In the lead-up to the 2026 World Cup, a coalition of more than 120 civil rights and human rights organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union, warned visitors that traveling to the United States may carry serious risks. That’s not something we’re used to seeing for the United States of America.
The advisory cautions fans, players, journalists and visitors that they could face arbitrary denial of entry, detention, deportation, invasive searches of their electronic devices, racial profiling, surveillance, suppression of speech and protest, and cruel or degrading treatment in immigration detention. It urges visitors to arrive with an emergency plan in place.
This World Cup is increasingly becoming a tournament for the wealthy, the vetted, the approved and the politically safe.
That alone should be a global scandal. It should be the lead story in sports pages across Europe, the subject of parliamentary debate. It should be the focus of endless television coverage and have football associations scrambling to explain how they can participate in a tournament under these dangerous conditions for players and their fans.
Instead, much of the institutional European football world has responded with a shrug. The World Cup is arriving in Donald Trump’s America — a country marked by mass deportations, aggressive militarized immigration operations, border crackdowns, attacks on free speech, visa revocations tied to political expression, racial profiling, an expanding surveillance state, escalating police responses to protest and a president who has turned the tournament into another stage for his own political spectacle.
A Somali referee selected by FIFA — one of Africa’s top officials and poised to make history — was reportedly denied entry and sent home, shattering his World Cup dream before kickoff.
An Iraqi player was detained and questioned for hours at a U.S. airport. An Iraqi team photographer was reportedly denied entry after his phone was searched.
Iran’s participation has been dragged into the full force of geopolitics. Some Iranian officials and support staff have been denied visas. The team’s travel and residency arrangements have been restricted. Players face the prospect of competing in a country whose government has been at war with their own. Iranian fans face a maze of sanctions, travel bans, visa barriers and intimidation just to support their national team.
And for fans from several African countries — including Senegal, Algeria, Cape Verde and Côte d’Ivoire — the U.S. has imposed or threatened visa bond requirements that could force some travelers to post as much as $15,000 simply to enter the country.
That is not inclusion.
All of this is unfolding amid a tournament that is already pricing out ordinary fans. FIFA’s embrace of dynamic pricing has helped push tickets to extraordinary levels. European fan groups have complained about World Cup pricing to regulators. Hotel prices in host cities have surged. Transportation costs have become so concerning that New York and New Jersey lawmakers have called for FIFA to help subsidize access to MetLife Stadium.
For decades, the World Cup has been cherished because the sport belongs, at least in spirit, to ordinary people. It is the world’s game: played in alleyways, on dirt fields, on beaches, in parks, by children with nothing more than a ball and space.
But this World Cup is increasingly becoming a tournament for the wealthy, the vetted, the approved and the politically safe.
That should be a scandal, too. But where is the outrage? Where are the European football associations demanding guarantees that their fans will not be searched, detained, deported or denied entry because of their nationality, race, religion, political views or social media posts? Where are the captains promising to wear armbands for migrants rounded up by masked agents? Where are the warm-up shirts demanding due process for all?
Where are the broadcasters refusing to begin with the spectacle and instead opening with the question: How did FIFA award the world’s biggest sporting event to a country where civil rights groups are warning visitors to prepare for detention, deportation, surveillance and suppression of protest?
Where are the European ministers announcing they will boycott official ceremonies until the U.S. guarantees equal treatment for all teams and fans?
Where are the pundits asking whether the tournament should have been moved?
We know the standard because Western governments, football officials and media organizations spent years articulating it when the hosts were Russia in 2018 and Qatar in 2022.
We know the standard because Western governments, football officials and media organizations spent years articulating it when the hosts were Russia in 2018 and Qatar in 2022.
Four years ago, Qatar was essentially put on trial. Before a ball was kicked, the 2022 World Cup was framed by much of the Western press as a referendum on the host nation’s human rights record. Migrant labor. LGBTQ+ rights. Women’s rights. Press freedom. Environmental impact. Corruption. Sportswashing. All of it was fair game, and rightly so. Any host nation should face scrutiny.
