Like all large sporting events law enforcement in the US are using the 2026 World Cup as an excuse to increase raids and stings against host cities most vulnerable populations. Recently Antonia Crane of Strippers United wrote an article for the La Local, LA Views: I was arrested in a prostitution sting. Why I’m worried for sex workers as the World Cup begins:
If the goal is to make Los Angeles safer and more welcoming for tourists and locals, then providing legitimacy for the sex working community should be a top priority, not surveillance and erasure. Several local sex worker-centered advocacy groups are busy offering reasonable solutions that don’t involve locking people up: affordable housing, childcare and peer-led community-based models that center harm reduction are just a few examples of the life-sustaining work they are doing. Los Angeles lawmakers should listen to them.
Sex workers — like me — get arrested because cops and politicians have something to prove. It’s Election Day, it’s the World Cup, it’s whatever. We are not dirt to sweep up when they clean up the streets. We are a part of the vibrant tapestry of Los Angeles culture, and we are participating in street economies that are available to us as a means for survival. Instead of arresting us, why not ask ourselves why so many people use sex work as an economic safety net in one of the richest cities in the world?
As the 2026 World Cup progresses and more large events like the 2027 Super Bowl and 2028 Olympics take the stage La and host cities have a choice, protect and humanize the marginalized members of their community or continue to villainize and harm them under the guise of abating sex trafficking. It’s time La listen to the sex workers and unhoused most harmed by these policies and stop the raids.