Following his exclusion from a party at the White House, a Muslim mayor in New Jersey is urging an end to the American government’s terror watch lists.
On his way to an Eid al-Fitr celebration at the White House on Monday, Mohamed Khairullah—who is serving his fifth term as mayor of Prospect Park and was originally elected to the borough council in 2001—was informed by the Secret Service that he would not be permitted to attend.
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Khairullah, a prominent Muslim figure in New Jersey, asserted during a recent meeting with the state’s Council on American-Islamic Relations that he thinks he was added to a covert federal government blacklist around 2019.
Khairullah, whose family left Syria in 1980 and who became a citizen a year before assuming office, stated, “The last time I remember traveling without issue is May of 2019.”He added, “This has inconvenienced, harassed, and humiliated me and my family ever since.”
Khairullah claimed that in recent years, he has experienced being detained and questioned when landing at JFK Airport and crossing the border into Canada.
The longest-serving Muslim mayor in New Jersey is Khairullah. Governor Phil Murphy said that he spoke with Khairullah on Monday to express his support, but he refrained from attacking Vice President Joe Biden or demanding that the watch list be removed.
At a recent separate event, Murphy told a number of reporters, “We’re trying to figure out exactly what happened. ” Murphy referred to Khairullah as a close friend and mentioned that the two of them had attended the governor’s mansion’s Eid party.
According to a story from DailyDot.com at the time, a Swiss hacker released a no-fly list that was taken from a CommuteAir server in January. According to CAIR, Khairullah’s name and birthday are among its 1.5 million entries, the majority of which are names from the Middle East or the Muslim world.
Khairullah noted that they’re persons on the list who don’t have a platform as his, “This is about [more than] 1.5 million people who are on the selectee list who don’t have a platform like I do at this point.” He added, “Our crimes are our names, ethnicities, and religion, and I call on President Biden to correct the injustices of the previous administrations by disbanding this illegal list and correcting ill-advised and racist policies.”
Several organizations that support civil liberties and immigrant rights recently attended the press conference. His name simply being removed from the watch list, according to Khairullah, is insufficient.
CAIR is urging Biden to express regret and to consult with Muslim groups about the issues brought on by the watchlist. In the end, it wants the list to be removed.
Sahar Aziz, a professor at the Rutgers School of Law, noted during the press conference that people are not given any notice as to why they are on the list or even the chance to contest the reason(s) for their inclusion. “For the past 20 years, the U.S. government has created a behemoth intelligence apparatus that is eviscerating the civil rights and liberties of all Americans.”
The documentary “Mayor Mohamed” regarding Khairullah was released in 2021. It follows him around Prospect Park as he manages local politics in the small North Jersey community while working on humanitarian aid for Syria.
