Critics of Qatar 2022 Face Questions Over Trump World Cup Racism

By: Jeremy CorbynSaturday June 13, 2026

Omar Artan’s journey home on Wednesday, after being turned away at Miami international airport, marked a bitter twist in what should have been a historic moment. Photograph: Feisal Omar/Reuters

Omar Artan was set to break new ground as the first Somali referee to take charge at a World Cup finals. Already a Fifa-certified official since 2018, he had overseen matches at the 2023 Africa Cup of Nations and was later named the 2025 Confederation of African Football men’s referee of the year. Yet last weekend, Artan was refused entry to the United States at Miami international airport.

Washington has not publicly explained the ban, but Somalia appears on Donald Trump’s travel ban list. After the decision drew international attention, an administration source, speaking anonymously, said the refusal stemmed from possible links to possible terrorists. In the face of the backlash, that explanation should be treated with deep skepticism. There is a word for this: racism.

For this disgraceful decision is only the most visible part of a much wider problem. Somalia is one of 39 countries – including Laos, Sierra Leone, Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger and South Sudan – on a US travel ban list. As a result, fans from more than a quarter of the nations competing at the World Cup are confronting visa refusals and restrictions; so much for Fifa’s assertion that “football unites the world”. A tournament meant to bridge divides now risks deepening them.

That is what can happen when a World Cup is cohosted by an administration that divides, detains and deports at will. For months, international organisations have warned that this tournament carries a human rights emergency that reaches far beyond match officials and into the lives of players, supporters and residents. In a recent Amnesty International report, the “starkest threat” facing the World Cup, which is being cohosted by the US, Canada and Mexico, was identified as “the machine of abusive, discriminatory and deadly immigration enforcement and mass detention in the USA”.

In January, the footage of an Immigration Control Enforcement (ICE) agent shooting dead Renee Good was seen around the world. Two weeks later, ICE agents were linked to another death: Alex Pretti. Those were only the most prominent cases; at least 17 people have died in ICE custody this year. In June last year, the US moved to deport more than 500,000 legal immigrants – six times the number of people expected to watch the World Cup final at MetLife stadium in New York. ICE’s acting director has said the agency will be “a key part of the overall security apparatus for the World Cup”.

So far, neither Fifa nor the US has given any guarantee that fans will be protected from unlawful detention, raids or deportation. Nor have they answered a series of other concerns raised by Amnesty: severe limits on peaceful protest, the further displacement of homeless people, the expansion of mass surveillance and doubts about whether the US can deliver the “safe, welcoming and inclusive” tournament promised by Fifa, especially for members of the LGBTQ+ community.

When Qatar hosted the World Cup four years ago, I joined human rights groups in expressing alarm over freedom of expression, LGBTQ+ rights and the appalling exploitation of workers, many of whom died while building the tournament’s infrastructure. It is hard not to notice the deafening silence now from those – including our prime minister – who were outspoken then. The double standards are striking, and they reveal the cowardice of politicians who defend human rights only when it suits them.

That hypocrisy has also helped excuse appalling complicity in some of the gravest crimes imaginable. Since Trump received the newly created Fifa Peace prize in December 2025, the US government has illegally kidnapped the president of Venezuela, waged an illegal war on Iran and tightened its criminal blockade on Cuba. In each case, the US has depended on the moral cowardice of our own government, which has not condemned the abduction of a head of state, has allowed the use of its airbases for strikes on Iran and has abandoned the Cuban people in their hour of need. That is quite the hat-trick. And that is before mentioning the UK’s role, alongside the US, in Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

“I’m not responsible for America’s immigration policy.” That was the answer from government minister Liz Kendall this week when asked about Omar Artan’s ban. She is right. But another truth is just as clear: one reason the US feels able to show such open contempt for human rights is the quiet approval it receives from governments such as ours.