How World Cup Players Are Navigating Trump’s Immigration Crackdown
Louicius Deedson was nine years old when a 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck Haiti, in 2010. He remembers running out of his family’s Port-au-Prince home as it crumbled behind him, and eventually taking shelter in makeshift tents that his parents and neighbors constructed in a nearby dirt field. Within three days, he told me, he and his friends had turned the field into a soccer pitch.
He was the best player in the group, rising through the ranks of the country’s youth-academy system. His parents sent him to live with a host family in the United States at the age of thirteen, but he kept in touch with his friends and family back in Haiti, speaking on the phone daily, describing his efforts to acclimate to American life. Deedson kept playing soccer, and when he was eighteen, he signed his first professional contract, with a club in Denmark. He called his childhood friends after every game, recounting his glories and setbacks. “Sometimes they make little motivational videos for me,” Deedson said.
At twenty, he made his début for Haiti’s national team, part of a generation of Haitian players who grew up away from their country, then came together to represent it on the international stage. Now, for the first time since 1974, Haiti’s men’s national soccer team will compete in the World Cup, which the United States is co-hosting with Mexico and Canada this summer. “To be able to put that flag at the best competition in the world, it’s something big,” Ruben Providence, a twenty-four-year-old striker whose parents migrated to France before he was born, said. “Haitian people have faced a lot of negativity.”
Nearly every player I spoke with keeps in touch with loved ones back on the island. Hannes Delcroix, a twenty-seven-year-old center-back, who was two years old when a family from Belgium adopted him, connected with his birth mother and cousins in Haiti several years ago. Duke Lacroix, a thirty-two-year-old full-back, whose parents had grown up in Port-au-Prince before migrating to the U.S., told me his “dream would be to play a match in Haiti” in front of his aunts and uncles. For Deedson, his dream would be to take the pitch for Haiti’s World Cup matches in Boston, Philadelphia, and Atlanta in front of his childhood friends. But Haiti happened to qualify for the World Cup in a year when it takes place in a country that has banned Haitians from visiting.
“The ones that want to come do not have the visa,” Deedson told me. “For me, it’s sad. A lot of people would try to come if the games were in Mexico or Canada.” Haitian fans are used to travelling to watch matches. After the assassination of Haiti’s President, Jovenel Moïse, in 2021, left the country in the grip of gang violence, the team has trained and played its home games abroad, most recently in Curaçao. Last November, hundreds of Haitian fans made the trip across the Caribbean Sea for the national team’s biggest game in half a century. Filling the rows of blue bleachers on that warm and clear night, they waved flags, chanted songs, and bumped kompa. Les Grenadiers, as the team is often called, were in the midst of a magical run through the regional tournament that determined which teams from North America would earn a place in the 2026 World Cup. By the tournament’s final night, one spot remained up for grabs. To qualify, all Haiti needed was to beat Nicaragua. The game happened to be on November 18th, the anniversary of Haitian revolutionaries defeating the French Army in 1803 before declaring independence.
“I feel like everything was written: two battles won that day,” Garven Metusala, a twenty-six-year-old defender whose parents moved to Quebec before he was born, said. “Everyone just knew we were gonna qualify.”
Nine minutes in, Deedson cut across the edge of the box and unleashed a left-footed strike that found the back of the net, loosening nerves and igniting the crowd. Haiti held on for a 2–0 win. Some players collapsed onto the turf in joyful tears. Others sprinted to the chain-link fence surrounding the pitch to dance alongside their supporters. The CBS Sports announcer described the scene as “the stuff of football dreams.” While many of his teammates went out to celebrate, Deedson returned to his hotel to call loved ones in Haiti. In punching a ticket to the world’s most popular sporting event, Haiti’s players had staked their claim as underdogs in a competition dominated by wealthier nations—exactly the sort of Cinderella story that FIFA aimed to spur when it expanded the World Cup field from thirty-two to forty-eight teams, giving more countries “the chance to dream,” as the FIFA president, Gianni Infantino, put it.
Never before in the history of the World Cup has a host nation barred tourists en masse from a participating country in the way the U.S. has done this year. In fact, FIFA rules prohibit “discrimination of any kind against a country, private person or group of people,” including on the basis of “national or social origin,” with violations “punishable by suspension or expulsion.” But over the past year, President Donald Trump has issued proclamations blocking tourist visas for passport holders from forty countries, “to protect the security of the United States,” including four with teams that have qualified for the World Cup: Haiti, Iran, Senegal, and Côte d’Ivoire.
