A Muslim New Jersey mayor said Monday the Secret Service denied him entry to the White House for a reception hosted by President Joe Biden to celebrate Eid al-Fitr, marking the end of Ramadan.
Prospect Park Mayor Mohamed T. Khairullah told NBC News that Secret Service informed him shortly before he was due to arrive that he didn’t receive the clearance required to enter the premises.
Khairullah added he believes his name was on an FBI watchlist by mistake. He said it has been an issue when traveling in the past, but he thought it had already been resolved.
“I’m baffled,” he told NBC News.
In a Facebook post, Khairullah wrote the incident “reeks of #Islamophobia by certain federal agencies.”
The Secret Service confirmed Khairullah was denied entry, but declined to provide further details.
“While we regret any inconvenience this may have caused, the mayor was not permitted to enter the White House complex for this evening’s event,” Secret Service spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi said in a statement shared with multiple news outlets.
Khairullah told the Associated Press he was questioned for three hours at New York’s JFK airport in 2019 after returning from a trip to Turkey with his family. Authorities at the airport asked if he knew any terrorists, he said.
He said he also was previously held at the U.S.-Canada border upon returning to the U.S.
“It’s not a matter of I didn’t get to go to a party,” he told AP about Monday’s incident. “It’s why I did not go. And it’s a list that has targeted me because of my identity. And I don’t think the highest office in the United States should be down with such profiling.”
Khairullah, who fled Syria in 1980 and became a U.S. citizen in 2000, has served as mayor of Prospect Park since November 2005. He was reelected in January.
Selaedin Maksut, the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in New Jersey, called Monday’s events “wholly unacceptable and insulting.”
“We call on the White House to override the Secret Service and reinstate the mayor’s invitation, disband the secret watchlist, and issue an apology to the Mayor,” Maksut said in a statement.
“If these such incidents are happening to high-profile and well-respected American-Muslim figures like Mayor Khairullah, this then begs the question: what is happening to Muslims who do not have the access and visibility that the mayor has?” Maksut continued.
In a Twitter post following the reception, Biden wrote “We must always stand against anti-Muslim hate. And stand up for the rights and dignity of all people.”
“It’s essential to who we are: a nation founded on the idea of freedom and justice for all,” he added.