Referee Omar Artan signals a penalty during the Confederation of African Football Champions League final soccer match in Morocco on May 24, 2026.Mosa'ab Elshamy/ Associated Press
A World Cup referee from Somalia confirmed on Tuesday that US border patrol officials denied him entry into the country.
“I am very, very disappointed,” Omar Abdulkadir Artan, one of 52 referees chosen in April for the upcoming FIFA Men’s World Cup, told the New York Times. “I’m just simply a referee who’s trying to live his dream, the biggest dream of my life, to come to the World Cup.”
Artan added that he “had the right papers” and “the right visa.” According to the Associated Press, the Somalia embassy in Kenya said it processed his travel visa to the US last week.
US border officials said on Monday that Artan would not take part in the soccer tournament. Artan would have been the first Somali referee to officiate a World Cup game and was named the men’s referee of the year by Africa’s soccer federation in 2025.
According to a statement from the US Customs and Border Protection, Artan flew to Miami International Airport from Istanbul International Airport on Saturday. CBP inspected him “to verify information or determine admissibility” and was denied entry “due to vetting concerns.”
The federal agency did not disclose what specific “vetting concerns” it found.
Artan told the New York Times that his immigration interview lasted for 11 hours. Afterward, he was put in a holding cell for several hours before being forced on a flight back to Istanbul.
Last June, the White House labeled Somalia as “a terrorist safe haven” with a government that “lacks command and control of its territory.” President Donald Trump has repeatedly hurled abuse at Somali immigrants, calling them “garbage” last December and using fraud cases in Minnesota involving them to justify cuts to social services like child care and the massive ICE raids in the state.
According to the Council on Foreign Relations, an American foreign policy and international relations nonprofit, the US gave 3,196 visas to travelers from Somalia between May 2024 and April 2025. In January 2025, Trump fully restricted people from Somalia from entering the US, noting national security and public safety concerns over “foreign terrorists.”
The CBP preventing Artan from refereeing at the World Cup is just one story in a series of US visa denials of national team players, staff, and other sports officials from making it to the tournament. As I wrote last week, according to Iran’s football federation chief, the players had not yet received their US visas. Since then, all of Iran’s players have received visas, but more than a dozen staff members—which can include coaches, medical professionals, and trainers—were rejected.
