US President Donald Trump has spent years warning that birthright citizenship, guaranteed by the US Constitution, is being abused by foreigners. Then the football World Cup handed him one of the greatest ironies of his presidency.
With the US facing Belgium in a make-or-break round-of-16 clash on 7 July, Folarin Balogun – the striker carrying America’s hopes – appeared to be out. A red card against Bosnia and Herzegovina had triggered an automatic suspension. Then Trump called FIFA president Gianni Infantino and pressed for the ban to be reviewed. FIFA later suspended the ban, clearing Balogun to play. Trump hailed the decision as the reversal of “a great injustice”.
There is just one catch. Balogun is American only because of the birthright citizenship Trump has been fighting to restrict. The player he fought to keep on the pitch owes his US passport to the very constitutional guarantee Trump has repeatedly argued should no longer apply to children born in the country.
The flight that changed a life
Balogun’s American story began with a missed flight. His Nigerian parents were living in London when his mother, Florence, travelled to New York while pregnant in 2001 to visit relatives. She intended to return home before giving birth, but the airline refused to let her board because she was too far into her pregnancy. She gave birth to her son in Brooklyn before flying back to Britain a few weeks later.
That unexpected delay turned out to be life-changing. Because he was born in New York, Balogun automatically became an American citizen under the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution. He grew up in England, developed through Arsenal’s academy and represented England at youth level before eventually switching allegiance to the US, where he has become one of the country’s most important football attackers.
Without that airline’s decision more than two decades ago, there would almost certainly be no Balogun leading America’s offence at the World Cup.
“The irony is that the player who has been saved is Balogun, an American through birthright citizenship; the very principle Trump has been attacking,” Zimbabwean journalist Hopewell Chin’ono wrote on X.
Citizenship battle reaches the World Cup
The Balogun episode comes as Trump’s campaign against birthright citizenship faces renewed legal and political scrutiny.
Hours after returning to the White House, Trump signed an executive order seeking to deny automatic citizenship to many children born in the US to undocumented migrants and to parents temporarily in the country, including tourists. His administration said that birthright citizenship had been stretched far beyond its original purpose and was encouraging what supporters describe as “birth tourism”.
Because her son is a US citizen by birth, we’re winning
Federal courts swiftly blocked the order, ruling that it conflicted with the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment, which guarantees citizenship to almost everyone born on US soil. The legal challenge has become one of the defining immigration cases of Trump’s second term, with supporters arguing that birthright citizenship has been abused and opponents saying the constitution leaves little room for reinterpretation.
Balogun’s World Cup story has become part of that debate. For many commentators, the bigger story is that a president trying to narrow the definition of American citizenship has suddenly become the most prominent herald of one of birthright citizenship’s greatest success stories.
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council and a defender of birthright citizenship, said: “Because her son is a US citizen by birth, we’re winning.”
For Tania Bernath, a human rights defender, the contradiction runs deeper. “Trump didn’t defend a principle; he defended a winner made possible by a principle he’s tried to eliminate for everyone else,” she tells The Africa Report.
“Balogun is useful because he’s winning, American and valuable, so the fact that his citizenship rests on the very guarantee Trump has tried to gut never enters the frame. That is more damning than deliberate hypocrisy because it shows birthright citizenship was never treated as a fixed principle by Trump, only something that flexes depending on who is considered useful.”
The backlash
Trump’s intervention has opened up several fronts in the Balogun saga. Football pundits, former players, club executives and clubs from across the world have criticised FIFA’s decision to suspend the striker’s automatic one-match ban, with many arguing that it undermines the integrity of the tournament’s disciplinary process.
The Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) accused FIFA of crossing a “red line”. UEFA stressed that a minimum one-match suspension following a red card is “a principle embedded in regulations, which cannot be made subject to exceptions, let alone in the middle of a tournament where several other players have been in the same situation and served their suspension”.
The people whose birthright citizenship is being challenged in courts right now have no such visibility
The sporting dispute shows no sign of fading. The Royal Belgian Football Association has formally protested FIFA’s decision, arguing that the World Cup regulations clearly require any player shown a red card to miss the following match. The federation says FIFA ignored its own disciplinary code and has indicated that it is exploring all available legal options.
For others, the greater controversy lies in Trump’s role in bringing about FIFA’s decision. “For a sitting president to interfere in refereeing and disciplinary decisions is one of the lowest points in global football,” Chin’ono wrote on X. “I cannot remember another time when something like this has happened.”
The controversy has also reached Washington. When House Speaker Mike Johnson was asked by reporters how Republicans could celebrate Balogun while campaigning against birthright citizenship, he rejected suggestions of any contradiction.
Johnson said that the US remained “a nation of immigrants”, adding that Republicans were seeking to curb what they regard as abuses of birthright citizenship rather than legal immigration.
For Bernath, however, the significance of Balogun’s story goes well beyond politics or football, as it reflects the experience of many immigrant families, especially African families whose lives span continents.
“The difference is that Balogun became visible and got a presidential phone call because he’s a World Cup striker,” she says. “The people whose birthright citizenship is being challenged in courts right now have no such visibility.”
Bernath says that birthright citizenship is a human rights safeguard, reflected in Article 15 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which recognises everyone’s right to a nationality and protects against arbitrary deprivation of nationality.
“Balogun’s story shows the guarantee working exactly as it was intended.” She says the US World Cup squad reflects that tradition. “One of the things that makes America distinctive is that there are so many ways of becoming American. If you look across the team, you see that reflected.”