In addition to these travel bans, the decision to issue any visa is entirely at the discretion of the U.S. government, and Trump has made no secret about which arrivals he deems worthy. All told, Trump has restricted immigrant visas in some capacity from seventy-five countries, fifteen of which are sending teams to the World Cup. All of these teams are from Africa, South America, the Caribbean, or Asia —including perennial powerhouse Brazil, 2022 semifinalist Morocco, first-time qualifier Cabo Verde, and consistent contenders Colombia, Egypt, and Ghana. Cabo Verde, Côte d’Ivoire, and Senegal, along with fellow World Cup qualifiers Tunisia and Algeria, are also among the fifty countries whose passport-holding citizens are required to pay a bond of as much as fifteen thousand dollars to enter the U.S. on a tourist visa.
Infantino cannot claim he didn’t anticipate the possibility that U.S. policies might come into conflict with FIFA requirements. When FIFA considered candidates to host the 2026 World Cup nine years ago, the President was Donald Trump, and Infantino acknowledged at the time that Trump’s 2017 executive order banning visitors from predominantly Muslim countries threatened to disqualify the U.S. from contention.
“It’s obvious when it comes to FIFA competitions, any team, including the supporters and officials of that team, who qualify for a World Cup need to have access to the country, otherwise there is no World Cup,” Infantino said at a 2017 press conference, in London. A year later, Trump wrote a letter to Infantino saying that he was “confident” that “all eligible athletes, officials and fans from all countries around the world would be able to enter the United States without discrimination.”
Despite Infantino’s concerns, and before the Supreme Court had even issued a final ruling on Trump’s travel ban, FIFA’s voting committee awarded the World Cup to the U.S. While Canada and Mexico share in the hosting duties, seventy-eight of the tournament’s hundred and four matches, including the final rounds, will be on American soil.
Geopolitical tensions simmer in the backdrop of every World Cup. For the 1934 World Cup, in Italy, Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini built new stadiums around the country to showcase the strength of his regime. When Argentina hosted in 1978, the military junta that had taken power two years earlier staged elaborate ceremonies as markers of the country’s stability amid growing evidence of violent political repression. When the U.S. faced Iran in the 1998 World Cup, after years of diplomatic tensions, President Bill Clinton said he hoped the match “can be another step toward ending the estrangement between our nations.” During the 2002 World Cup, fans across Africa celebrated Senegal’s upset victory over defending champion France, its former colonizer, as a symbol of liberation.
Over the years, FIFA has prohibited play for countries with government policies that violate the organization’s stated values, including South Africa during three decades of apartheid; Yugoslavia, in 1994, following United Nations sanctions during the Balkan wars; and Russia, after it invaded Ukraine in 2022. The U.S. under Trump has faced no such consequence—quite the opposite. In the past year, Infantino attended Trump’s Inauguration, honored him with FIFA’s first “Peace Prize,” and, after a White House meeting, assured everyone that “America will welcome the world.”
In response to questions about the impact of visa restrictions on the World Cup, a spokesperson for the U.S. State Department told me that “America’s safety and the security of our borders will always come first.” The State Department did offer expedited appointments in the visa-application process for visitors with World Cup tickets, but the program doesn’t accommodate “foreign nationals who are otherwise not eligible for visas.” For countries barred from receiving visas, Trump’s proclamation only allows “exceptions for any athlete or member of an athletic team, including coaches, persons performing a necessary support role, and immediate relatives.” The exception explicitly “does not apply to fans.”
But Issa Laye Diop, of Senegal, has applied for a visa anyway, telling me he hopes the rules change in time. As the president of le 12ème Gaïndé, a fan club for the Senegalese national team, he has attended all three World Cups for which Senegal has qualified in the past, in 2002, 2018, and 2022. This year, Senegal boasts a strong roster, led by the star forward Sadio Mané. “The whole country will apply for a visa,” Diop said. “Why not?” And, even if Diop’s U.S. visa doesn’t come through, he still has a chance to keep his streak alive: teams are guaranteed to play three group-stage games in their attempt to reach the “knockout” tournament, and, while Senegal’s first two games are in the U.S., its third will be north of the border, in Toronto.
Iran’s national team has no such luck—and faces far more difficult circumstances than any other participating country. All three of its games are in the U.S., raising ongoing questions about whether the players can safely participate under a host nation at war with their homeland. In a social-media post, from March 12th, Trump wrote that “The Iran National Soccer Team is welcome to The World Cup, but I really don’t believe it is appropriate that they be there, for their own life and safety.” Iran’s sports minister, Ahmad Donyamali, said on state television that it is “not possible for us to take part in the World Cup,” and the government announced in a statement that it was prohibiting national and club teams from travelling to “countries that are considered hostile and are unable to ensure the security of Iranian athletes and team members.” Iran’s football federation requested that FIFA move its matches to Mexico, but FIFA denied the request.
