A year after anti-immigrant riots in Britain, many worry it could happen again

LONDON (AP) — The killing of three girls at a summer dance class in England a year ago Tuesday, by a teenager misidentified as a migrant, triggered days of street violence directed at newcomers and minorities.

In the aftermath, communities came together to clear up the physical damage — but repairing the country’s social fabric is harder. Experts and community groups warn that the mix of anger, fear, misinformation and political agitating that fueled the violence remains. In recent weeks it has bubbled over again on the streets of Epping, near London.

“Given a trigger event, none of the conditions of what happened last year have gone away,” said Sunder Katwala of British Future, a think tank that looks at issues including integration and national identity. He said there is a “tense and quite febrile atmosphere” in some parts of the country.

A three-minute silence was held Tuesday in the seaside town of Southport in northwest England, where the stabbing attack left three girls under 10 dead and eight children and two adults wounded.

Over the following days, violence erupted in Southport and across England, driven partly by online misinformation saying the attacker was a migrant who had arrived in the U.K. by small boat.

Because of British contempt of court and privacy laws, authorities were initially slow to disclose the suspect’s identity: Axel Rudakubana, a British-born 17-year-old obsessed with violence. He later pleaded guilty to murder and is serving a life sentence.

In the week after the attack, crowds in more than two dozen towns attacked hotels housing migrants, as well as mosques, police stations and a library. Some rioters targeted non-white people and threw bricks and fireworks at police.

Within a few days, larger numbers of people took to the streets to reclaim their communities, sweeping up broken glass and sending a message of welcome to newcomers.

A year on, the sight of migrants crossing the English Channel in dinghies — more than 22,000 so far this year — provides a focus for those concerned about the impact of immigration. Those concerns are often amplified by online rumor, scapegoating and misinformation, some of it deliberate.

Add a sluggish economy, high housing costs, frayed public services and widespread distrust in politicians, and Britain, in the view of many commentators, has become a “tinderbox.”

Nigel Farage, leader of hard-right political party Reform UK, said last week that the country is close to “civil disobedience on a vast scale.”

The left-of-center Labour government agrees there is a problem. At a Cabinet meeting last week, Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner noted that 17 of the 18 places that saw the worst disorder last year were among the most deprived in the country. She said that Britain is “a successful multi-ethnic, multi-faith country,” but the government must show it has “a plan to address people’s concerns and provide opportunities for everyone to flourish.”

The government has pledged to stop migrants trying to reach Britain across the Channel and to end the practice of lodging asylum-seekers in hotels, which have become flashpoints for tension.

Critics say the government risks legitimizing protesters who in many cases are driven by intolerance and want to drive immigrants from their homes.

In Ballymena, Northern Ireland, last month, rioters threw bricks, bottles, petrol bombs and fireworks and firebombed immigrants’ houses after two Romanian-speaking 14-year-old boys were charged with sexual assault.

Hundreds of people have protested this month outside a hotel housing asylum-seekers in Epping, a town on the edge of London, after a recently arrived migrant from Ethiopia was charged with sexual assault. He denies the charge.

Protesters in Epping and a handful of other communities this summer have included local people, but also members of organized far-right groups who hope to capitalize on discord.

Tiff Lynch, who heads the Police Federation officers union, wrote in the Daily Telegraph newspaper that the Epping disorder was “a reminder of how little it takes for tensions to erupt and how ill-prepared we remain to deal with it.”

Learning from last summer’s violence, where the police and courts responded quickly to detain and charge hundreds of suspects, police have charged more than a dozen people over violence in Epping. A protest and antiracist counter-demonstration in the town on the weekend were peaceful.

The online realm is harder to police. The British government, like others around the world, has struggled with how to stop toxic content on sites including X. Under the ownership of self-styled free-speech champion Elon Musk, X has gutted teams that once fought misinformation and restored the accounts of banned conspiracy theories and extremists.

