Four Days Before World Cup, USA Bars Iraqi Official Team Photographer, Detains Striker
The Iraqi national football team arrived in Chicago on Saturday to prepare for the 2026 FIFA World Cup. The U.S. regime welcomed them the way it welcomes most people arriving from the Middle East, with hours of detention, phone searches, and, in one case, sending someone back where they came from.
Aymen Hussein, the striker who scored the goal that ended Iraq’s 40-year wait for a World Cup, was held at O’Hare International Airport for nearly seven hours. No official reason has been given. Some sources have floated an identity mix-up, but lengthy and unexplained detentions are now a norm in Trump’s USA.
Hussein was eventually released and rejoined his teammates. The team’s photographer, Talal Salah, was not so fortunate. He was held for over ten hours, had his phone searched, and was denied entry to the country altogether. The Iraqi team will not be granted the permission to have their own photographer document their players at their own World Cup.
This is not an isolated incident. It is a pattern. Amnesty International warned in March that the regime’s “harsh, discriminatory, and potentially lethal immigration enforcement” posed the most serious danger to World Cup visitors. Fans from Côte d’Ivoire, Haiti, Iran, and Senegal are barred from travelling to watch their own national teams compete, unless they held valid U.S. visas before January 1, 2026. Iran’s team spent months fearing their inclusion was at risk entirely, Trump insinuated that their players’ safety could not be guaranteed on U.S. soil, visas for key federation officials were denied, and they were only cleared to participate at the last minute. The tournament promises, in FIFA’s words, to be “safe, welcoming and inclusive.” It is clear at this point that those three adjectives only apply to those the USA wants to grant them to.
Iraq’s path to this tournament was already extraordinary. Their coach, Graham Arnold, spent weeks stranded in the UAE after U.S. airstrikes on Iran closed regional airspace. Players and staff were unable to obtain visas in time for playoff matches. The team arrived despite everything. The regime’s response was to put their star player in a room for seven hours and send their photographer home.
The USA should not be hosting this tournament. It is run by a regime that has spent the past year terrorising immigrant communities, waging war across the world, and making clear that certain passport holders are presumed suspects until proven otherwise. What happened to Aymen Hussein and Talal Salah at O’Hare on Saturday is not an accident of sorts. This is the USA acting as the USA acts in Donald Trump’s second term.
There were warnings that this would happen. FIFA ignored them. The World Cup starts in four days.