wasnt

PORTLAND, Maine — The person Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents targeted in Maine last month when an officer shot and killed a motorist was a roommate who was not subject to a final removal order, a Democratic congresswoman from the state said.

Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a 25-year-old Colombian national, was shot and killed by an ICE agent in a car near his Biddeford home on July 13. Rep. Chellie Pingree said during a hearing in Maine on Monday that ICE’s intended target was Durán Guerrero’s roommate, who was the owner of the car Durán Guerrero was driving.

Pingree called the discovery a “shocking revelation in clear contradiction to what ICE” and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security have said about the shooting. She added that it was previously established Durán Guerrero was not the intended target and also did not have a final order of removal, but did have a pending asylum case and a valid work permit.

“Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero should be alive today,” Pingree said during the hearing. “More than a month later, there are still so many basic questions that remain unanswered by ICE and the Trump administration.”

The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement late Monday that it stands by its prior assessment of the shooting. ICE was conducting “targeted surveillance on the last known address of an illegal alien with a final order of removal,” a spokesperson for the agency said.

“We are not going to disclose law enforcement sensitive intelligence and methods. Nowhere did we state that Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero or his roommate were the target of the operation,” the spokesperson said.

The shooting of Durán Guerrero remains under investigation by the office of the Maine attorney general. Pingree was among several Democratic House members who spoke at a hearing in Biddeford on Monday to discuss ICE’s use of deadly force in the state. The Department of Homeland Security said at the time of the shooting that Durán Guerrero attempted to flee the scene and the ICE officer discharged his weapon because he feared for public safety.

Pingree and other Democratic members of Congress have also called for answers from Homeland Security about its training and vetting of agents after it was disclosed that the ICE officer involved in the shooting had a history of violent behavior and mental health issues. The shooting also appeared to lead to a policy change in which ICE would suspend most vehicle stops, but President Trump swiftly expressed opposition to that change.

Whittle writes for the Associated Press.

Hi, and welcome to another edition of Dodgers Dugout. My name is Houston Mitchell. New ranking of the summer movies I’ve seen this year: 1. “Spider-Man: Brand New Day”; 2. “The Odyssey”; 3. “Supergirl”; 4. “Young Washington”; 5. “Disclosure Day”; 6. “Masters of the Universe”; 7. “The Devil Wears Prada 2.” I keep including these just to annoy the one guy who calls me names for not having “Disclosure Day” last. I have to get thrills where I can get them.

So, the Dodgers lost three of four to the Brewers, who now have clinched the tiebreaker over the Dodgers. They always have to do things the hard way. Some random thoughts about the Dodgers

—It’s time for Edwin Díaz to drop the Timmy Trumpet entrance and just come out like any other pitcher. When you have a 10.66 ERA and it’s August, perhaps it’s time to sneak into the game quietly.

—Dave Roberts had this answer when asked Thursday night, after Díaz blew a save, as to why he is still closer: “Give me another option. I have to have other options. And to be quite honest, none of those [other] guys really are throwing the baseball great. So that’s just kind of the way it is.”

—It is surprising to see Roberts throw the whole bullpen under the bus. But since he asked, here’s an option: Tanner Scott, who since the All-Star break has an 0.87 ERA in 12 games and 10.1 innings. He has three saves and has given up nine hits, six walks and has struck out 12. Not exactly Mariano Rivera, but better than the current guy.

—But here’s the other thing to keep in mind: The Dodgers seem to do this every year. They are going to give Díaz every chance to right the ship before the postseason, because having him in the bullpen would be great if he was pitching well. But, if he’s pitching like this when the postseason begins, he won’t get a lot of innings. Remember last season? Scott was terrible. He last pitched Sept. 26. He didn’t pitch at all in the postseason. Instead, they put Roki Sasaki in the bullpen and he was solid, though not the second coming of Éric Gagné as some seem to think.

—The Dodgers will figure out whom they trust near the end of September, and that will be the bullpen for the postseason. It will include starters and a guy who is just there to eat innings during big losses (think Will Klein last season. Yes, he saved the season in Game 3, but there was a reason he was the last guy out of the bullpen). And it will include the five to six relievers they trust the most. This happens every season, so this should not come as a surprise.

—Yes, it can be frustrating during the regular season. We in the media say “Greatest team ever!” “They could win 120 games!” But that’s never going to happen. The Dodgers are interested in one thing only: Winning the World Series. They have a plan as to how to approach it, and while it annoys some fans, they aren’t going to deviate from that plan. And why should they? They won three World Series, and almost another one in *2017.

