5 min readJun 10, 2026 09:42 AM IST
First published on: Jun 9, 2026 at 04:19 PM IST
Haiti are appearing at the World Cup for the first time since 1974. Their opening match, against Scotland on June 14, is at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts, home to one of the largest Haitian diaspora communities in the United States. A Haitian living in Ohio, identified only as Emile, told Al Jazeera he was afraid to attend because of President Donald Trump‘s immigration crackdown. He is not alone.
The 2026 World Cup, the largest in history at 48 teams across three countries, opens Thursday in an America that has spent 18 months conducting the most aggressive immigration enforcement campaign in modern US history.
Fans of Côte d’Ivoire, Haiti, Iran and Senegal cannot travel to the US unless they held valid visas before January 1, 2026, due to travel bans imposed by the Trump administration. All four nations qualified. Their players will play. Their fans, by and large, will watch from home. “If the US is barring certain visitors,” Senegal fan Djibril Gueye told the Associated Press, “then the country shouldn’t agree to host the World Cup.”
The acting director of ICE, Todd Lyons, said the agency would play a “key part” in the tournament. DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin announced on X that ICE agents would “be out there everyday” at games. When Andrew Giuliani, executive director of the White House World Cup task force, was asked whether the administration would rule out ICE raids at stadiums, his answer was precise: “The president does not rule out anything that will make American citizens safer.”
The numbers are not abstract. From January 2025 to March 2026, ICE arrested at least 167,000 people in and around the 11 US cities hosting World Cup matches, according to government data analyzed by Human Rights Watch. Of those arrests, 65 percent had no US criminal convictions. Human Rights Watch also documented the case of an asylum seeker who attended the Club World Cup final last year at MetLife Stadium with his two children, was arrested by ICE and deported as they watched. A Washington Post/University of Maryland poll found that 65 percent of Americans oppose ICE officers patrolling stadiums, including 74 percent of independents.
In Dallas, the group El Movimiento DFW has reinforced its detention hotline and distributed rights kits throughout the community. “Immigrant communities are preparing emergency plans,” organiser Azael Álvarez told El País. “Families are attending know-your-rights trainings.”
At SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, workers voted 96 percent in favour of authorising a strike unless they receive protections from immigration enforcement. “It’s kind of scary when you feel that you’re in a bubble and you’re trying to walk to work, and not knowing if somebody is going to snatch and grab you and take you into custody because of how you look,” Yolanda Fierro, a suites runner at the stadium, told ABC7. Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna has said ICE will not conduct raids in the city. Texas has offered no such assurances.
In Kansas City, the host city rolled out the red carpet for tourists and built a new jail. The $25 million facility is the only new detention infrastructure built by any of the 16 host cities worldwide. The contractor that built it also built the cages at Guantanamo Bay.
Argentina, Algeria, Austria, Curacao, Ecuador, Netherlands and Tunisia will play at Arrowhead stadium.
More than 120 US civil rights organisations, including the ACLU, issued a travel advisory warning fans, players and journalists of risks including racial profiling, arrest and deportation, and proposals to force visitors to submit their social media accounts for screening for anti-Americanism. At least 17 people have died in ICE detention so far this year, according to the ACLU, at a rate of roughly one every six days.
Then the tournament’s opening weekend produced a case study. Somali referee Omar Abdulkadir Artan arrived at Miami International Airport on Saturday from Istanbul. He had a valid visa and a diplomatic passport issued specifically to ease his journey after earlier visa difficulties. He was CAF referee of the year in 2025. He was the first Somali ever appointed to referee at a World Cup. US Customs and Border Protection determined he was inadmissible due to vetting concerns and turned him away. He flew back to Istanbul.
FIFA confirmed his removal, noting that host governments determine who enters their territory. Andrew Giuliani told the BBC it was “the right decision by customs and border patrol.”
Six months earlier, FIFA president Gianni Infantino had presented Donald Trump with the inaugural FIFA Peace Prize at the World Cup draw in Washington. Privately, according to The Athletic, senior FIFA executives had been urging Infantino to leverage that relationship to ask Trump for a moratorium on ICE raids, framing it as a “positive news story” under the slogan FIFA Unites the World. There is no indication Trump was ever asked. There is no indication he would have said yes.
The World Cup opens Thursday. The world is welcome. Conditions apply.
FIFA President Gianni Infantino, right, presents President Donald Trump. (FILE photo) 
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