Somali referee Omar Artan has said that the biggest dream of his professional life had been shattered after US authorities denied him entry into the United States to participate in the World Cup.
Artan was one of 52 selected for the tournament and would have been the first Somali to referee a World Cup game.
Artan said officiating a World Cup game would have been a symbol for all Somalis of what they could achieve despite their country’s difficulties.
“I am very, very disappointed,” Artan said in a telephone interview from Istanbul, the city he had been flown to after he was refused entry. “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.”
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Artan flew to Miami International Airport on Saturday, five days before the first game of the tournament, on Thursday, but was prevented from entering the United States by border officials, who took him aside and questioned him in a small room overnight.
“I had the right papers and everything. I had the right visa,” Artan said, adding that he had also showed documentation from Fifa as well as photographs of his career of over a decade as a professional referee. Border officials also checked online material detailing Artan’s career, he said. He was named referee of the year in 2025 by the Confederation of African Football, which governs soccer in Africa.
The immigration interview ended after 11 hours, Artan said, and he was then taken to a separate holding cell where he was detained for several further hours before being put on a flight back to Istanbul. He said officials did not give him a reason for refusing him entry.
US Customs and Border Protection said in a statement that decisions were made on a case-by-case basis and did not provide details about why Artan had been denied entry.
“The traveller underwent additional inspection, a routine part of CBP’s inspection process when officers need to verify information or determine admissibility,” the statement said. “Following inspection, the traveller, a referee for the Fifa World Cup, was determined to be inadmissible due to vetting concerns and was denied entry.”
Artan said, “I think that they have a problem with my country,” adding that he would return to the Somali capital, Mogadishu, on Wednesday. He said he had been preparing for the World Cup for four years, taking courses with Fifa in Qatar and in the United Arab Emirates.
The Trump administration has imposed severe travel and visa restrictions on Somalia, a country in East Africa, and it was not clear whether Fifa had sought clearance for Artan to enter the United States.
Fifa did not immediately respond to a request for comment but confirmed in a statement that Artan would not be able to officiate at the World Cup.
“Fifa is not involved in host country immigration processes, including visa adjudications, and has been informed by authorities that Mr. Artan’s status will not be changed at present,” the statement said.
It was unclear why Artan could not have been considered for referee duty in Mexico or Canada, the two other countries hosting the tournament.
In the interview, Artan recounted his journey to the United States, which he said had begun last week in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, where he waited to secure travel papers. Once the documents arrived, he flew to Istanbul before catching a connecting flight to Miami ahead of a pre-tournament meeting of Fifa referees in the city.
Artan said border officials had asked him why he had come to the United States and about politics in Somalia. Those questions, Artan said, included many about the militant group al-Shabab, which controls parts of Somalia and which has fought a years-long insurgency against the government.
The relationship between the United States and Somalia has been fraught in recent years.
In December, US president Donald Trump singled out Somali immigrants, calling them “garbage” in a tirade at the White House and saying that Somalia was “not even a country.” Nonetheless, the Pentagon has been working with Somalia’s government to conduct scores of air strikes against militant targets in the country.
Other countries attending the World Cup have faced difficulties travelling to the United States. Last week, members of Iran’s soccer team were granted visas to enter the country after months of uncertainty caused by the US-Israeli war with Iran. But more than a dozen members of the team’s support staff were denied entry.
Elsewhere, Iran’s football federation said on Tuesday its ticket allocation had been pulled just days before the World Cup starts, leaving supporters who had already made travel plans unable to attend their team’s matches.
The World Cup begins on Thursday, with Iran playing their first two Group G games in Los Angeles, against New Zealand on June 15th and Belgium on June 21st, and then facing Egypt in Seattle on June 26th. In a statement, the Iranian federation said it had already begun the ticket sales process for the matches but could no longer provide them to fans.
“This is despite the fact that many Iranian football fans, relying on the officially announced process, had already made the necessary plans to attend the matches,” the FFIRI added in a statement. “Depriving Iranian supporters of access to their lawful and official allocation of tickets is an action contrary to the spirit governing international competitions and the principle of equality among participating countries.
“This development raises serious questions about the interference of non-sporting and political considerations in the organisation of the world’s biggest football event.”
Each participating federation at the World Cup receives 8 per cent of the tickets for each of their matches to be allocated to fans according to their own criteria. The FFIRI did not say who had made the decision to withhold the tickets but urged Fifa, football’s governing body, to adhere to “the principles of neutrality, fairness, and established regulations” and called on it to prevent off-field issues from casting a shadow over the tournament. Fifa did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times. Additional reporting from Reuters
