and Houston officials have been facing a string of challenges regarding public safety and security. Giuliani, the executive director of the White House Task Force for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, is well aware of the challenges brought by the world’s biggest sporting event. He’s pleased with the government’s execution thus far, both on the local and federal level. 

“I think the size and scope of this is challenging. You’re talking about 78 matches in the United States across 39 days, you realize there’s never been an event of this magnitude of this size or this scope in this country,” Giuliani told Chron on Saturday. “But Houston PD has been great, Houston Fire, its emergency management systems. They’ve done a great job through 10 days that there’s no major threats to fans.

One point of pride for Giuliani through the first days of the World Cup? Eliminating threats through the air. 

Giuliani said the federal government provided Houston with a $500 million grant award before the World Cup for counter-UAS (Unmanned Aircraft Systems) technology. The grant was just the start of federal partnership with Houston officials. Congress passed the Safer Skies Act in December, which allowed local and state officials to strike down and take out drones and other UAS systems that are deemed a threat. The FBI then created a counter-UAS training center in Houston for local police, and there is also a consistent FBI presence at the FIFA Fan Festival. 

The federal government now employs a drone ban at the Fan Festival that extends within a one-mile radius surrounding the Fan Fest and 1,000 feet vertically. That area expands to three miles in the area surrounding Houston Stadium, with a 3,000-foot vertical radius. Giuliani said Saturday there were 60 drone mitigations in Houston across the first nine days of the World Cup, with a majority identified as drones belonging to civilians unaware of the no-drone zones across Houston. 

“It’s very important to make sure that when we have major gatherings in the United States of America, we’re able to protect people at those events,” Giuliani said. “For us, what we really want is for people to not put their drone up in that area, period.

“We’ve been able to mitigate everything. No nefarious drones have come in at this point, but we’re certainly focused on that, and the intelligence community has certainly been very helpful in making sure we snuff things out.”

Giuliani added increased staffing from the Bureau of Consular Affairs has greatly decreased the wait times for the roughly five million international visitors—spread across 19 different countries—who applied to enter the U.S. between October 2025 and March 2026. Potential visitors from Brazil faced a 700-day wait between application time and entry in previous years. That window is now down to two weeks. Those same applications in Argentina previously took 300 days, per Giuliani. They are now processed in just two days. 

“We’re striking that balance to make sure people don’t go around those security procedures, while also welcoming fans and creating legal pathways for people to come into the United States,” Giuliani said. “We wanted to keep our security strong, but also allow this World Cup to be the international event it should be.”

Latin-American visitors enjoyed a sped-up entry process into the United States ahead of the World Cup. However, that same privilege reportedly didn’t extend to visitors from one African nation participating in World Cup matches in Houston. Fans from the Democratic Republic of Congo faced a 21-day entry rule ahead of the World Cup, requiring travelers to be 21 days removed from their home country before coming stateside due to the Ebola outbreak in DR Congo. DR Congo visitors in Houston criticized the policy last week, noting the Ebola virus was found 2,000 kilometers away from the country’s capital city, Kinshasa. 

“Most of the people I know who are supposed to be here couldn’t get here because of the Ebola stuff going on,” Kanda Mateta, a DRC fan visiting Houston told Chron’s Jamil David. “And the funny thing is, Ebola is in the east of the country, and Kinshasa is in the far west, so there’s nothing. But many people couldn’t get here just because of that.”

DR Congo fans could enter the United States if they followed the 21-day entry rule. Fans from Haiti, Iran, Ivory Coast and Senegal were fully barred from attending World Cup matches in the United States, the result of a Travel Ban instituted by President Trump last December. 

Giuliani knows the U.S. still has roughly month ahead to keep fans and residents safe before the conclusion of the World Cup on July 19. He insists federal efforts have placed each host city in a place to succeed, where even the most low-rung official has the tools and knowledge to execute their job with ease. 

“We take the intelligence we’re seeing and making sure it gets to a beat cop in Houston so they can make the proper decision,” Giuliani said. “The nice thing is, right now, through 10 days, we’re only talking about what’s happening on the field. That means we’re doing our job.”

Houston’s Fan Festival will be open each day through the remainder of the World Cup. The city’s next World Cup match will be Tuesday night, with the final match scheduled for July 4 in a Round of 16 tilt.