{"id":694531,"date":"2026-06-10T00:14:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-10T00:14:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/694531\/"},"modified":"2026-06-10T00:14:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-10T00:14:11","slug":"somali-world-cup-referee-denied-entry-into-u-s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/694531\/","title":{"rendered":"Somali World Cup Referee Denied Entry Into U.S."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The World Cup <a href=\"https:\/\/defector.com\/the-world-cup-for-nobody-is-almost-here\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">is continuing to suck<\/a>, and here\u2019s the latest reason why: CBP goons denied referee Omar Artan entry into the U.S., where he was set to become the first-ever Somali to officiate a World Cup game.<\/p>\n<p>Artan arrived in Miami on Saturday to attend a mandatory training hub for the tournament\u2019s 140 officials. (Because all on-pitch refs have to stay at the base in Florida, he can\u2019t just go to Canada or Mexico to officiate matches.) Instead of allowing him through, however, immigration officials interrogated Artan for 11 hours before locking him in a holding cell for several more. Then they put him on a flight to Istanbul without providing a reason for his denied entry. Since then, CBP cited vague \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2026\/06\/08\/sport\/somali-referee-denied-entry-to-us\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">vetting concerns<\/a>\u201d in an official statement. As a result, Artan will not fulfill what he says is \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/football\/articles\/c9d2y76pd57o\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">the biggest dream<\/a>\u201d of his life at the 2026 World Cup, despite the Confederation of African Football naming him as their top male official last year.<\/p>\n<p>FIFA regards Artan <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/DropSiteNews\/status\/2064062406758687133\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">like they do<\/a> most of the fans, players, and professionals who populate their World Cup: They could not give less of a shit about him. They deferred responsibility for his detention and ejection to \u201chost country immigration processes\u201d which the organization is \u201cnot involved in.\u201d Artan is out, and they will not lift a finger to challenge that.<\/p>\n<p>Somali immigrants are among Donald Trump\u2019s favorite groups to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/articles\/c8dy1613j2ro\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">disparage<\/a>. They were at the center of the hellfire the feds rained down on Minnesota in the winter, and they\u2019re also subject to the Trump administration\u2019s near-total <a href=\"https:\/\/www.congress.gov\/crs-product\/IN12631\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">travel ban<\/a> on 19 mostly Muslim-majority nations. The ban promised specific exceptions for the World Cup and other major sporting events, but this promise appears as false as the entire premise that there could ever be a fair, discerning campaign of mass expulsion and border security mania. Add \u201cthe best male soccer referee in the continent of Africa\u201d to the list of those caught in the expanding dragnet.<\/p>\n<p>Recommended<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The World Cup is continuing to suck, and here\u2019s the latest reason why: CBP goons denied referee Omar&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":694532,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[403,99],"class_list":["post-694531","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/694531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=694531"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/694531\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/694532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=694531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=694531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=694531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}