Super Bowl security ramps up as ICE fears shadow the festivities

SANTA CLARA — When the Seattle Seahawks and the New England Patriots kick off Super Bowl LX on Sunday, tens of thousands of spectators at Levi’s Stadium, and hundreds of millions more around the world, will be watching intently.

So will a network of hundreds of visible, and less-visible, law enforcement officers and security personnel fanning the 1.85-million-square-foot venue and its surroundings to watch for potential threats. They will be backed by a phalanx of surveillance cameras, drones and multiple real-time technological hubs monitoring every entrance, doorway and egress point.

Santa Clara police, who have been drawing up security for 49ers games and other major events since the venue opened in 2014 — and who helped host Super Bowl 50, the stadium’s first NFL championship, in 2016 — have been guarded about releasing even broad security details. But on Tuesday, Chief Cory Morgan touted his department’s previous experience hosting the big game.

“When that game was awarded, Santa Clara had not yet hosted a major event at Levi’s Stadium. Twelve years later, we’ve hosted more than 200 major events, including Super Bowl 50. That experience matters. It’s given us a clear understanding of what it takes to safely host an event of this scale and significance,” Morgan said at an NFL-organized public safety briefing in San Francisco. 

“We have a comprehensive public safety plan in place that addresses a wide range of contingencies … I’m confident in the planning that’s been done and in the professionals that will be executing that plan,” Morgan continued. “I’m excited for Sunday. It’s going to be a beautiful day in Santa Clara and we are ready.”

According to officials, most of the city’s $6.3 million tab for hosting the Super Bowl will go toward police and security, which would roughly match the security costs for a whole season of 49ers home games.

The police blotter for the Super Bowl a decade ago was relatively uneventful: About 20 arrests for drunkenness and minor disorderly conduct were recorded, and one bomb threat — deemed not credible — was made from a computer in Europe. Four small planes were diverted by the Air Force after breaching restricted airspace around the stadium, but the aircraft were never considered threats. A North Korean satellite that hovered some 300 miles above the general stadium area was also deemed non-offensive.

Since Monday, there has been one aerial presence that has caught eyes and ears: A low-flying Leonardo AW-139 helicopter scanning the area with radiation sensors, which the National Nuclear Security Administration said is “part of standard preparations to protect public health and safety during the” Super Bowl. The purpose of such a survey is not in response to any threat, but rather to establish a baseline radiation level.

“These aerial radiation surveys are a normal and routine part of security and emergency preparedness activities,” reads an NNSA statement, which adds that the flights were set to end Wednesday.

Jim Dudley, a retired San Francisco police deputy chief who oversaw numerous large events and festivals in that city, said the goal for Super Bowl LX should be what 2016 achieved: a mundane after-action report.

“Really, if everybody could go home at 3 or 4 in the morning and not be injured, and not have to write reports about stuff that happened all night, that’s the measure of success,” said Dudley, now a criminal-justice lecturer at San Francisco State University. “Then next week there will be a debrief and we’ll see what worked and what didn’t work, and pack it up and save it for the next one.”

But the already-complex Super Bowl picture is further clouded by tensions and palpable fears about Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents descending on the area, stoking fear with immigrant communities who have seen more aggressive and visible ICE activity at South Bay courthouses and jails.

At a downtown San Jose rally Monday, civil-rights groups including the San Jose-Silicon Valley chapter of the NAACP and the Council on American-Islamic Relations, sounded the alarm over a potential surge in ICE enforcement timed with the festivities.

“We are here before the Super Bowl arrives, before the cameras, the spectacle, the corporate slop and gloss, because we know what these moments are used for: expanded raids, militarized presence, intimidation disguised as public safety and ultimately, violence,” said Musa Tariq, policy director for CAIR’s Bay Area chapter, adding: “ICE, get out of the Bay!”

NFL and law enforcement officials were pressed on the issue at the Tuesday news conference; Cathy Lanier, the league’s chief security officer, said while agencies under the Department of Homeland Security are part of the overall Super Bowl security infrastructure – consistent with past practice – ICE agents are not.

“There are no known, no planned ICE or immigration enforcement operations that are scheduled around the Super Bowl or any of the Super Bowl related events,” Lanier said. “We are confident of that.”

However, Lanier declined to answer directly when pressed on whether the league or law enforcement would even get notification about inbound ICE activity at any game events; she also emphasized her confidence in the league’s relationship with DHS. Similarly, in a security-themed video released last week by Santa Clara police, Chief Morgan said his department “does not direct or control federal law enforcement agencies and does not necessarily receive advanced notice of their operations.”

He added in the video, “As a matter of practice, we do not confirm, deny, or speculate about the presence or activities of other agencies.”

That statement drew condemnation from local NAACP President Sean Allen, who in a public email to Morgan wrote that the stance “created reasonable concern that SCPD intends to facilitate – through action or deliberate inaction – federal immigration enforcement operations during the Super Bowl.”

Dudley, the retired police chief, said the the chances of a massive immigration enforcement action timed with the Super Bowl are low, given the potential political and practical damage such a spectacle could bring.

“I don’t think we’re going to see any kind of dust-up like that,” he said. “The level of rhetoric is just ridiculous right now … It’s a lose-lose-lose-lose if anything like that happens.”

He also noted that Homeland Security, formed as an executive department in 2002, has long had a role in big-event security, including crackdowns on human trafficking. Though ICE’s enforcement actions are facing heavy criticism, the agency still is only one part of the DHS web, which includes U.S. Customs, the Transportation Security Agency, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and others.

“If it’s been appropriate before, it should be appropriate now,” he said.

The DHS federal coordinator for Super Bowl LX, Jeff Brannigan— also the acting special-agent-in-charge for Homeland Security Investigations in Northern California — affirmed that his agency, which operates under the DHS, is continuing its past practice of providing services to the event, deploying the Coast Guard to watch the Bay’s shores and searching for potential threats from online attacks and weapons of mass destruction. 

Brannigan added that “we have multiple intelligence groups that are working and monitoring different sources of intelligence and we’ve had no credible or specific threats whatsoever.”

“Nothing on our radar,” he said at the NFL news conference. “We’re feeling really good going into this period.”

Sanjay Virmani, special-agent-in-charge of the FBI San Francisco field office, said his agency’s security role includes coordinating with the Federal Aviation Administration to enforce temporary flight restrictions and drone bans in the airspace around Levi’s Stadium, and providing SWAT and bomb squad personnel.

But chief among agents’ duties, Virmani said, is operating a joint command center overseeing the Super Bowl and accompanying events, with intelligence analysts “working around the clock to collect and assess threat information and to share intelligence in real time and to coordinate rapid responses if needed.”

“We are ready,” Virmani said.