The 2026 FIFA World Cup was promised to the world as a celebration of football’s universal spirit; forty-eight nations, 3 host countries, football unites the world. What has unfolded at borders, airports and visa offices tells a very different story. We write this with anger, sorrow and an unwillingness to look away.
OPSEU/SEFPO’s Coalition of Racialized Workers denounces the actions of the United States Government harassing and targeting World Cup Football, teams, players and fans who are black, racialized or Muslim. This is the first time that this happens on this scale in The World Cup’s ninety six year history.
Within days before its opening, it has revealed itself to be something else entirely: a showcase for United States imperial arrogance, a monument to the cowardice of FIFA’s leadership, and a humiliation visited disproportionately upon the peoples of the Global South. Football has always been the game that grew from the streets in the Global South and football united “ many oppressed against colonizers as Nelson Mandela said: “While we were on Robben Island, the only access to the World Cup was on radio. Football was the only joy to prisoners,” .
We call on FIFA to apply their “No Racism” slogan and protocol in matches and act by ending their silence and moving the rest of the matches in the USA to another country.
The incidents accumulating in the last few weeks hours are not isolated administrative mishaps. They form a line, one drawn consistently along lines of race, religion and national origin.The racist actions by the USA government through its immigration services are a pattern, and systematic racism and discrimination including but not limited to:
- Somali referee Omar Abdulkadir Artan, who was denied entry into the United States despite being selected to officiate at the tournament. Artan, named CAF’s Best Male Referee of 2025 and set to become the first-ever Somali World Cup official, was denied entry in Miami as he travelled to officiate his first World Cup matches. U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) held Artan for more than eleven hours before returning him.
- Iraq’s national team striker Aymen Hussein was detained and questioned for almost seven hours after arriving at Chicago O’Hare Airport, during which time his phone was examined, highlighting the extensive and largely unchecked authority that U.S. border officials wield when screening arrivals. Hussein was eventually admitted, but the team’s photographer, Talal Salah, was detained for more than ten hours before being denied entry altogether. Both were subjected to the machinery of a security state whose relationship with Iraq needs no elaboration here. The United States invaded Iraq in 2003 on the basis of fabricated intelligence, killing hundreds of thousands, destroying the infrastructure of an ancient civilization, and igniting sectarian conflicts whose embers still burn. That an Iraqi athlete in 2026 must submit to seven hours of interrogation at a United States airport to attend a sporting event his country qualified for is not irony. It is continuity.
- The Iranian national team spent days dealing with visa procedures at the U.S. Consulate in Turkey, with the United States permitting entry only on match days and denying visas to fifteen members of the delegation, including federation secretary general Hedayat Mombeini and vice president Mehdi Mohammad Nabi. This situation led Team Melli to threaten a boycott of the World Cup, though the matter was partially resolved after extensive negotiations between the Iranian football federation, the Trump administration, and FIFA. Iran ultimately decided to participate, but was denied the right to stay overnight in the United States, meaning the team will play their matches and then return to their base camp in Tijuana, Mexico. Let that sink in. Iran qualified for the World Cup through two years of gruelling qualifiers. Their players trained, sacrificed, and earned their place on the global stage.
- The visa denials come in the context of President Trump’s June 2025 executive order establishing travel restrictions for citizens of twelve countries, including Iran, though the order included an exemption for athletes and necessary support staff attending the World Cup, Olympics, or other major sporting events. That the exemption has been applied so selectively and capriciously, permitting some whilst denying others without explanation or transparency, tells us everything about the nature of such exemptions. They are not rights. They are privileges extended by sovereign discretion, revocable at will, subject to no independent review, and carrying no accountability. Haiti and Iran faced full travel bans, whilst Côte d’Ivoire and Senegal faced partial restrictions. Haiti had qualified for the first time in over fifty years, yet due to the travel ban, most Haitian fans would be unable to watch their team play in the United States.
- The Iranian supports tickets have been all cancelled without notice, so the Iranian team will not be allowed any supporters in the field.
- Man Moroccan fans have been denied Visas after they already bought tickets and bought their hotels.
- The treatment of African delegations has carried an unmistakable racial dimension that observers have been rightly unwilling to ignore. Members of the Senegalese national team staff were forced to remove their shoes and subjected to lengthy, intrusive searches at the border, prompting widespread accusations of racism and racial profiling.
- The South African national team arrived in the United States much later than planned because part of the delegation was not granted visas on time. South Africa’s sports minister, Gayton McKenzie, described the visa process as embarrassing and grossly unfair towards the players and coaching staff.
- The Uzbekistan national team was searched with bomb-sniffing dogs, footage of which spread rapidly across international media, exposing the humiliating manner in which teams from Muslim-majority nations are processed through the United States security apparatus. Uzbekistan national and Senegal being asked to hand over their smartphones and empty their pockets after stepping off the team bus. The team’s bags were also gathered on the ground and inspected by a sniffer dog before the squad was finally allowed to enter the stadium. Notably, the Netherlands players did not undergo similar screening measures.
These are not routine procedures applied neutrally. The United States does not typically deploy explosive detection dogs against European delegations. The racial and religious logic of United States border enforcement, which has always treated the brown and the Muslim body as presumptively suspect, has been imported wholesale into the administration of a sporting tournament that claims to celebrate human universality.
- Swiss footballer Breel Embolo, the Cameroon-born forward who plays for Rennes, experienced a two-day delay in receiving his United States visa after his Electronic System for Travel Authorization was abruptly revoked on account of a 2018 criminal conviction, blocking him from joining his national team until days later. Whatever one makes of that conviction, the retroactive, last-minute revocation of travel authorisation for an accredited World Cup participant speaks to an immigration apparatus operating not by clear rules applied consistently, but by discretionary power exercised arbitrarily, power that falls most heavily upon the racialised, the Muslim, the African, and the citizen of nations that Washington has designated as enemies.
- The head of the Palestinian Football Federation was denied a Visa to enter USA to watch a couple of matches based on the request of Israel.
- FIFA refused to suspend Israel from qualifiers after calls from many countries to suspend Israel after the genocide and war crimes that Israel committed in Palestine and Lebanon. FIFA has a history of banning countries when they are involved in wars or crimes:
- In 2022 FIFA suspended Russia due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine
- In 1992 FIFA from all international football competitions due to the Yugoslav wars
- FIFA banned South Africa from 1970 to 1990 because the apartheid regime
The answer is as damning as anything else in this sorry episode. FIFA responded to the denial of Artan’s entry by stating that it is not involved in host country immigration processes, including visa adjudications, and that a host government ultimately determines who receives a visa and who is admitted into their country.
This is not acceptable as in previous cases FIFA took immediate actions, for example:
1-In 1966 England did not want to give North Korea players. FIFA threatened to move the torment to another country event in the last minute then UK backed off and gave Visa to the North Korean Team.
2-In 2023, in the under 21 World Cup, Indonesia refused to give Visas to the Israeli team and FIFA moved the World Cup to Argentina just three weeks before the tournament started.
The same standard should be applied to USA. This is not acceptable and FIFA need to take immediate action.”