*-The Astros cheated in that series.

—A look at some numbers:

Kyle Tucker at Dodger Stadium this year: .189/.286/.272
Tucker everywhere except Dodger Stadium this year: .275/.361/.469

That’s pretty incredible. In 239 career at-bats at Dodger Stadium (206 from this season), he is hitting .205/.307/.318.

The road Tucker is whom they signed, the home Tucker hits like a pitcher. Why? Could be any number of things.

The Dodgers are 14-15 since the All-Star break. Let’s see how the main people are hitting and pitching (through Sunday):

Freddie Freeman, .327/.367/.366 (109 plate appearances)
Shohei Ohtani, .278/.336/.509 (119)
Alex Call, .278/.350/.389 (20)
Hunter Feduccia, .273/.304/.455 (23)
Andy Pages, .270/.336/.398 (111)
Teoscar Hernández, .267/.298/.422 (94)
Miguel Rojas, .258/.314/.355 (35)
Dalton Rushing, .250/.325/.472 (40)
Mookie Betts, .238/.287/.386 (108)
Max Muncy, .214/.298/.512 (94)
Tommy Edman, .211/.272/.347 (103)
Kyle Tucker, .188/.286/.353 (98)
Ben Rortvedt, .182/.182/.182 (11)
Kiké Hernández, .087/.125/.087 (24)

Team after the break: .248/.306/.403
Before the break: .262/.343/.434

Runs per game before the break: 5.22
Runs per game after the break: 3.93

They have lost their patience at the plate and their power. Not a good combination for winning games. These numbers will go up slightly though because of Monday’s 11-5 win over the Rockies.

Here are the pitching numbers, through Monday:

Jonathan Hernández, 0.00 ERA (7.2 IP)
Tanner Scott, 0.87 (10.1)
Blake Snell, 1.50 (12)
Brock Stewart, 1.80 (5)
Yoshinobu Yamamoto, 1.82 (34.2)
Roki Sasaki, 2.10 (30)
Kyle Hurt, 2.16 (8.1)
Jack Dreyer, 3.09 (11.2)
Tarik Skubal, 3.18 (17)
Eric Lauer, 4.15 (21.2)
Evan Phillips, 4.50 (10)
Alex Vesia, 4.63 (10.2)
Edgardo Henriquez, 6.52 (9.2)
Justin Wrobleski, 6.92 (26)
Edwin Díaz, 12.92 (7.2)
Will Klein, 14.54 (4.1)

Wrobleski, Stewart and Klein are on the IL, as is Blake Treinen.

Dodgers ERA after the break: 4.12
Before: 3.55

For those who think Roberts doesn’t notice these things, here’s what he had to say after Sunday’s loss:

“This has been cumulative. It’s been a long time since we’ve been consistent offensively. … I just don’t see the consistent plan of attack, one through nine. The results are hard, hitting’s hard, but I do think that fighting and winning pitches, spoiling pitches — that’s care, hunger. 
And that’s a reason why [when] you look at four and a half months of the season, the Brewers have outscored us. … A team that’s young and hungry. It’s certainly not talent.

“We just haven’t played clean baseball for quite some time, and that speaks to the defense and not converting an out … it’s just not winning baseball. Our pedigree [and] what we typically do is control the zone, grind it, grind at-bats [and] create stress. We’re not doing that.”

Tommy John dies

Former Dodger Tommy John, who had an arm surgery named after him, died Sunday at 83. He took part in this newsletter’s “Ask….” series last year and here are a couple of highlights:

Bud Layne of Parkersburg, W.V., asked: First, I would just like to join the crowd and say that Tommy John belongs in Cooperstown. Hope it is soon, as my time on this earth is growing short at 82 years old, and I am hopeful that the event takes place in my lifetime. My question: Do you think falling short of 300 career victories is the main hindrance of you not being able to join the immortals in Cooperstown? And, if not, what do you think is the reason?

John: I too will be 82 in May of this year. There is no rhyme or reason why I’m not in the Hall of Fame. I have no idea. I had 288 wins. I lost a season and a half which would’ve brought me to more than likely the 300 mark. I had 188 no decisions. I don’t know if it’s because my name is mentioned almost every day or that it is their jealousy that I have a surgery named after me. I have no idea. All I know is I am very proud of my career and the teams that I played for.

