A referee from Somalia said on Tuesday that the biggest dream of his professional life had been shattered after the American authorities denied him permission to enter the United States to participate in the World Cup soccer tournament.
The referee, Omar Abdulkadir Artan, was one of 52 selected for this summer’s World Cup in North America. He was one of seven African referees to be chosen for the tournament and would have been the first Somali to referee a World Cup game.
Speaking for the first time since he was denied entry to the United States, Mr. Artan told The New York Times that officiating a World Cup game would have been a symbol for all Somalis of what they could achieve in spite of their country’s difficulties.
“I am very, very disappointed,” Mr. 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.”
Mr. 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,” Mr. 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 Mr. 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 interview ended after 11 hours, Mr. 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 that officials did not give him a reason for refusing him entry.
U.S. 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 Mr. Artan had been denied entry.
“The traveler underwent additional inspection, a routine part of Customs and Border Protection’s inspection process when officers need to verify information or determine admissibility,” the statement said. “Following inspection, the traveler, a referee for the FIFA World Cup, was determined to be inadmissible due to vetting concerns and was denied entry.”
Mr. 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 that he had been preparing for the World Cup for four years, taking courses with FIFA in Qatar and in the United Arab Emirates.
The border protection force decision has drawn criticism from top soccer officials and prominent Democrats, including Hillary Clinton, but the head of the White House Task Force on the FIFA World Cup 2026, Andrew Giuliani, defended it and said there had been derogatory information about Mr. Artan.
“We also want to make sure that we are not going to allow a soccer tournament to be the opportunity for terrorists to potentially get in the country or anybody who is actually talking to them,” he told the British Broadcasting Corporation.
A search of the sanctions list website of the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control shows that Mr. Artan’s name is similar to that of a man identified as linked to the Somali militant group Al Shabab and upon whom the U.S. government had imposed sanctions. The office is part of the Treasury Department.
That similarity would most likely have prompted additional questioning by border officials about potential ties to Al Shabab, according to Melissa Chavin, an immigration lawyer based in London who specializes in assisting clients seeking to go to the United States. Customs and Border Protection did not immediately reply to a request for comment
Mr. Artan told The Times that border officials had asked him repeatedly if he had ever met anyone from the militant group. He said he had replied that he knew nothing about Al Shabab and was simply a soccer referee going about his business.
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 Mr. Artan to enter the United States.
FIFA did not immediately respond to a request for comment but confirmed in a statement that Mr. 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 Mr. Artan could not have been considered for referee duty in Mexico or Canada, the two other countries hosting the tournament.
In the interview, Mr. 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 pretournament meeting of FIFA referees in the city.
Mr. Artan said that border officials had asked him why he had come to the United States and about politics in Somalia, which for more than a decade has been on a path toward stable statehood. Al Shabab controls parts of the country and has fought a yearslong insurgency against the government.
The relationship between the United States and Somalia has been fraught in recent years.
In December, President 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 airstrikes against militant targets in the country.
Other countries attending the World Cup have faced difficulties traveling 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 U.S.-Israeli war with Iran. But more than a dozen members of the team’s support staff were denied entry.
Hussein Mohamed contributed reporting from Mogadishu, Somalia.
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