Global soccer boss Gianni Infantino and his inner circle tapped the Trump administration to secure a work permit for his Nicaraguan housekeeper after the White House scrapped her legal status, sources have told The Post.
The embattled FIFA president enlisted a politically connected adviser to intervene with federal immigration officials on behalf of 33-year-old Yajarlin del Socorro Fernandez, whom the soccer body had continued employing for months after her work authorization was revoked, according to leaked documents, audio recordings, and three sources with direct knowledge of the matter.
An internal FIFA letter obtained by The Post confirms Fernandez remained employed by the soccer organization through October 2025 — more than four months after the Trump administration revoked her permission to work in the US, according to two government sources familiar with her immigration file.
“This is to confirm that Yajarlin del Socorro Fernandez was employed by FIFA (Americas), Inc. from 1 August 2024 to 31 October 2025. Ms. Fernandez worked on a full-time basis,” reads the letter signed by Faviana Urdaneta, FIFA’s People & Culture business partner in Miami.
FIFA and Infantino did not respond to The Post’s detailed questions about the arrangement.
Fernandez landed a coveted C11 parole work authorization under Kristi Noem’s Department of Homeland Security in January 2026, despite Trump moving to ax the humanitarian scheme for her nation a year earlier.
The backdoor maneuver followed a move by the Swiss-Italian sports suit’s inner circle to use an allegedly false address, rather than list the residence where she was actually living and working for Infantino and his family.
Infantino’s wife, Leena, originally tapped Fernandez for that job before she had even obtained an initial work permit, two sources said. The family later moved into One Thousand Museum, where English soccer legend David Beckham recently sold a penthouse for just under $25 million.
Carlos Cordeiro, the former Goldman Sachs banker who recently quit FIFA over Infantino’s commercial deals with Josh Kushner’s Thrive Capital, orchestrated the arrangement at his boss’s behest, three sources said.
Trump had appointed Cordeiro a senior adviser to the White House’s World Cup task force in May 2025. Crucially, that group—which included Noem—operated directly out of Homeland Security, the same agency that rubber-stamped Fernandez’s new work permit.
Acting on orders from the FIFA head honcho, Cordeiro instructed a subordinate during a May 2024 meeting to submit their own Miami rental on Fernandez’s immigration filings, insiders said, concealing where she was actually living and working for the FIFA boss’s family.
Fernandez subsequently received temporary permission to work, but that authorization was revoked the following year.
On May 30, 2025, the Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to terminate the four-country humanitarian parole scheme.
On June 12 of that year, the Department of Homeland Security formally notified participants that their permission to live and work in the US was revoked.
After losing her work authorization, Fernandez faced an interview with federal immigration officers in fall 2025. The allegedly false address triggered panic when agents began scrutinizing her residential records, sources said.
Around that time, Infantino asked Cordeiro to leverage his government contacts to help Fernandez obtain new immigration authorization, according to sources familiar with the discussions.
Infantino had already rebuffed internal staff warnings to sever ties with Fernandez, keeping her on the corporate payroll, according to sources familiar with the matter.
“You cannot keep paying her through us, because she’s going to get deported,” one FIFA insider warned. “If she gets caught by ICE, we would have a problem.”
When contacted by The Post, Cordeiro declined to address his alleged role in Fernandez’s immigration filings, claiming he was “not aware of the story.”
The paper trail leads directly back to Zurich. Florida state records list FIFA’s top global brass —including Secretary General Mattias Grafström and Chief Legal Officer Emilio Garcia Silvero — as registered directors of the Delaware-registered FIFA (Americas) Inc.
Michael Wildes, the prominent immigration attorney who famously represented First Lady Melania Trump, told The Post that Fernandez’s continued employment became strictly unauthorized once that program was scrapped.
“Generally speaking, C11 work authorization is tied to the validity of the individual’s underlying parole,” the top legal eagle said. “If the individual’s parole was terminated because the overarching program through which they obtained it was terminated, then the individual loses the ability to renew their C11.”
Wildes told The Post the sudden issuance of a new C11 permit in early 2026 suggests Fernandez may have received preferential treatment.
“The everyday noncitizen has virtually no chance of getting the kind of re-parole and new [work permit] issuance that this individual received,” he said, adding that the current administration is routinely denying similar requests from people with genuinely pressing humanitarian needs.
“It’s not unreasonable to say that, based on your explanation of these events, this individual received a level of favorable treatment that is entirely out of reach for the vast majority of noncitizens who cannot fall back on their preferential connections,” the senior immigration attorney added.
Such work permits are issued by US Citizenship and Immigration Services, an agency within DHS, rather than the State Department.
Today, federal officers mostly hand these emergency passes to people escaping war zones, like Ukrainians, or to the immediate families of military troops, according to the USCIS website.
“If Infantino and his wife hired a maid without legal status, they have spat in Trump’s face and his policy agenda,” said one source with direct knowledge of the matter. “What the president will make of this is anyone’s guess.”
“They behave like kings and queens and think they are entitled to have servants,” the source added.
The DHS and USCIS did not respond to questions about Cordeiro’s alleged intervention or why Fernandez was granted new work authorization after her previous immigration status was revoked.
The arrangement marks a glaring irony for Infantino, who ascended to global soccer’s throne in 2016 on a crusading vow to clean up the governing body.
His reign came following the sweeping 2015 US Department of Justice corruption indictments that toppled the scandal-plagued regime of Sepp Blatter.
Infantino, who faces a presidential election in March 2027, has spent recent months navigating intense fallout over a collapsed plan to privatize FIFA’s commercial operations.
Under the contested proposal, a newly created subsidiary valued at $20 billion would have sold a minority stake to private investors, led by Thrive Capital. The Post broke the news in July that the deal had collapsed amid global uproar.
The initiative triggered fierce internal revolt and open warfare with European governing body UEFA, which threatened a total boycott of FIFA competitions and later filed discovery actions in US federal courts to obtain internal pitch decks.
Reuters reported on Monday that FIFA would release some key documents linked to the furore, but sources said the outfit would force its own soccer bigwigs to sign an NDA to prevent their contents from leaking to the media.
