One Less Photographer and Growing Fear of ICE Raids

As the world arrives for the World Cup, U.S. immigration authorities detain and turn away Iraq’s photographer, question one player for nearly seven hours, and leave stadium workers fearing ICE raids!

Chicago - One less photographer will cover the World Cup. Talal Salah, the official photographer of the Iraqi national team, was detained in Chicago for nearly twelve hours and was then denied entry. And so this tournament, meant to bring the world together, begins for one of the people tasked with documenting it at a door that does not open. Almost none of this is visible to the crowd outside the Waldorf Astoria in Chicago as fans wait for the arrival of the German national team before its match against the United States on Saturday. The match ends in a 2:1 victory for Germany, and that is the least significant fact of the day. Because the image that emerged from Chicago on June 6, 2026 is one that should not fit the story of a World Cup. Fans with flags at the airport, players on the eve of the biggest tournament in decades, and at the same time hours of questioning and phone inspections, ending in a denied entry.

According to people close to the Iraqi delegation, Talal Salah was held for more than ten hours upon arrival and was then not allowed into the country. One of the people whose job was to preserve the tournament in images will now not be part of it. Consider that for a moment. The world travels to be seen and to see, and the very person whose work is seeing cannot get in. Whoever turns away the person meant to create the images also shapes what a country will later allow itself to be seen as.

He was not the only one. Iraqi striker Aymen Hussein, the player whose goal secured Iraq’s qualification for the World Cup, was questioned for nearly seven hours at Chicago O’Hare Airport according to people around the team. He was eventually allowed entry and, according to the same sources, his phone was also inspected. The man to whom his country owes its place at this tournament is treated at the gate like a suspect, and suspicion reaches into the contents of his phone. The Iraqi embassy in Washington later confirmed that two members of the sixty two person delegation had been subjected to additional entry screening and that one person was ultimately denied admission. As justification, officials referred to the authority of U.S. immigration agencies and the application of existing regulations. It is the language in which rejection becomes merely the application of rules and no one appears responsible for it.

While guests are being sorted at the airports, those who make the event possible fear for their own freedom. Days before the World Cup, workers at SoFi Stadium voted to authorize a strike out of concern over ICE raids and stalled wage negotiations with Legends Global. The union stated that workers should not be forced to choose between showing up for work and risking being “kidnapped by ICE.” If a strike actually takes place, FIFA’s suites, priced at one hundred thousand dollars, would be left with “nothing but bottled water and Doritos.” That one sentence captures the entire relationship. The shine of the most expensive luxury boxes depends on the labor of people who fear being detained on their way to that very work, and without them the shine becomes nothing more than an empty and expensive shell.

In the end, an old question remains, as old as the tradition of hospitality itself. What does it mean to welcome the world? A host who invites and then sorts guests at the threshold according to passport and suspicion has blurred the difference between welcoming and allowing entry, and that difference is decisive. This tournament will be remembered through goals, through the 2:1 result and those that follow. But the truth about the host is not found in the stadium. It stands at the airport, in the hours of questioning, in the searched phones, and in the one denied entry. If the person meant to document, the person meant to play, and the person preparing the venues are all treated as threats at the gate, then the welcome was never truly one. One less photographer will report on this World Cup, and with him one less pair of eyes on what a host does to its guests at its own door.

Chicago in October 2025 - What unfolded on America’s streets resembled a state of war - yet it was a war the government was waging against its own population. The situation has once again become significantly more tense.

Half of our team is now effectively assigned solely to incidents involving ICE and deployed in the cities we know to be the most critical. The people there need support in every form, and what matters most is speed. It comes down to those few hours before someone disappears into detention centers and is moved from one location to another until almost no one knows where they are anymore. Those who arrive too late often find, if they are lucky, only a case number and a person who has already been transferred elsewhere. We know what we are talking about because we have handled well over a thousand cases, and every one of them has taught us that between help and helplessness there are often only a few days.