Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said Sunday that Iranian officials attempted to bring multiple individuals with alleged ties to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps into the United States as part of the country’s World Cup soccer delegation.
Mullin made the remarks during an interview with Fox News as U.S.-Iran negotiations were
U.S. officials subjected members of Iran’s traveling delegation to heightened scrutiny after President Donald Trump directed the Department of Homeland Security to conduct extensive vetting of individuals seeking entry into the country.
Mullin said more than half of the additional representatives Iran sought to bring into the United States had connections to the IRGC, which U.S. officials view as a hostile military organization.
“When we started doing the research on him, he had only been put in place since 2022, and we didn’t allow him to board the plane,” Mullin told Fox News host Maria Bartiromo on Sunday, referring to the individual who had ties with the IRGC.
“The guy that tried to get on the plane yesterday had direct ties to the IRGC,” Mullin .
“We accepted 53 individuals coming in and the rest of the individuals that Iran had tried to bring in all also had direct ties to the IRGC and aren’t their normal traveling group,” he said.
Mullin said that the Iranian official who attempted to enter the United States was, according to Tehran, the president of the country’s soccer federation, noting that the Iranian soccer team playing World Cup games is based in Tijuana, Mexico. The team flies from Mexico into the United States when they need to play games.
The secretary said the administration anticipated that Iran could attempt to use the World Cup delegation to gain access to the United States and took additional precautions as a result.
According to Mullin, Trump authorized what he described as extreme vetting measures to screen members of the Iranian contingent.
“These games that Iran plays makes them an adversary that you can’t trust,” Mullin said.
Mullin did not provide additional details about the individuals who were denied entry or the nature of their alleged ties to the IRGC.
The Football Federation Islamic Republic of Iran called Mullin’s allegation “an outright lie.”
“The claim that an official representative of the Iranian football federation attempted to board a flight to enter the United States yesterday and was prevented from doing so is an outright and undeniable lie. This claim is so unfounded that those who made it are well aware that such an incident never occurred in the first place,” FFIRI said.