The Trump administration’s cruel border obsession is turning the American World Cup matches into an international embarrassment. Upon arrival in the States, the Uruguay national team – twice World Cup winners – was pulled over on the side of the road for a humiliating canine search of their luggage before they even arrived at their hotel.
In another incident, Iraq striker Aymen Hussein was detained for nearly seven hours at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport, while a member of the Iraqi team’s photography staff was denied entry entirely.
Fans from across the world weren’t having it:
“Imagine training your whole life to represent your country at the World Cup, only to have your first touch in America be a sniffer dog checking your luggage on the roadside,” one post read.
Many pointed out the obviously racist pattern of teams from Latin America and Africa facing far more aggressive scrutiny than others. “What a coincidence that the fixation on registering and checking is always with American countries from Mexico southward or from Africa,” one blogger wrote.
Another referred to the United States as “A country that should never again host a World Cup. If you only like people from your own country, then don’t organize an event that should be open to the world.”
Oh snap, we were afraid something like this might happen. Stephen Miller and his horde of goons have no use for soccer, so let’s make a point, right?
They have already denied entry to fans, journalists, and soccer federation officials from Haiti, Iran, Senegal, and the Ivory Coast, all World Cup-qualifying nations that fall under the State Department’s 39-nation travel ban (the players and coaches got carve-outs).
They want to showcase Trump’s “America First” obsession to the whole world. They want to project to the MAGA masses that their hatred toward Black and brown people as well as Muslims are bigger than sports – watch us treat their elite athletes and symbols of their national pride like criminals. Aren’t we badasses?
Hosting the World Cup is a global honor, which provides a setting to celebrate global unity and amity through sports.
Instead, under Trump, that’s all discarded as woke. In its place is more of its petty cruelty and self-sabotage on the world stage.
"What has the United States become?" the more than five billion people watching across the world are asking themselves.
Think of people, say, crowding around a communal village TV in rural West Africa to get a snippet of the real America on the screen in addition to the football, and seeing and hearing about stuff like this.
What disappointment they must feel when they see America, which has always been the symbol and hope that a better life exists and awaits out there, now behaving like a bunch of merciless thugs.
Shameful. Embarrassing. Humiliating.
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