FIFA referee Omar Artan flew into Miami on Saturday for the assignment of his career: He was about to become the first Somali to referee in a World Cup. But Artan never made it out of the airport. U.S. Customs and Border Protection reportedly interrogated him for 11 hours then held him in a cell before putting him on a flight back to Istanbul, from where he had caught his connecting flight to the U.S. By Monday, FIFA had dropped Artan from the tournament.
I spent nearly a decade at the Department of Homeland Security working in counterterrorism and civil rights, and I can say with confidence that Artan being denied entry for so-called vetting concerns and being sent away had nothing to do with national security and everything to do with his being born in Somalia. The government is dressing up its religious and ethnic discrimination in seemingly innocuous bureaucratic clothing.
We don’t have to shut out whole countries to keep our country safe.
The U.S. already operates the world’s most exacting traveler-vetting system — officials look at fingerprints, facial scans, multiple watchlists and conduct checks via the Electronic System for Travel Authorization. That system is applied every time someone tries to enter the U.S., and it makes crude nationality bans unnecessary. We don’t have to shut out whole countries to keep our country safe. We have the tools to single out threats and let everyone else through.
But during this second Trump administration, the government is restricting visits from nationals of 39 countries. Four World Cup teams — Haiti, Iran, Senegal and Ivory Coast — are on that list, and the administration has only given the tournament a narrow carve-out. Players and their families, coaches and staff can enter. But no one else from those nations can: not fans, not journalists, not sponsors and not the officials who run the matches. So Artan, who was named Africa’s best official in 2025, was turned away at the gate as the players he may have officiated were waved through.
There are 48 nations that have qualified for the World Cup, and people from 11 of them were having a hard time getting visas to visit the United States even before the World Cup began, a BBC analysis of State Department data found. Between October 2024 and September 2025, according to that report, people from those 11 countries who applied for B1 or B2 visas to the U.S. were denied more than 40% of the time. The rate for all countries was 34%.
In Jordan, where visa refusal rates reached 57%, the head of the country’s football fan association was denied a U.S. visa after he said he brought 42 documents to his visa interview. Iran’s players received visas, but more than a dozen in Iran’s Football Federation, including its president, did not.
Barred from sleeping on American soil, the Iranian team has set up camp across the U.S. border in Tijuana, Mexico, and will cross the border to play its matches. Pressed to explain the refusals, the Trump administration said it wouldn’t let Iran “sneak terrorists” in. No evidence beyond that was offered.
Officials claimed “terror associations” had surfaced for Artan, but never showed documentation or allowed him to challenge that finding. This tactic, claiming unnamed, unappealable “threats” after a decision is made, is a pattern Muslim communities in America know intimately. A recent Opinium poll commissioned by trans-Atlantic thinktank the Concordia Forum found that only 1 in 5 Muslims in the U.S. believe they are always treated equally under the law. That’s not a fringe perception. It’s a majority experience of a system that applies different standards based on faith and origin.
It’s reasonable to conclude that Artan was turned away not because of anything in his record, but because of where he was born.
Real vetting — internally and externally — is specific, documented and open to challenge. None of that seems to have happened here. That’s why it’s reasonable to conclude that Artan was turned away not because of anything in his record, but because of where he was born.
Before the World Cup kicked off Thursday, the administration was already using the tournament as an excuse to further its exclusionary authoritarian agenda. White House border czar Tom Homan promised “more ICE than you’ve ever seen” in New York as millions of visitors arrive. The White House has floated the idea of sending the National Guard into Chicago, San Francisco and Seattle, and in October, Trump threatened to pull matches from any city his administration decides is unsafe.
Expect the pattern to intensify once the cameras are on: more fans turned back at the airport, more officials and reporters pulled into back rooms, more enforcement theater in host cities. America promised FIFA a tournament free of discrimination, but issuing blanket bans based on nationality sends the opposite message.
There’s still time to stop these policies and appropriately welcome those visiting. For what America decides to do in this moment will echo long after the final whistle. We have the tools to tell who’s a threat from who’s not a threat. We only have to use them.
Haris Tarin is vice president of policy and programming at the Muslim Public Affairs Council. He previously served as a senior advisor at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and was chief of staff for Operation Allies Welcome.