He’s frustrated, but he’s keeping in his anger. Abdoulaye—the pseudonym of a well-known Senegalese journalist who spoke to us—just doesn’t know if he’ll be able to cover his country’s match against Iraq, scheduled to take place in Toronto on June 26 as part of the upcoming football World Cup. Known as the Lions of Teranga—Senegal’s national team, named for the Wolof concept of hospitality—the squad is in Group I alongside France and Norway, who they’ll face at New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium on June 16 and 22.

Accredited by FIFA and with the necessary visas in hand, Abdoulaye sums up his dilemma: “From the United States, I can enter Canadian territory, but I’m not sure I’ll be able to return to US soil” for the potential continuation of the competition. The fault, he says, lies with the restrictive anti-immigration measures enacted by the Trump administration, the impact of which could affect the 40 or so journalists heading to North America from Senegal. “FIFA will have to step up and make the American organizers see reason,” he notes. In any case, Abdoulaye is still in a privileged position, as thousands of his compatriots have for months faced a wall of concrete and steel erected by the US Embassy in Dakar to cut off the legal pathway to American visas.

These drastic, often final restrictions already affect thousands of young Senegalese students eager to pursue their studies in the United States, as well as businesspeople seeking to expand their firms in the homeland of unbridled capitalism. Other ordinary citizens—whether or not they have relatives in the United States—are simply drawn by the joy of discovering “the Great America” and its majestic symbols. Yet the Trump administration’s ideological blindness has taken its toll.

This January, Executive Order 10998, issued by the US president, placed Senegal on the list of countries now subject to the Visa Bond. This requires applicants for business (B1) and tourist (B2) visas to pay a bond ranging from $5,000 (approximately 2.8 million CFA francs) to $15,000 (approximately 8.5 million CFA francs). In the eyes of US diplomats, these amounts serve as a guarantee against any temptation among admitted individuals to vanish into thin air once they arrive on US soil.

A financial bond of this magnitude is a brutal measure of exclusion based on money, as few ordinary Senegalese will have the means to satisfy the appetite of US consular officials. These deterrent measures taken ahead of the World Cup are clearly discriminatory. They have their own sordid objectives: to limit to the absolute minimum the number of Senegalese able to experience the sporting celebration in person; to rake in funds by fleecing as many people as possible; and to reap the political dividends of these diplomatic and administrative blunders by linking them to Donald Trump’s campaign pledges for a zero-tolerance line on immigration.

The hunt for—and surveillance of—the “lucky” Senegalese who do get to experience the World Cup in person is therefore unlikely to let up. One of the provisions of Executive Order 10998, in addition to the security deposit required (payable on a US government website), requires them to enter US territory through the airport designated for them by the consular authorities themselves. These diplomatic agents, vested with full discretion over each case, function as the enforcers of a discriminatory machinery tasked with providing the MAGA administration with “positive” statistics to justify the continuation of indiscriminate repression against migration flows.

Even the Senegalese who have cleared the financial hurdle are not out of the woods yet. The Trump administration’s repressive machinery has also erected digital barriers that deliberately violate their privacy and freedom of expression. This inquisition imperiously demands the contents of all their communications from the past five years on every platform they use. An omission or a false statement is treated as an attempt to conceal information and is punished by the rejection of the application, without appeal.

Access to US territory has become harder for most citizens of countries whose nationals require a visa. For Senegalese, this difficulty has tended to become institutionalized since President Trump’s return to the White House in January 2025. The executive order suspends all issuance of immigrant visas, making family reunification impossible—at least until further notice. It also blocks global access to the Green Card through the annual lottery. According to State Department figures, the rejection rate for Senegalese applicants for tourist and business visas (B1/B2) in 2025 was a whopping 74 percent, likely among the world’s highest. The number of student visas (F1) issued between September 2022 and October 2024 had gone up from 393 to 426—but they do little to hide an estimated acceptance rate that declined from 65.2 percent in October 2022 to 59 percent in October 2024.

Hundreds of Senegalese families who hoped to come to the United States through the legal family reunification system now see their plans put on hold indefinitely. According to an estimate by the Department of Homeland Security, in 2022–23 there were approximately 34,000 Senegalese born in Senegal who had immigrated to the United States, with around 25,000 to 30,000 legal residents. This figure does not include Americans of Senegalese origin. In this figure lie many human tragedies related to the freeze on family reunifications.

Already in June 2025, the US Embassy in Dakar denied visas to 12 members of Senegal’s women’s national basketball team—including five players—who were scheduled to travel to the United States for a ten-day training camp. Outraged by this decision, then-Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko canceled the trip and ordered the training camp to be relocated within the country, “in a sovereign setting conducive to performance.”

The systemic chaos surrounding the 2026 World Cup, even before it begins, is stirring the entire planet. The organization of the world’s biggest sporting event is in turmoil, bringing together racism, restrictions, discrimination, visa selection based on ability to pay, digital screening, and even attempts to humiliate some of the tournament participants themselves. The Senegalese players and coaching staff experienced this firsthand when they were searched at Raleigh Airport on their way to San Antonio. Still, in a press release, the Senegalese Football Federation played down the episode, emphasizing that the frisking of the staff and players “took place in respect for the relevant airport security rules and no particular incident was observed.” Among much of the Senegalese public, there is almost total incomprehension. Interviewed by the BBC for a report on the organization of the World Cup, Aliou Ngom, a Senegalese fan who attended the previous tournaments in Qatar (2022) and Russia (2018), laments that this World Cup won’t be a moment for “cultures coming together from all over the world.”

Ultimately, Trump’s tragicomic governance is again a subject of derision. If past administrations built up soft-power tools for selling America and its promise to the world’s youth—including in countries like Senegal—this is now badly compromised. At the same time, China, Russia, India, and even Turkey continue to refine their strategies for quietly expanding into new territories and partnerships that could shape the global power balance for years to come.