Following the Department of Homeland Security on social media resembles wandering through a late-night casino; eventually, you encounter something that prompts the question: How did we arrive at this point?
One such moment occurred earlier this month. Shortly after the US began its World Cup journey with a decisive 4-1 victory over Paraguay, DHS celebrated by sharing an image of Chris Richards, Sergiño Dest, and Folarin Balogun under the headline “DEFEND THE HOMELAND,” accompanied by the caption “OUR SOIL.”
The irony of this message, particularly posted on Juneteenth, was unmistakable. This is the same department that recently denied entry to a prominent referee from Somalia, kept Iranian players on precarious visa terms during the tournament, and has seemingly undermined the conditions for hosting this World Cup, yet now revels in its festivities.
Moreover, the administration currently challenging the 14th Amendment in the Supreme Court is showcasing players like Dest, a Netherlands-born Brooklynite; Richards, a military child raised in Europe; and Balogun, a British Nigerian who gained American citizenship by birthright. Remarkably, it seems that World Cup enthusiasm has even captivated the Make America Great Again supporters. However, this may lead only to disappointment.
Such a sentiment is not a critique of the USMNT, who, despite a recent 3-2 loss to Turkey, have progressed to face Bosnia and Herzegovina in a last-32 matchup next Wednesday. Rather, it highlights that Americans who dismiss soccer as a “sissy sport” that “real sports fans” ignore, only to join in when the tide turns, have misinterpreted the World Cup. For them, the tournament serves as a platform to project an image of American power. What they fail to grasp is that this event, which may appear as a rivalry between homogenous nations, is fundamentally a celebration of global migration.
Other teams, like the Netherlands, also resist jingoistic narratives. Their nine goals in this tournament have come from players of African or Indonesian descent. Belgium’s roster features many players whose parents immigrated from Congo, Senegal, and Ghana, often facing racist backlash for defying expectations. The face of Spain’s national team is Lamine Yamal, an exceptionally talented teenager who proudly embraces his Moroccan and Equatoguinean heritage, reflecting the increasingly global nature of the squad. France continues to embrace its Black-Blanc-Beur approach, which previously brought them World Cup victories in 1998 and 2018, despite resistance from extremist factions.
A significant number of England’s players could have chosen to represent Ireland or various African or Caribbean nations. This depth has allowed the USMNT to recruit a promising young striker like Balogun, born in New York, who skipped the US residency process and grassroots soccer development to become the team’s top scorer in this tournament.
However, the USMNT’s impressive start pales in comparison to the overarching narrative of the tournament: the influence of the diaspora. During England’s match with Ghana, some fans made it clear on social media that a game between colonizer and colonized can never be “just a game.” The advancement of Morocco, South Africa, Côte d’Ivoire, Cape Verde, and potentially Senegal to the round of 32 underscores the remarkable talent migrating from Africa to Europe’s top leagues.
Even DHS’s travel restrictions aimed at the World Cup have inadvertently showcased the rich diversity already present within the United States: Haitian, Congolese, and Cape Verdean supporters filled stadiums in Philadelphia, Houston, and Miami, proudly displaying their flags. I encountered a large group of Morocco fans in downtown Atlanta on Wednesday, gearing up for their match against Haiti. Given their numbers and the hints of American accents, it was evident that not all had traveled from across the Atlantic for this event.
The nations that perceive immigration as a threat are witnessing a World Cup that starkly contrasts that belief, highlighting both the shortsightedness of exclusionary politics and the failures of leadership within FIFA. If the governing body were not so preoccupied with appeasing authoritarian regimes and exploiting everyday fans, it could serve as a tremendous force for global good, akin to the advent of international flight.
This tournament has demonstrated that when politics and cultural pretenses are cast aside, soccer can truly unify—enticing Japanese fans to embrace chips and salsa, fostering camaraderie between Scots and Bostonians, and keeping Brazil’s supporters in a celebratory mood alongside New York Knicks fans. It has kept major retailers and fast-food establishments bustling. At a watch party for Cape Verde in Oakland, Jill Tucker, who previously taught English there as a Peace Corps volunteer, was amazed to discover one of her former students among the enthusiastic crowd. These connections serve as a powerful reminder that sharing a flag does not equate to sharing a worldview, especially one dictated from above.
This poses a challenge for the current administration: despite its attempts to redefine what it means to be an American, diversity remains integral to national identity. A nation that owes much of its cultural and economic vitality to diversity, equity, and inclusion—illustrated by figures like Einstein and Oprah—sees soccer in a similar light. Immigrants from Europe and Latin America laid the foundation of the sport in the industrial regions and mill towns of the Midwest and Southeast. Over decades, sustained immigration transformed soccer into a national pastime, boasting remarkable participation rates, impressive television viewership, and vast growth potential. The fact that viewership for this year’s World Cup is robust on both Telemundo and Fox signals the millions of American soccer enthusiasts who have comfortably followed the game in Spanish.
The USMNT has spent years assembling teams comprising talents that reflect global influences as much as they embody American identity. David Regis, a French-born defender who played professionally in Germany and spoke little English, was fast-tracked into the USMNT’s 1998 World Cup squad following his marriage to a US citizen, obtaining expedited citizenship.
For a significant portion of the early 2000s, American soccer’s hope rested on Freddie Adu, a Ghana-born child of a green card lottery winner who became the youngest player to represent the USMNT in a senior international match. Mauricio Pochettino, the Argentine manager currently leading the US, continues a lineage of worldly USMNT coaches, from Scotland’s Robert Millar, who oversaw the US’s historic third-place finish in the 1930 World Cup, to German soccer icon Jürgen Klinsmann, who shaped his 2014 World Cup squad with input from American military families.
When the US defeated Australia 2-0 last week, one of the standout players was Alex Freeman, a 21-year-old who might have pursued American football if not for soccer’s prominence. His father, Antonio Freeman, was an NFL star and Super Bowl champion with the Green Bay Packers. The fact that a Black man named Freeman could score a World Cup goal for his country during Juneteenth weekend was not a mere coincidence in a nation that often shies away from diversity; it was, in many ways, inevitable.
Eventually, the World Cup will leave American soil, and sports enthusiasts will return to their focus on the NFL season and the baseball playoffs—though not before the US president inserts himself into the proceedings. This aligns with Donald Trump’s brand as much as it mirrors historical patterns. Throughout its history, the World Cup has frequently been co-opted as a grand stage for jingoistic narratives, often by authoritarian regimes that recognized its symbolic significance. However, the DHS’s posts have had the opposite effect—illuminating the fallacy of American homogeneity and highlighting the divide between the government’s portrayal and the reality lived by many.
Ultimately, the current North American World Cup has made one thing abundantly clear: the world convenes not to affirm borders but to erode them. The flags serve as mere markers that reflect how we arrived here and point toward where we may venture next—a place where “our soil” is merely an intricate construct.
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