SEATTLE, June 13 -- The tickets were the kind of gift that does not come twice. Twenty free seats to a World Cup round-of-16 match in Seattle, the sort that resell for around a thousand dollars each, handed to a youth-soccer academy whose kids come mostly from low-income immigrant families. Ali Abdulla gave every one of them back.

Abdulla runs the African Youth Sports Academy, and the decision to return the tickets was not really his alone. It came from the parents. After Somali referee Omar Artan was barred from entering the United States, the families of his 13-to-16-year-old players told him they could not in good conscience take the seats. "We feel heartbroken, we feel betrayed," was the message Abdulla relayed. "We don't feel right ...