Somali Referee Denied US Entry for World Cup Gets Hero’s Welcome Back Home

Omar Artan, the 34-year-old Somali referee who was denied entry to the U.S. for the World Cup, was welcomed in Mogadishu by crowds of supporters on Wednesday.

On Saturday, Artan was refused entry to the U.S. after arriving in Miami, despite the fact that he arrived with a valid U.S. visa and had been invited to officiate at the World Cup. Instead, border officials questioned Artan for 11 hours about his travel and about Somali politics, before transferring him to a holding cell, detaining him for several more hours, and then deporting him to Istanbul.

“I am very, very disappointed,” Artan 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, who was named Africa’s referee of the year in 2025, said that he showed border officials documentation from FIFA and photographs from his decade-long career, and that the officials also verified his career from online sources. Still, they denied his entry, without providing him with a reason.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) stated that Artan “was determined to be inadmissible due to vetting concerns.”

On Tuesday, the Trump administration said that Artan was denied entry because of links to “suspected members of terror organizations,” without providing evidence.

Somalia is one of 12 countries under President Donald Trump’s full travel ban. Trump first banned immigrants and visitors from Somalia in January 2017 at the start of his first term, and then renewed the ban in 2025. But participants in the World Cup – athletes, coaches, and essential staff – are supposed to be exempt from U.S. travel bans.

“I think they have a problem with my country,” Artan told the Times after being deported to Istanbul. In fact, Trump has shown particular malevolence toward Somalia as well as Somalis in the U.S. In addition to the full travel ban on Somalia, he has peddled white nationalist rhetoric about Somali communities, particularly in Minnesota and Ohio. He has called them “garbage,” claimed that they “contribute nothing,” and demonized Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar (D) in particular.

FIFA, soccer’s international governing body, which had appointed Artan as a referee for the World Cup, did not defend Artan against the Trump administration. In a statement, the organization said that it is “not involved in host country immigration processes, including visa adjudications … in line with previous Fifa events, a host government ultimately determines who receives a visa and who is admitted into their country.”

On Wednesday, however, when Artan landed in Mogadishu, he was welcomed by supporters, and invited as a guest of honor at a soccer match where he was cheered on by thousands of fans.

Trump’s draconian border policies have already proven an obstacle to the 2026 World Cup. The BBC has reported that 11 of the 48 participating countries, all of them from the Global South, have faced travel restrictions or high rates of visa rejections.

And FIFA has shown itself more loyal to Trump than to the international players. Earlier this week, FIFA directed Haiti’s national soccer team to change its jerseys – just days before the start of the World Cup – because the jerseys were supposedly “too political.” The jerseys featured imagery that referenced the Haitian Revolution, the first major successful revolt by enslaved people in modern history.