In a development first reported by The Guardian on Friday, three top representatives of the Palestine Football Association (PFA) — including its president Jibril Rajoub — have been blocked from entering Canada, where global football’s governing body FIFA will hold its annual congressional meeting in Vancouver on April 30. This visa rejection comes at a fraught moment for international football, as Canada is set to co-host the 2026 men’s FIFA World Cup alongside the United States and Mexico, and the PFA is already locked in a high-stakes dispute with FIFA over Israeli football activity in occupied Palestinian territory.
Rajoub had been expected to use his speaking slot at the Vancouver congress to publicly raise the issue of Israeli matches being held in the West Bank, a territory universally recognized by the United Nations as illegally occupied by Israel. The PFA has formally called on FIFA to step in immediately to resolve the visa issue and allow its delegation to participate in the gathering, where their presence was already set to put the long-running territorial conflict at the center of global football’s agenda.
When contacted for comment, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada declined to share specific details about the visa applications, citing privacy rules for individual cases. The department only confirmed that all entry applications are assessed individually based on documentation submitted by each applicant.
This latest clash follows months of escalating tension between Palestinian advocates and global football leadership. Earlier this year, the PFA filed a formal complaint over the Israeli matches in the West Bank. After completing a review of the complaint last month, FIFA released a statement arguing that the final legal status of the West Bank remains an unsettled, complex issue under international law, and as a result, the organization would take no disciplinary or regulatory action against the Israel Football Association. That inaction prompted a unprecedented legal challenge: in February, a coalition of six pro-Palestinian human rights and sports justice groups — including Irish Sport for Palestine, Scottish Sport for Palestine, Just Peace Advocates, Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, and Sport Scholars for Justice in Palestine — submitted a 120-page complaint to the International Criminal Court prosecutor, The New York Times confirmed. The complaint names FIFA president Gianni Infantino and UEFA (European football’s governing body) president Aleksander Ceferin, accusing both of aiding and abetting war crimes by allowing Israeli clubs to host official league matches on seized Palestinian land.
Beyond the immediate dispute over Palestinian participation in the FIFA Congress, the visa denials also unfold against a backdrop of growing concern over immigration and entry policies for the 2026 World Cup, particularly in the United States. Co-host the U.S. has already faced public backlash over flagging ticket sales driven by exorbitant pricing, as well as widespread fears that foreign visitors and immigrant residents will be targeted by U.S. federal immigration authorities during the tournament.
While there is no publicly confirmed link between U.S. and Canadian immigration decisions on these applications, the two neighboring countries’ border agencies have a long history of sharing intelligence and screening data. Over the 15 months since the Trump administration took office, the U.S. has implemented sweeping new entry restrictions for international visitors, including mandatory social media vetting that requires applicants to share years of personal online activity. Multiple cases have already been documented of visitors being denied entry after border agents found social media content critical of U.S. government policies. Others have been detained for weeks in overcrowded, unsanitary facilities run by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) — privately operated detention centers that generate profit for their operators based on the number of detainees held — before being allowed to return to their home countries.
Last December, Andrew Giuliani, who leads the White House 2026 FIFA World Cup Task Force, publicly confirmed that the Trump administration could not guarantee that non-U.S. citizens would be safe from ICE raids at World Cup stadiums. That comment came just months after a high-profile incident in July, when ICE agents arrested a father of two at a FIFA Club World Cup match in New Jersey. Human Rights Watch issued a public statement at the time calling for urgent reform of U.S. entry policies, warning that the current regime creates unnecessary risk for visitors and directly undermines FIFA’s stated core values of human rights, inclusion, and open global participation. Giulani later defended the arrest, claiming the man had violated event rules by flying a drone to take a family photo at the match.