The United States rejected visa applications for multiple members of Senegal’s women’s basketball team, which was scheduled to train in the country, the country’s prime minister said yesterday, as he cancelled the group’s participation in the practice.
The visa refusals come amid the US President Donald Trump’s administration’s immigration crackdown and tightened border controls, reports AFP.
The United States is set to co-host the 2026 FIFA World Cup and the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles.
Senegal is among 36 nations that the United States is considering adding to a travel ban barring entry to its territory, according to an internal administration memo.
Senegalese Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko posted on Facebook that he had been “informed about the refusal to issue visas to several members of the Senegalese women’s national basketball team”.
He said that he had instructed the country’s minister of sports to cancel what was to have been a 10-day training camp in the United States.
According to Babacar Ndiaye, president of the Senegalese Basketball Federation, the United States only renewed visas for “those who held old visas and rejected new requests”.
Les Lionnes had been slated to train in the United States ahead of the Afrobasket 2025 tournament in Ivory Coast, which begins in July.
A spokesperson for the US State Department told our correspondent that it was not able to comment on individual cases, while the US Embassy in Senegal did not reply to a request for comment.
In addition to pulling the plug on the training, Prime Minister Sonko thanked China for having “awarded dozens of training scholarships for our athletes and their coaches”.