“In Iran, nobody is thinking about football or any sports nowadays,” Aref Mohajeri, a sports agent for a firm that represents around fifty Iranian players, including dozens who remain in the country, told me. “But the World Cup is really important for our players.” For Iranian athletes who play in domestic-league games that aren’t broadcast internationally, the World Cup serves as a critical launchpad to impress international scouts. After the 2018 World Cup, five Iranian players signed with clubs in Europe, including the star forward Mehdi Taremi, who has gone on to have a decorated career in Portugal, Italy, and Greece. “The whole world, and a lot of coaches, are watching,” Mohajeri said. “That’s a huge advantage for players.” And it’s not just a bigger paycheck; signing with a European club now means escaping a war zone.
Within days of qualifying for the World Cup, in October, officials from the Ghana Football Association started meeting with diplomats at the U.S. Embassy in Accra. Though the event was still eight months away, and Ghana wasn’t restricted from applying for tourist visas, the officials wanted to make sure they had “enough time to get our house in order,” Henry Asante Twum, the association’s communications director, told me. The visa applications for past World Cup hosts, he said, “were not as cumbersome as it is now.”
They submitted the names of coaches, trainers, doctors, equipment managers, and players—anyone who could end up travelling with the team. “Every single individual that we have pencilled down has a specific role,” Twum said. By late February, the Ghana Football Association had asked players to submit the names of every relative they might want to invite to games. Though the roster wouldn’t be finalized until May, and players didn’t yet know how many tickets they’d be able to distribute, Ghanaian officials wanted to play it safe: submit the visa applications as early as possible, and figure out the rest later. “So if you’ve got plans of bringing family, inform us before you make the squad,” Twum recalled telling the players being considered for the national-team roster. “Inform us now so we can begin the process.”
It’s not just legal documents. Trump’s policies have created uncertainty for players and soccer federations trying to determine whether they will be safe in a country where immigration agents are reportedly detaining even legal residents based on their appearance, along with other factors. “We are not expecting problems, but we are preparing for possible problems,” Thiago Freitas, who runs Roc Nation’s sports agency in Brazil and has a star-studded client list that includes Real Madrid’s Vinícius Júnior, told me. “A lot of athletes have in their families people with a profile, according to age or occupation, that often are rejected by U.S. authorities.”
When the U.S. hosted the Copa América tournament in 2024, under the Biden Administration, Freitas helped his clients with visa applications for their loved ones. The process involved preparing documents showing proof of employment or family ties that signal an applicant isn’t likely to overstay their visa. Of the fifty or so applicants, Freitas recalls at least two getting rejected. Both were childhood friends of athletes on the national team, and were unemployed and unmarried. Currently, the State Department’s guidance for the World Cup officially welcomes the “immediate relatives” of players from participating countries, a term that covers “spouses, children, and parents,” the State Department said in a statement. “Exceptions may be considered on a case-by-case basis as needed.” If an athlete wants to invite a cousin or childhood friend, Freitas said that he anticipates those applicants are “probably subject to the same criteria as everyone who comes into the U.S. now, and this could be disappointing, especially because some of their friends are as important as their family.”
This uncertainty is not promising for most countries that Trump has targeted with visa restrictions. But, for some, his mercurial approach to geopolitics might provide an advantage. Juan Pablo Ribadeneira, an agent who represents four players on Ecuador’s national team, told me he is relatively relaxed about the visa process because “Ecuador has a good relationship with the United States.” Trump recently called Ecuador, and its right-wing government, “one of the United States’ strongest partners” in the region.
Nearly everyone I spoke to—more than two dozen players, agents, fans, and officials from various national soccer federations—has a pending U.S. visa application or plans to submit one soon. Because of this, most spoke cautiously about American policy, fully aware that their fates could hinge on the whims of the Trump Administration. One player followed up after our interview to ask that I not use a line he said that mentioned the President.
Steven Moreira, a thirty-one-year-old defender on Cabo Verde’s national team, told me that he knew plenty of people who had waited all their lives to see their nation represented in the World Cup. On the night of Cabo Verde’s qualifying victory, Moreira recalled, players celebrated on a beach with crowds of fans. “You could see in their eyes how much it meant to them,” he said. “Like they forgot about everything else except how happy they were.” He said he hoped to see many of those fans waving their flags at Cabo Verde’s games in Atlanta, Miami, and Houston. “Everything,” he said, “depends on Trump.” ♦