Drew Taylor of Huntington Beach asked: What was going through your mind after having your surgery and being told the odds were 100-1 against you returning to pitch, what drove you to defy those odds?

John: All my life starting as a child all I wanted to do was pitch. When I was given the odds, I figured 1% was better than nothing and I had just become a new dad for the first time. I told Dr. [Frank] Jobe if you do your job I will do more than mine. I just happened to be in the right place at the right time with the right doctor and team.

Tony Smith of Los Angeles asked: You played for two of the most emotional managers in history in Tommy Lasorda and Billy Martin. How would you compare the two and did you have a favorite manager in your career?

John: I loved playing for Tommy Lasorda. He loved all the players. Tommy just made the game fun. Billy was a good manager, but he was very high strung. Tommy just enjoyed the game, his team and all the celebrities who came out to celebrate the Dodgers.

—OK, back to your humble host here. Let’s face it: John should be in the Hall of Fame. He won 288 games, pitched in 26 seasons. That alone would be enough. But if you add in the fact that he underwent what was basically experimental surgery, a surgery that saved his career and went on to save the careers of hundreds of pitchers, then he should be in.

Imagine you were in the hospital for something and the surgeon can fix it, but he says, “I have to try a surgery that has never been done before.” I mean, what thoughts went through John’s head? Maybe he’d lose the use of his arm altogether. It couldn’t have been an easy decision. And sure, someone later would have said yes if he said no. But being the first counts for something. We remember Neil Armstrong more than the other brave men who landed on the moon for a reason. He (and Buzz Aldrin) were the first.

John was pitching on July 17, 1974, when he hurt his arm. “Right at the point where my arm is back and bent, something happened,” he told The Times. “It was as if I had left my arm someplace else. It was as if my left arm had just flown off my body, away from the rest of me.” He said he felt no pain, but after blooping two pitches up to the mound, he signaled for Dodgers manager Walter Alston to take him out. He eventually saw Dr. Jobe , and the rest is history. Jobe took a tendon from John’s right arm, threaded it through holes he had drilled in John’s left elbow and hoped it all would work. And it did, with John returning to the mound on April 16, 1976.

John before the surgery: 124-106, 2.97 ERA, 116 ERA+
After the surgery: 164-125, 3.66 ERA, 107 ERA+

On a personal note, I got John’s autograph at the Carson Mall in 1977. I was a big Dodger fan and knew who he was, but was too young to understand the history. There were a bunch of kids in line, and many dads or older brothers who were interested in seeing him (autographs were for 12 and under only). As I got closer to the front of the line, I noticed that John always took an extra moment to ask the kid about himself. He made each child feel important. It’s something I never forgot. And, when I asked him to do the Q&A, he and his wife, Cheryl, could not have been more pleasant. Sincere condolences to his entire family. He will always be a Hall of Famer in my mind, and I hope he is for real at some point.

The postseason

Here’s a look at the NL. Remember, the three division winners plus the next three teams with the best record make the postseason. The two division winners with the best record get a first-round bye.

Division leaders
1. Milwaukee, 77-48
3. Dodgers, 75-51, 2.5 GB
2. Atlanta, 74-51, 3 GB

Wild-card standings
1. Chicago, 73-53
2. Philadelphia, 68-58
3. San Diego, 67-59

4. Arizona, 66-60, 1 GB
5. Miami, 64-62, 3 GB
6. St. Louis, 64-62, 3 GB
7. Pittsburgh, 61-66, 6.5 GB
8. Cincinnati, 60-65, 6.5 GB
9. Washington, 60-66, 7 GB

In case you missed it

Swanson: Tarik Skubal’s gritty starts would pay off if slumping Dodgers would wake up

‘Rare accomplishment’: How Max Muncy went from being cast off to longest-tenured Dodger

Tommy John, Dodgers pitcher and medical pioneer, dies at 83

MLB approves sale of Padres to José E. Feliciano, Kwanza Jones

Shaikin: For Dodgers’ Charley Steiner, a complete game three years in the making

Swanson: The Dodgers need Mookie to be Mookie

Shohei Ohtani takes important step in his push to return to Dodgers’ rotation

Swanson: Dave Roberts and Dodgers need to stop using Edwin Díaz in high-leverage moments

And finally

Ross Porter interviews Tommy John in 2021. Watch and listen here.

Until next time …

Have a comment or something you’d like to see in a future Dodgers newsletter? Email me at houston.mitchell@latimes.com. To get this newsletter in your inbox, click here.

