Fifa’s grip on its own World Cup is being seriously questioned after Africa’s leading referee was turned away at a US airport.
Omar Artan, Somalia’s top referee and one of 52 officials selected for the 2026 World Cup, flew into Miami to begin his preparations for the tournament.
After what he describes as an 11-hour interrogation by immigration officials, Artan was placed on a return flight without being permitted to enter the country.
Artan had earned his place at the World Cup through a remarkable 2025, becoming the first Somali to take charge of a continental final.
In June 2025, he officiated the second leg of Pyramids FC’s African Champions League final victory over Mamelodi Sundowns, cementing his reputation on the world stage.
Fifa subsequently appointed him to the U-20 World Cup in Chile, where he took charge of three matches including the third-place play-off.
“Every referee’s ambition is to go to the World Cup,” Artan told BBC Somali last week. “When you are selected, you feel that all your hard work was worth it. Years of effort finally made sense.”
Instead of making history as the first Somali to officiate at a World Cup, Artan is now en route back to Mogadishu after being detained for several hours following his lengthy immigration interview.
“I had the right papers and everything. I had the right visa,” Artan told the New York Times, making his exclusion all the more difficult to comprehend.
Andrew Giuliani, who leads the White House Task Force on the World Cup, offered little explanation when speaking to BBC World Service, saying: “While I can’t go into the derog on that I can tell you it was the right decision by customs and border patrol and I support that decision.”
Piara Powar, executive director of discrimination campaign group Fare, described the situation in stark terms, saying the fears surrounding US immigration policy were now being realised.
“Never have we seen the farce of an official Fifa referee being refused entry as he arrives for final preparations,” Powar said, as criticism mounted rapidly.
Former Arsenal and England striker Ian Wright also voiced his frustration publicly, posting on Instagram: “Every few hours it’s another story, another story about fans denied, players denied, officials denied, journalists denied, now refs. This is a World Cup of chaos.”
The Artan case sits within a much broader backdrop of immigration concerns that have overshadowed the entire build-up to the tournament.
In June 2025, President Trump imposed a full entry ban across all visa categories covering 12 countries, including Somalia and three World Cup nations — DR Congo, Iran and Haiti.
Iran has already said its allocation of group stage tickets was revoked by US authorities, while the Iranian squad faces the unusual arrangement of flying in and out of Tijuana within 24 hours for each match.
Iran has also accused the US of denying visas to 15 “integral” members of their backroom staff, raising the alarming prospect of a team being unable to attend their own fixture.
Fifa president Gianni Infantino previously warned that restricting access to a World Cup host nation could invalidate hosting rights, but those words now appear to carry little weight.
Fifa’s current position is that it “is not involved in host country immigration processes, including visa adjudications,” a response many critics have found deeply unsatisfactory.
“Never have we seen so many World Cup coaches, team operations, fans and even senior administrators within Fifa member associations, subject to so much interrogation and exclusion,” Powar added.
“The disruption is such that one has to ask who is running the World Cup. Is it Fifa or is it the US government with its racially charged immigration policies?”
With the tournament kicking off in under 48 hours and one of Fifa’s own referees unable to enter the host country, that question is growing harder to ignore.
