Somali Referee Denied US Entry for World Cup Gets Hero’s Welcome Back Home |
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Omar Artan, the 34-year-old Somali referee who was denied entry to the U.S. for the World Cup, was welcomed in Mogadishu by crowds of supporters on Wednesday.
On Saturday, Artan was refused entry to the U.S. after arriving in Miami, despite the fact that he arrived with a valid U.S. visa and had been invited to officiate at the World Cup. Instead, border officials questioned Artan for 11 hours about his travel and about Somali politics, before transferring him to a holding cell, detaining him for several more hours, and then deporting him to Istanbul.
“I am very, very disappointed,” Artan told The New York Times. “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.”
Artan, who was named Africa’s referee of the year in 2025, said that he showed border officials documentation from FIFA and photographs from his decade-long career, and that the officials also verified his career from online sources. Still, they denied his entry, without providing him with a reason.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) stated that Artan “was determined to be inadmissible due to vetting concerns.”
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