It may sometimes seem like people only go on Love Island to become influencers, but the show has consistently created long-lasting relationships and even resulted in some babies! Here’s every couple who are still together after Love Island…

Season 2

Cara de la Hoyde and Nathan Massey are now married with two children, but due to a brief break, their co-stars Olivia Buckland and Alex Bowen take the crown as the couple to have been together the longest. They are also married with two children.

Season 3

The third season also saw two couples stay together. Jamie Jewitt and Camilla Thurlow are married with three children, while Jess Shears and Dom Lever are married with two.

Season 5

Perhaps Love Island’s most famous couple, Tommy Fury and Molly-Mae are still together. They recently welcomed their second child, Midas, who joins their toddler Bambi in the Fury dynasty.

Season 9

Winners Kai Fagan and Sanam Harrinanan went exclusive whilst in te villa nd have remained together, marrying in 2025. Their co-stars Jessie Wynter and Will Young are also engaged.

All Stars 1

The most recent Love Island newly weds are Molly Smith and Tom Clare, who met on All Stars and won the show. The pair married in July 2026. This marks Molly’s second serious Love Island romance, as she and co-star Callum Jones were together for four years.

Also meeting on All Stars, Sophie Piper and Josh Ritchie are still together as well.

Season 11

Uma Jammeh left the villa to be with Wil Anderson when he was dumped and this proved to be a good decision as she and Wil are now engaged!

All Stars 2

Luca Bish and Grace Jackson met on All Stars 2 and though they had a rough time on the show, they are still together.

Season 12

Three couples are still together from season 12 – Ty Isherwood and Angel Swift, Harry Cooksley and Shakira Khan and Megan Forte Clarke and Conor Phillips.

All Stars 3

Sean and Lucinda, despite being labelled fake on the show, are one of the only ones from All Stars 3 to still be together. Scott Van-Der-Sluis and Leanne Amaning are also still together, as are Whitney Adebayo and Yamen Sanders.

And of course, a special shout out to Lucie Donlan and Luke Mabbott, who were not on the same series but got together later and are now married!

For nearly six months, Delcy Rodríguez’s interim government has tried to project a different image: less ideological, more administrative; less revolutionary, more technocratic. The earthquakes became the first real test of whether that transformation ran deeper than economic policy. It didn’t. Faced with the country’s worst humanitarian disaster in decades, the Venezuelan state reverted almost instinctively to the habits it had spent 25 years learning.

The earthquake handed Delcy Rodríguez something politics rarely does: a chance, however limited, to soften public perceptions of her government. Nobody expected it to prevent the earthquake or even manage it flawlessly. The bar was much lower than that. Venezuelans expected a government that communicated at least somewhat honestly, remained visible, welcomed help wherever it came from, and, above all, stayed out of the way of those trying to help. Instead, many of its decisions seemed almost designed to produce the opposite effect, leaving an already angry public even angrier.

For the crucial first hours after the earthquake, Venezuelan civil society largely filled the vacuum left by the state. By the time the government moved to reclaim the space it had forfeited, the nature of its response had become clear. The emphasis was no longer on expanding the rescue effort, but on reasserting control over it. The government’s administrative response had been slow. Its political reflexes were anything but that.

Why?

The obvious explanation is incompetence. Of which there was certainly plenty. But incompetence alone cannot explain why a government whose political identity has been built on the appearance of public support repeatedly embraced decisions that seemed to generate even greater public anger. Something deeper appears to have been at work.

Responding to earthquakes requires a very particular kind of approach. Unlike ordinary governance, disaster response cannot be centralized for long. Every collapsed building becomes its own command center. Every neighborhood develops different priorities. Every rescue team faces different engineering challenges. Governments do not succeed because they directly coordinate thousands of decisions. They succeed because they remove obstacles that allow thousands of other people to make good decisions simultaneously.

As civil society increasingly assumed functions the state could not perform, it also threatened to accumulate visibility, legitimacy, and influence outside government control.

During normal times, governments can afford to centralize decisions and insist that major initiatives pass through official channels. Earthquakes punish those instincts. Rescue operations cannot wait for permission, and civil society and the private sector suddenly become indispensable partners in the state’s response. The democratic governments (like the one overseeing Venezuela’s “transition”) that perform best recognize this early, spending the first critical hours empowering society rather than attempting to direct every aspect of the response themselves. For twenty-five years, chavismo taught its institutions almost the opposite lessons.

