WASHINGTON—The US Secret Service said on Monday that it prevented a Muslim mayor from Prospect Park, New Jersey, from attending a celebration at the White House with President Joe Biden to mark the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
Mayor Mohamed Khairullah said he received a call from the White House shortly before he was scheduled to arrive at the White House for the Eid-al-Fitr celebration informing him that he had not been cleared for entry by the Secret Service and could not attend the event where Vice President Joe Biden spoke to hundreds of guests. He said the White House official didn't make sense of why the Mystery Administration had obstructed his entrance.
After being informed that he would not be permitted to attend the event, Khairullah, 47, informed the New Jersey chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
The group has asked the Biden administration to stop the FBI from disseminating information from a "Terrorist Screening Data Set," which includes hundreds of thousands of people. The gathering informed Khairullah that an individual with his name and birthdate was in a dataset that CAIR lawyers got in 2019.
Khairullah was a vocal opponent of President Donald Trump's travel ban, which prohibited citizens of several predominantly Muslim nations from entering the United States. In addition, he has worked with the Watan Foundation and the Syrian American Medical Society on humanitarian projects in Bangladesh and Syria.
Khairullah stated in a telephone interview as he returned home to New Jersey on Monday evening, "It left me baffled, shocked, and disappointed." I didn't get to go to a party, so it's not my fault. It's the reason I didn't go. Additionally, due to my identity, it is a list that has targeted me. Furthermore, I don't figure the most noteworthy office in the US ought to be down with such profiling."
Anthony Guglielmi, a spokesperson for the US Secret Service, said that Khairullah was not allowed into the White House complex, but he did not say why. In January, Khairullah won a fifth term as the mayor of the borough.
"While we lament any bother this might have caused, the city hall leader was not permitted to go into the White House complex tonight," Guglielmi said in an explanation. " We regret that we are unable to provide any additional information regarding the specific protective measures and techniques utilized in our White House security operations.
The White House did not respond.
The move was described as "wholly unacceptable and insulting" by Selaedin Maksut, executive director of the CAIR chapter in New Jersey.
"In the event that these such occurrences are going on to prominent and very much regarded American-Muslim figures like City chairman Khairullah, this then, at that point, makes one wonder: What is happening to Muslims who lack the mayor's visibility and accessibility? Saying Maksut.
Khairullah said he was come by experts in 2019 and grilled at John F. Kennedy Global Air terminal in New York for three hours and examined regarding whether he knew any fear mongers. The occurrence happened when he was getting back to the US after a family visit to Turkey where his better half has family.
He also claimed that while returning to the United States with family, he was briefly detained at the border between Canada and the United States.
According to the group, Khairullah assisted the New Jersey Democratic Party in compiling the names of local Muslim leaders to invite to the White House Eid celebration and attended an event over the weekend at the governor's mansion in New Jersey.
Khairullah was brought into the world in Syria, yet his family was uprooted amidst the public authority crackdowns by Hafez al-Assad's administration in the mid 1980s. In 1991, his family moved to Prospect Park after fleeing to Saudi Arabia. Since then, he has lived there.
He became a citizen of the United States in 2000 and was elected to his first term as mayor of the town in 2001. Additionally, he served his community as a volunteer firefighter for 14 years.
Between 2012 and 2015, Khairullah stated, he traveled to Syria with humanitarian aid organizations on seven occasions.
He stated, "I'm Syrian, and you know it was very difficult to see what we saw on television and social media, and not respond to help people." I mean that we felt helpless.