As the World Baseball Classic gets underway Thursday, Team Cuba will take the field despite the U.S. denying several team staffers the ability to enter the United States.

The Cuban Baseball and Softball Federation announced last week that pitching coach Pedro Luis Lazo, organization president Juan Reinaldo Pérez Pardo and secretary general Carlos del Pino Muñoz were among the eight people denied visas to travel to Puerto Rico for the team’s games starting Friday. All players on the team reportedly got the go-ahead to travel.

Cuba’s national baseball team previously experienced travel setbacks in September when the federation announced that the Trump administration didn’t OK its participation in the Classic, an international competition that features some of the sport’s biggest names. (A similar bureaucratic hurdle occurred under the Biden administration before the team was OK’d to play in the 2023 Classic.)

Cuba is among several countries under travel restrictions imposed by the president last June. The administration has outlined that athletes, coaches and staff participating in major sporting events wouldn’t be subjected to the restrictions.

HuffPost has reached out to the White House and the State Department for comment on the denied visas.

Pitcher Yariel Rodriguez is set to represent Team Cuba in the World Baseball Classic this year. Rodriguez, seen here playing in an exhibition game against the Kansas City Royals on Tuesday, is a member of the American League champion Toronto Blue Jays.

Brandon Sloter via Getty Images

The travel roadblock is part of an alarming pattern in the Cuban sports community, with athletes reportedly struggling to travel to competition in the States since Trump took office.

Venezuela, another participating nation in the Classic, also falls under Trump’s travel restrictions. A spokesperson for the Venezuelan team told HuffPost that no member of its team experienced visa issues ahead of its games, which begin Friday at Miami’s LoanDepot Park.

With this year’s Classic primarily taking place in the U.S., Team Cuba’s visa issues hint at how this year’s World Cup could operate under the administration. The international soccer championship is slated to be held in 16 cities across U.S., Canada and Mexico. Teams representing Haiti, Senegal, Ivory Coast and Iran — nations that fall under Trump’s travel restrictions — are all set to take part.

Todd Lyons, the acting head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, has said the agency would play a key role in security for the World Cup matches on American soil.

“I think it’s going to cause a lot of chaos,” said Michigan-based immigration attorney Amy Maldonado, who represents five MLB teams, in an interview with Sportico.

Maldonado said there have been “unprecedented denials” that were approved otherwise in years past and called the Trump administration “the most difficult ... to work under” since she began practicing immigration law over 25 years ago.

Ahead of the World Cup, at least one top soccer club has already backed out of games in the States. Last month, Germany’s Werder Bremen called off its exhibition games in Detroit and Minneapolis, citing political unrest due to Trump’s immigration crackdown.