The Trump administration has a record of denying international athletes visas, including members of an Ethiopian delegation to the World Athletics Cross Country Championships, whose 44-year medal streak was broken by a mass visa denial in January. Multiple Cuban sports delegations have also been locked out of sports competitions since 2025 by the US’ refusal to grant them visas—including Olympic qualification events. And according to Television Jamaica, Javontae Smith, a shotput and discus thrower from Munro College in Jamaica, was denied a US nonimmigrant visa last month to compete in the Penn Relays in Philadelphia.

Iran’s national team is set to leave for Mexico on Saturday. The team’s initial three matches will take place in the US, but the country’s soccer federation won FIFA approval in May to move its training base from Tuscon, Arizona, to Tijuana, Mexico, due to security concerns amid the US and Israel’s ongoing war in Iran and elsewhere in the Middle East.

The delays have created unprecedented uncertainty for many national team players and sparked outrage among their fans, who now have to worry about whether they can even get to the tournament—let alone whether their team will play well in it.