The government could not lead the humanitarian response with the effectiveness the moment demanded. Society therefore began leading significant parts of it instead. Volunteers organized rescue brigades. Churches became shelters. Journalists became emergency information networks. Engineers inspected damaged buildings. Diaspora organizations coordinated donations. Foreign rescue teams rapidly became the public face of many rescue operations. None of this was unusual. This is how major disasters are managed around the world.

What was unusual was the kind of state confronting the disaster.

Every major political crisis reinforced the same institutional lesson: autonomous organization reduced the state’s control over society. Independent organization was rarely viewed as something to harness, but was something to supervise. NGOs are suspected of serving foreign interests, until proven innocent. Independent journalists and universities are seen as political adversaries. Neighborhood networks are just three doritos away from becoming opposition structures. Enemies abound in the schizophrenic chavista view of societal organization. Because for a chavista state that has banked its continuous survival on complete, centralized control, such a degree of civil organization represents an extinction level threat.

Those lessons make sense for a political system primarily concerned with its own survival. They become profoundly maladaptive during natural disasters. Thus, the humanitarian response itself gradually became part of the government’s problem. As civil society increasingly assumed functions the state could not perform, it also threatened to accumulate visibility, legitimacy, and influence outside government control. Administratively, this strengthened Venezuela’s response. Politically, it displaced the government from the center of its own national emergency. Most democratic governments would welcome that trade-off. 

What authoritarian systems find difficult to tolerate is not civilian participation itself, but civilian participation they neither direct nor control. The rescue volunteers were not political activists. The churches distributing food were not organizing protests. The programmers building databases of missing persons were not preparing electoral campaigns. Yet institutions do not respond only to intentions; they respond to patterns. For a security apparatus that had spent years dismantling decentralized civic networks, from the humanitarian aid operation of 2019 to the comanditos of 2024, the potential may have mattered more than the differences.

Search-and-rescue operations have become increasingly militarized, with rescue crews at the Tahití building reportedly prevented by the military from reaching survivors for hours.

Seen through that lens, what initially looked like a series of political blunders begins to look more like institutional habit. Faced with a humanitarian emergency it lacked the capacity to fully manage, the government fell back on the institutions it trusted most: those responsible for regulating information, supervising autonomous actors, and maintaining political control. Much of the administrative state had long ceased to be valued primarily for its capacity to govern, functioning instead as an instrument of patronage and political management, while the coercive apparatus remained the regime’s principal institutional investment.

Faced with the limitations of both its own incompetence and the state it had spent decades constructing, havismo has increasingly resorted to the tactics with which it is most familiar. Survivors who expressed their anger at the government’s lackluster response, such as Wilmer Cruz, have reportedly been arrested. Search-and-rescue operations have become increasingly militarized, with rescue crews at the Tahití building (Caraballeda, La Guaira) reportedly prevented by the military from reaching survivors for hours. Intelligence agencies such as the DGCIM have been deployed to intimidate the families of victims, while, as the Sky News Trump 100 podcast reported, authorities have obstructed reporting from Caracas.

For months, the debate surrounding Venezuela’s transition has centered on whether chavismo was truly changing or merely adapting. The earthquake suggests the answer is both. Markets can be liberalized. Diplomatic priorities can shift. Revolutionary rhetoric can soften. Institutional instincts are far more resistant to change because they are built over decades of incentives, routines, promotions, and crises.

The earthquake did not create those instincts. It merely forced the government into a situation where it could no longer avoid relying on them.

Every state becomes good at what it repeatedly practices. The chavista regime spent twenty-five years investing in political control rather than disaster response; in supervising society rather than empowering it; in preserving power rather than preparing for catastrophe. When the country’s greatest humanitarian emergency in decades arrived, society responded with the institutions it had built to save lives. The state responded with the institutions it had built to preserve power. The earthquake did not force the Venezuelan state to choose between control and effective governance. That choice had been made long before the ground began to shake.

I already want to return to this historic town that has quietly built a reputation as one of the most desirable places to live in Britain.

Friends spoke highly of it, travel writers regularly rank it among the UK’s best places to live, and it has built a reputation as one of the country’s most creative and independent towns.

Even so, I wasn’t quite prepared for how much I would enjoy spending a day there. Located in the Upper Calder Valley in West Yorkshire, Hebden Bridge has a fascinating history. Once a small settlement where packhorse routes crossed the River Hebden, it grew rapidly during the Industrial Revolution thanks to textile manufacturing and its position on the Rochdale Canal.

The arrival of the railway in the 19th century further transformed the town, connecting it to nearby cities and helping it prosper. Today, many of the old mill buildings remain, giving Hebden Bridge much of its distinctive character. But rather than being dominated by its industrial past, the town has reinvented itself as a thriving hub for independent businesses, artists and outdoor enthusiasts.

I arrived by train on a bright morning and was immediately struck by the setting. Hebden Bridge is in a narrow valley surrounded by steep hillsides, with rows of traditional stone buildings packed between the river and the slopes above. It’s a dramatic setting but the town itself feels welcoming and surprisingly compact.

My first stop was a walk along the Rochdale Canal, one of Hebden Bridge’s defining features. The towpath was busy with walkers, cyclists and dog owners, while narrowboats drifted slowly through the water. It felt like the perfect introduction to the town, offering a chance to take in both the scenery and the relaxed pace of life.

Full of independent shops

From there, I headed into the centre, wandering along Market Street and the surrounding roads. One of the things that stood out most was the number of independent shops.

Unlike many town centres, there was little sign of the major chains that have become so common elsewhere. Instead, I found bookshops, bakeries, record stores, galleries and cafés occupying handsome stone-fronted buildings. I stopped for coffee and later picked up lunch from a local bakery before spending time browsing some of the shops.

The town was busy without feeling overcrowded, and there seemed to be a strong sense that people were there because they wanted to be, rather than simply passing through.

In the afternoon, I made the walk up to Heptonstall, the historic hilltop village overlooking Hebden Bridge. The climb is steep in places, but the views across the valley more than justify the effort.

Heptonstall itself is well worth exploring, with its cobbled streets, historic church and connections to the poet Sylvia Plath, who is buried in the churchyard.

Back in Hebden Bridge, I spent some time by the river before heading to the station. As I sat watching people come and go, it became clear why the town has attracted so much attention over the years: the combination of history, landscape, community and independence. It manages to feel both lively and relaxed at the same time, while offering easy access to some of the most beautiful countryside in northern England.

I’ve visited plenty of attractive towns across the UK, but few have left me thinking about what it might be like to live there. Hebden Bridge was one of them, and by the time I boarded the train home, I was already planning a return visit.

Jibril Rajoub is in Mexico awaiting a US visa to attend the World Cup 2026.

The head of the Palestinian Football Association says he is waiting in Mexico City for permission to enter the United States to attend the FIFA World Cup with other federation heads.

Jibril Rajoub attended the opening match between Mexico and South Africa on Thursday, but he has now joined several people accredited to attend the World Cup who have been denied visas or have yet to receive them from the US.

“I don’t believe that it’s fair to use or to abuse and deny the right of all footballers all over the world to attend,” the veteran Palestinian political figure told The Associated Press news agency.

The Palestinian team did not qualify for the World Cup, but FIFA typically invites the heads of football associations from around the world to the event every four years, which it frames as a celebration of global unity.

“Everyone will be welcome in Canada, Mexico and the United States for the FIFA World Cup next year. We are working exactly for that,” FIFA President Gianni Infantino said last year.

The US, however, has refused entry to delegates from several countries, including a referee from Somalia and a photographer travelling with Iraq’s team.

Infantino said this week that FIFA had been trying to resolve visa issues but could not overrule the US government.

“We need to respect that we are not the kings of the world who can rule over governments and police forces,” he told reporters on Wednesday.

The US Department of State had no immediate comment on Rajoub’s visa, but last year implemented new restrictions on Palestinian passport holders, including on anyone who had been employed by the Palestinian Authority.

It revoked a visa to allow Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to travel to the United Nations General Assembly last September.

Rajoub and other Palestinian football officials have long argued that Israel violates statutes by allowing teams from settlements in the occupied West Bank to play in Israel’s national league.

They have pushed FIFA to sanction Israel, highlighting restrictions on the movement of Palestinian players and how Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza has damaged or destroyed 80 percent of sports facilities and killed at least 565 players there, according to the association.

Last month, Rajoub refused to shake hands with the head of Israel’s football federation at Infantino’s behest because he said the gesture would not heal wounds but instead whitewash Israel’s actions.

Rajoub pointed out that when Russia hosted the 2018 World Cup, it did not implement comparable visa restrictions for people who were invited to the tournament.