The scrutiny of Qatar was relentless. The BBC famously chose not to air the opening ceremony on its main channel, instead beginning its coverage with a sweeping critique of Qatar’s treatment of migrant workers, FIFA corruption and the criminalization of homosexuality. It was dubbed the most controversial World Cup in history before the first match had even started.
Seven European teams — England, Wales, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland — planned to wear OneLove armbands in support of LGBTQ+ rights until FIFA threatened them with sporting sanctions. Germany posed for its team photo with players covering their mouths in protest.
French cities including Paris, Marseille, Lille, Strasbourg and Bordeaux refused to host public fan zones or big-screen broadcasts, citing human rights and environmental concerns. Denmark wore toned-down kits, including a black jersey described as mourning for migrant workers who died in Qatar. German fans hung #BoycottQatar2022 banners in stadiums. European lawmakers wore OneLove armbands in Parliament as they adopted resolutions criticizing Qatar’s human rights record.
The message from the West was unmistakable: The record of a World Cup host country matters.
If migrant workers mattered in Qatar, then they should matter in an America that depends heavily on immigrant labor in construction, hospitality, food service, cleaning, transportation, stadium operations and event logistics. Some of the very workers helping produce this spectacle live under threat of detention and deportation. Others labor under visa systems that tie them to employers and make them vulnerable to wage theft, coercion and exploitation.
If LGBTQ+ rights mattered in Russia, they should matter in Dallas, Houston, Atlanta and every other host city operating within a country where hundreds of bills targeting LGBTQ+ people have spread across state legislatures.
If women’s autonomy mattered in Qatar, it should matter in a World Cup hosted partly in U.S. states where abortion bans and restrictions have stripped millions of women of bodily autonomy.
If free speech mattered in Moscow, it should matter in Trump’s America, where foreign students and visitors have faced visa consequences tied to political expression, campus protesters have been arrested, demonstrations have been heavily policed and civil rights groups are warning that World Cup visitors could face surveillance, searches and suppression of protest.
If fan safety matters abroad, it should matter in the U.S., a country whose gun violence crisis has led other governments to warn their citizens about travel risks.
If making the tournament accessible to fans from around the world mattered before, then it should still matter now that the U.S. and FIFA are presiding over a tournament with staggering ticket prices, inflated hotel costs and visa policies that could price or screen out many of the very fans who make the World Cup what it is.
This World Cup is arriving in a country governed by a president accused by critics of authoritarian tendencies, contempt for democratic norms, attacks on the press, hostility toward immigrants, retaliation against dissent and a willingness to use state power as a tool of humiliation and control.
It is arriving in a country still deeply implicated in illegal and globally destabilizing wars, military operations and foreign interventions abroad.
It is arriving as Trump has embraced FIFA and the World Cup as symbols of American greatness and personal prestige.
It’s a blatant case of sportswashing. Or at least it would be called that, if the host were not the United States.
We have seen this double standard before.
Before Russia hosted the 2018 World Cup, a bipartisan group of U.S. senators urged FIFA to strip Russia of the tournament because of Vladimir Putin’s annexation of Crimea and violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty. They argued that allowing Russia to host would reward Putin, elevate his global prestige and launder the image of a government engaged in aggression abroad.
That argument was not wrong. But it raises an obvious question: Does a host nation’s aggression abroad matter only when the aggressor is an official enemy of Washington?
If Russia’s annexation of Crimea made it unfit to host, why is America’s record of military operations, wars of choice and threats of territorial expansion treated as irrelevant?
If Putin or Qatar’s Sheikh Abdullah bin Hamad Al Thani could use the World Cup as propaganda, why can’t Trump?
The question is why one host’s flaws become the defining story of the tournament while another host’s abuses are treated as distractions from the beautiful game.
Daniel Maraccini, Grace Cardinal and Summer Wojtas contributed to this article.
Ayman Mohyeldin
Ayman Mohyeldin is a co-host of “The Weekend: Primetime,” which airs on Saturdays and Sundays from 6 to 9 p.m. ET on MS NOW.