Trump Admin Tries to Jump on Team USA World Cup Bandwagon… But Makes Racist Fool of Itself
A very diverse USMNT is filled with immigrants and the children of immigrants, while its top scorer is also the ideal advertisement for birthright citizenship. But don't tell that to Trump's DHS.
The 2026 World Cup in the United States is off to an unmistakably racist start. A Somali referee barred. An Iraqi player reportedly interrogated for seven hours. Uzbek players patted down and aggressively screened outside the stadium. And then there is Iran: exiled to Mexico, despite all three of its group-stage matches being played in the United States. “Our team is the most oppressed one in the whole World Cup,” Iran head coach Amir Ghalenoei said earlier this week.
On Friday, the Trump administration took that racism and xenophobia to the next level, but, thankfully, made a fool of itself in the process.
The groypers apparently moonlighting as the Department of Homeland Security’s social media team tried to jump on the World Cup bandwagon with this far-right, anti-immigrant tweet, ahead of the USMNT’s clash with Australia:
Got that? “Our soil. Defend the homeland. One nation. One homeland. One team.”
First, what a bizarre slogan for a host nation of the World Cup to use while describing a home game: “Defend the Homeland”? As if other teams playing at the World Cup are… invaders? Second, notice how the DHS tagline bears an uncomfortable resemblance to the Nazi slogan “Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer” (“one people, one realm, one leader”). I have written elsewhere about the way in which the Trump administration’s social media accounts “can’t stop posting Nazi imagery and memes… and leaning heavily into fascist aesthetics.”
But the funniest part is that the image itself completely undermines the accompanying far-right message. It is a picture of three non-white American players (Chris Richards, Sergiño Dest, Folarin Balogun), one of whom (Balogun) scored twice in the USMNT’s 4-1 demolition of Paraguay at the start of the tournament.
Balogun is an American by virtue of.. wait for it… birthright citizenship.
The Monaco striker was born in Brooklyn in 2001, but only by accident. His parents were visiting New York from the UK, where they lived. When Balogun’s mother, seven months pregnant with a self-described “massive” belly, tried to board the return flight, she was blocked by a “concerned airline staffer.” So Balogun was born in the U.S. before returning to the UK at 2 months old.
To be clear, if the Trump administration had its way, Balogun would not be able to play for the United States. He would either be playing for England, where he was raised, or Nigeria, where his parents are from. And, in the coming weeks, if the conservative-dominated Supreme Court accepts the Trump administration’s claims and guts the 14th Amendment’s long-standing guarantee of birthright citizenship to all children born in the U.S., there will be no more Baloguns in the future.
But it isn’t just Balogun. Consider the rest of the U.S. starting lineup for Friday’s game against Australia. Four other non-white USMNT players on that pitch in Seattle also made a mockery of the dumb DHS tweet.