The government has cited the amount of time people spend alone online as a factor behind polarization and fraying social bonds.

Families of the three girls who died in Southport — Alice da Silva Aguiar, 9, Elsie Dot Stancombe, 7, and 6-year-old Bebe King — called for quiet and respectful commemorations. Local authorities have asked people not to lay flowers, but to consider donating to causes set up in the victim’s memories.

The team behind Elsie’s Story, a children’s charity set up by Stancombe’s family, posted on Instagram: “Our girls, our town, will not be remembered for the events of that day, but for everything we are building together.”

Katwala said that despite a “sense of disconnection and frustration at national politics and national institutions,” there are grounds for optimism.

“Britain is less heated and less polarized than the United States, by quite a long way,” he said.

“People’s interpersonal trust remains quite high. Seven out of 10 people think their local area is a place where people from different backgrounds get on well. They’re just worried about the state of the nation.”

FILE - Police officers watch members of the public outside the Town Hall during a vigil to remember the victims of the stabbing attack last Monday in Southport, England, Monday, Aug. 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Darren Staples, File)

Protesters demonstrate outside the Bell Hotel in the town of Epping, Essex, England, Sunday, July 20, 2025. (Yui Mok/PA via AP)

Demonstrators hold flags and placards as they stand outside the Bell Hotel in Epping, near London, Sunday, July 27, 2025.(AP Photo/Alberto Pezzali)

A demonstrator holds a placard as she leaves a protest outside the Bell Hotel in Epping, near London, Sunday, July 27, 2025.(AP Photo/Alberto Pezzali)

A police officer reacts as demonstrators hold placards and banners as they leave a protest outside the Bell Hotel in Epping, near London, Sunday, July 27, 2025.(AP Photo/Alberto Pezzali)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Dozens of mayors and other city leaders gathered in the ballroom of a Washington hotel on a snowy January morning this year gripped by anger and anxiety about the federal government's increasingly aggressive immigration enforcement operation that included the killings of two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis.

And then FIFA President Gianni Infantino took the stage.

“For the first time in 250 years of history of the United States of America, well, you will not just be invaded but you will be conquered,” he said as the audience at the National Conference of Mayors largely reacted with silence.

“You will be conquered by soccer,” he added in an attempt to land the joke and get the crowd energized about the World Cup, which will be hosted jointly by the U.S., Mexico and Canada from Thursday through July 19.

Ahead of the tournament, Infantino has successfully cozied up to President Donald Trump, creating a peace prize that was awarded to him and frequently visiting the White House, including a stop last week, when he was photographed alongside the Republican president admiring changes outside the Oval Office.

Infantino has struggled with virtually everyone else.

In a deeply polarized country, few things unite elected leaders outside the White House quite like skepticism of Infantino and FIFA, the governing body for the world's most popular sport. It's a sentiment that cuts across the divide and spans from Washington to state capitals and city halls.

There are mayors like Zohran Mamdani of New York and Karen Bass of Los Angeles, Democrats who've balked at ticket prices. Mamdani eventually secured 1,000 tickets for New Yorkers at $50 per seat. The attorneys general in New York and New Jersey, also Democrats, started an investigation into ticket prices last month. In New Jersey, Gov. Mikie Sherrill, another Democrat, demanded help from FIFA to cover millions of dollars in transit costs before ultimately turning to new advertising revenue to help cover the gap.

Despite his ties to Infantino, even Trump has criticized World Cup ticket prices, telling The New York Post he wouldn't pay the $1,000 prices to watch the U.S. play its opening game against Paraguay.

In an interview, Republican Sen. Todd Young of Indiana, who played Division 1 soccer at the U.S. Naval Academy, said FIFA has been “detached from regular people around the world.”

“It really is a cabal run by elites,” Young added. "They really have had problems with corruption over the years, and one really does get the sense that they may overlook their singular mission, which is to help grow the sport, especially among young people around the world who wouldn't otherwise have the resources to access soccer.”

