It’s strange behavior to throw a party and turn away guests at the door. The joint bid by the United States, Canada, and Mexico to host the FIFA World Cup—backed by President Donald Trump during his first term—had bragged about the ease of travel, calling North America “one of the top destinations in the world for international visitors.”
But now that the soccer tournament is underway across North American cities, fans from the 48 participating countries have found themselves hassled or barred from coming by strict U.S. border policies. Even some of the participants themselves had trouble getting in.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection interrogated Iraqi soccer star Aymen Hussein for seven hours on his arrival at the airport in Chicago before letting him in. His official photographer wasn’t allowed in with him. “Why is America hosting the World Cup if it is so hostile to foreign nationals?” Hussein said, according to Al Jazeera.
Swiss player Breel Embolo had his U.S. travel clearance granted, yanked when the U.S. government discovered he had been fined over a 2018 bar fight, and then granted again at the last minute.
Hussein and Embolo were luckier than Somali referee Omar Artan, who was turned away in Miami after 11 hours of interrogation. Andrew Giuliani, the executive director of the White House Task Force on the World Cup, said border officers found some “derog” (derogatory information) on Artan and refused to explain further.
So it went for other invited guests. In addition to selling tickets on the open market, FIFA allocates each national team 8 percent of their games’ tickets to distribute to invited fans. And for the first time ever, Senegal was unable to bring an official fan delegation to the World Cup due to the U.S. immigration restrictions. The Ivory Coast also had to cancel its fan delegation.
“The supporters have cancelled the trip because the U.S. government does not want to see supporters from certain countries, including Ivory Coast, on its soil. The United States has been clear with us, saying they do not want to see our supporters,” Julien Kouadio Adonis, president of the Ivorian national fan committee, told Agence France-Presse.
Senegal and the Ivory Coast are on the Trump administration’s travel ban list. So are Haiti and Iran, two other countries playing in the World Cup. But the trouble was not restricted to officially banned countries. When 150 Ghanaian fans applied to travel as a group, only three received visas. Abu Kass, the head of the Jordanian fans’ association, told the BBC that only one Jordanian fan received a visa. He himself was rejected.
For the first time in World Cup history, the host country is also at war with one of the participating countries. The Iranian team, which has its training camp in Mexico, is scheduled to play its first matches in Los Angeles and Seattle. The U.S. Embassy in Turkey waited until less than a week before the World Cup to issue the players’ visas, and denied visas to more than a dozen team staff. Iran also had its fan ticket allocation yanked at the last minute.
“Sports transcends borders, and we look forward to welcoming competitors and fans from around the world,” Ambassador Tom Barrack, the U.S. envoy to Turkey and Syria, said in a statement about the Iranian team.
Unlike the U.S. government, the American people seem to be getting along well with our foreign guests. When the Algerian national team set up their training camp in the small college town of Lawrence, Kansas, locals turned out to welcome their guests. The University of Kansas band learned the Algerian anthem and a local banjo player went viral for his rendition of an Algerian folk song. Algerian stars played soccer with American little leaguers and basketball with the Kansas Jayhawks.
“I want to say thank you to Algeria for choosing our hometown of Lawrence, Kansas to come here. So welcome to the United States, and welcome to Kansas,” a local man told Algerian television. “We don’t know too much, but we want to welcome you here.”
