Editorial: Should the fear of soccer-based violence qualify you for asylum in the US?

The World Cup has been an amazing spectacle and, mercifully, the sport's notorious hooligans have been largely absent.

As soccer fans well know, hooligans are rowdy gangs that engage in violent behavior on game days. In some soccer-mad countries, they’re not just a nuisance but part of organized crime networks with ties to law-enforcement and extremist political parties.

Bojan Andric, for one, is afraid of them, and justifiably so. Andric was a professional soccer player in Serbia when he had a bad game. The local "Red Devils" crew followed him home, beat him unconscious and continued to threaten him afterward.

Andric requested a trade to a different city, but failing that, he came to the U.S. on a visitor’s visa and petitioned for asylum, a form of legal protection for people who fear persecution in their home countries. Andric claimed he faced persecution in Serbia from the hooligans.

In a thoughtful opinion earlier this month, Chicago’s 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decided against Andric, upholding an immigration court ruling. That probably means he will need to leave the country.

Andric is a sympathetic figure, but his case also illustrates why asylum law is hard. Not every person facing danger abroad qualifies for asylum in the United States. The law requires a connection to a protected ground - such as race, religion or nationality - and the courts found that Andric's case involved violent retaliation over his soccer performance, not persecution because of who he was or what he believed.

Still, the current system is working well, and Congress, not the courts, has to decide whether America's immigration laws are serving the country's interests and values.

We recognize that under the polarizing Donald Trump administration, comprehensive immigration reform is probably impossible. But it is needed. And the need is especially acute as one-off U.S. Supreme Court rulings roil America's immigration laws.

Case in point: In a decision last month, the high court ruled that asylum-seekers like Andric who have made it into the U.S. are entitled to apply for asylum and have their cases reviewed. Anyone who doesn’t physically arrive on U.S. soil, however, can be stopped at border crossings with no review of their cases.

The ruling effectively overturned immigration policies that gave vulnerable people an opportunity to seek protection, whether they were inside the country or at the border. Writing for the minority, Justice Sonia Sotomayor pointed out that blocking asylum-seekers with zero consideration of their plights creates a "perverse incentive" for migrants to cross the border illegally so their cases will be heard.

Whether you support the Trump administration's immigration crackdown or not, no one should be in favor of giving migrants an incentive to jump the border - not least because of the dangers to migrants themselves. Sotomayor predicted that "more people will die" because of the court's asylum decision.

We understand the asylum system is prone to abuse, as migrants can live for years in the country waiting for immigration court decisions. Also, it should be noted that Barack Obama's Democratic administration, not Trump's, pioneered the modern policy of blocking asylum-seekers at the border, addressing a surge in Haitian migrants in 2016.

Yet asylum is at the heart of what America stands for in the world. As this page has stated previously, asylum is a core American value that must be protected. "This country since its founding has been a refuge for people facing starvation, war and even pogroms," we wrote in 2023. "We need to fix the asylum process, not scrap it."

We voiced that position as Congress considered a bipartisan agreement on immigration reform. Had it gone through, it would have been the first comprehensive overhaul in decades. Negotiators had outlined an approach to asylum consistent with American values, which included speeding up the process. But for multiple political reasons, no reform was enacted.

Getting asylum in the U.S. is difficult. In Andric's case, an immigration judge determined his testimony was credible, and he did indeed face serious threats from the hooligans he had left behind in Serbia. (The 7th Circuit ruling doesn't give his exact arrival date.)

But a personal dispute isn't enough to support an asylum claim. Andric had to show that he is a refugee in a protected class - unable to return to Serbia on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a certain social group or political opinions.

Andric argued that former soccer players targeted by hooligans were indeed a social group deserving protection, but the judges didn't buy it. His argument that hooligans were acting against him because he didn't share their extreme nationalist political opinions also fell flat. "Andric provided no evidence of motive beyond the hooligans' dislike of his performance," the court wrote.

As North America has seen with the World Cup, emotions run high when it comes to soccer. The attack on Andric caused facial burns, a skull hematoma and a mild concussion. He lost his immigration case, but it's not as if he had no case to make, and we support the right of Andric and others in jeopardy abroad to make their cases.

America has long served as a beacon of hope for those facing violent oppression in their countries. People like Andric with credible fears deserve a fair-minded hearing. Anything else would be un-American.

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This story was originally published July 13, 2026 at 5:14 AM.