“Every good soccer fan who loves international football wishes Infantino would be a little less in the news and more promoting the game,” Rep. Rick Larsen, D-Washington, said in an interview.

A FIFA representative didn't respond to a request for comment. FIFA's skeptics said they were still enthusiastic about the 48-team tournament. Some lawmakers said Infantino was navigating a challenging political environment in the U.S.

Infantino is “doing the job he needs to do in terms of cultivating the Trump administration,” said Rep. Darin LaHood, R-Ill., the chair of the Congressional Soccer Caucus.

The World Cup kicks off a series of events that are central to Trump's second term effort to burnish his image and legacy through his association with high-profile sporting events. He'll hold a UFC bout on the South Lawn of the White House this month. It all culminates with the Olympics in Los Angeles in 2028, the final year of Trump's presidency.

But the soccer tournament opens against the backdrop of an intensely divided political climate in the U.S. — with Trump at the center. Just 37% of U.S. adults approve of the way Trump is handling the presidency, according to a May poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Still, Trump is intensifying efforts to put himself in the middle of American life, particularly as the country celebrates the 250th anniversary of its independence. He has embarked on a massive renovation of Washington and plans to headline “The Great American State Fair” on June 24.

Trump plans to attend the NBA Finals between the New York Knicks and the San Antonio Spurs on Monday. As the head of state, Trump is expected at the World Cup final in July.

But the World Cup presents a challenge for an administration that has placed aggressive immigration enforcement at the top of its agenda.

The most visible aspects of Trump's anti-immigration measures, including high-profile arrests in cities like Chicago and Minneapolis, have largely calmed. And the administration has sought to strike a welcoming stance toward World Cup visitors, suspending, for example, a requirement that those traveling from countries that qualified for the tournament and have bought tickets pay as much as $15,000 in bonds to enter the U.S.

But the White House is still considering hard-line options to punish perceived opponents. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has threatened to halt customs processing at airports serving cities whose local governments resist Trump's immigration policies. And intense clashes at a New Jersey immigration center about 10 miles (16 kilometers) from where the World Cup final will be held are a reminder of the tests facing the White House.

“I see the 2026 World Cup at the intersection of two really stark realities,” said Ashleigh Huffman, who was the chief of sports diplomacy at the State Department during the Biden and first Trump administrations. “Unprecedented opportunity to heal a country that is deeply divided and a world that is struggling. And unprecedented scrutiny. Everything that's going on has the power to unite us, but it also is forcing conversations around access and human rights and immigration and who gets included in this celebration.”

Speaking to reporters in Miami last week, Andrew Giuliani, the executive director for the White House Task Force on the World Cup, said that “if you're inside the country legally, then you have nothing to worry about.”

“We want people to be able to come here and enjoy this World Cup while also making sure that we can keep the country safe,” he said.

There are signs that the political divisions that course through so much of American culture also apply to the World Cup.

Democrats and independents are more likely than Republicans to say they plan to watch World Cup games, according to an Ipsos poll conducted in May. Earlier polling found Democrats were more likely to be “very” or “somewhat” interested in the matches.

While Republicans are less eager to tune into games, they feel a stronger sense of national pride than Democrats do from the U.S. team’s performance and participation in the World Cup. About two-thirds of Republicans said the U.S. team’s participation makes them proud to be American, compared with slightly less than half of Democrats.

But for soccer enthusiasts in Washington, the hope is that the tournament could provide a rare break from the constant partisan battle.

“There's a real opportunity to use this platform as a stage for unity and commonality across nations,” Young said.

For Larsen, “when the whistle blows until the end, I'll be yelling for red cards and cheering goals.”

Associated Press writer Gisela Salomon in Miami contributed to this report.

FIFA President Gianni Infantino makes comments during the opening ceremony of the International Broadcast Center, Monday, June 1, 2026, in Dallas. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez)