asylum

Trump Supports Asylum for Iranian Women's Soccer Team. His Immigration Policy Doesn't.

The president's advocacy is laudable, yet completely at odds with everything else he has said on the subject.

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President Donald Trump sits at a table behind the presidential seal. | Sipa USA/Newscom
(Sipa USA/Newscom)

This week, President Donald Trump advocated on behalf of asylum seekers—though only in one very specific situation.

Before an Asian Cup match in Australia, Iran's women's soccer team declined to sing their country's national anthem, though they "sang the anthem and saluted in later matches," according to Bloomberg.

Supporters of the Iranian regime called for reprisal. "This is the pinnacle of dishonour and lack of patriotism," said Mohammad Reza Shahbazi, a presenter on Iranian state TV, according to The Athletic. "Both the people and the officials should treat these individuals as wartime traitors, not as if they just had a protest or performed a symbolic act. The stigma of dishonour and betrayal must remain on their foreheads, and separately they must be dealt with properly."

The New York Post reported that after playing their final match and facing a return trip home, some of the players "appeared to flash a 'help' hand signal" to the press.

Thankfully, their story so far has a happy ending: CNN reported Monday that five members of the team "have sought asylum in Australia and and [sic] are currently safe with police."

Perhaps the unlikeliest supporter of their cause: President Donald Trump.

"Australia is making a terrible humanitarian mistake by allowing the Iran National Woman's Soccer team to be forced back to Iran, where they will most likely be killed," Trump wrote on Truth Social, in a post shared by the White House's official X account, while the situation still seemed tenuous. "Don't do it, Mr. Prime Minister, give ASYLUM. The U.S. will take them if you won't."

"I just spoke to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, of Australia, concerning the Iranian National Women's Soccer Team. He's on it!" Trump added in a post less than two hours later. "Five have already been taken care of, and the rest are on their way. Some, however, feel they must go back because they are worried about the safety of their families, including threats to those family members if they don't return. In any event, the Prime Minister is doing a very good job having to do with this rather delicate situation. God bless Australia!"

Trump's willingness to advocate on the players' behalf is laudable—and completely at odds with his position on the subject in nearly every other scenario.

"In October 2025, the Trump administration slammed the door shut to the world's most miserable, slashing the annual cap of refugee intake by 94 percent, to an all-time low of 7,500," Matt Welch wrote in the current issue of Reason.

Asylum is a similar process, and Trump has been just as vocal in his condemnation—frequently invoking mental institutions and the fictional serial killer Hannibal Lecter to inveigh against those seeking asylum in the U.S. from other countries.

In recent months, the administration has dismissed asylum cases for applicants who applied between 2019 and 2022, and it paused all asylum decisions, effectively preventing any new asylees from entering the country. It is also now arresting refugees who have been in the country a year but don't yet have a green card.

Incidentally, international sporting events have long been an occasion for defections from authoritarian nations—most visibly, the Olympics. "In 1956, shortly after the Soviets crushed the Hungarian revolution, nearly half of the Hungarian team's 100-member delegation to the games in Melbourne defected," David Hejmanowski wrote in 2024 for the Delaware Gazette. "Several members of the Afghanistan delegation defected during the 1980 Moscow games, and four Romanians failed to return home from Canada after the 1976 games in Montreal."

Baseball also has a rich history of players defecting from more onerous regimes. "Hundreds of Cuban players have defected over the years, many choosing to play American Major or Minor League Baseball," Reason's Alyssa Varas-Martinez wrote in 2023. And yet during his first term, Trump made this more difficult, overturning an agreement between baseball organizations in the two countries that would have made it easier for American teams to sign Cuban players.

Indeed, American presidents should routinely make the case for those suffering under repression around the world to make their way to our shores. "I had always hoped that this land might become a safe & agreeable Asylum to the virtuous & persecuted part of mankind, to whatever nation they might belong," George Washington wrote in 1788.

Trump's sudden advocacy on behalf of the Iran women's soccer team is commendable. The only thing that could make it better is if he expanded that same magnanimity to asylum seekers from all across the world.