NJ Mayor Mohamed Khairullah blames terror watchlist after White House revokes invite
Muslim leaders and civil rights advocates are demanding an apology and the disbanding of a federal terror watchlist program after a New Jersey mayor was disinvited from an Eid celebration at the White House on Monday.
Prospect Park Mayor Mohamed Khairullah was told hours before the event that the U.S. Secret Service denied his security clearance and that he could not attend the celebration with other prominent Muslims and President Joe Biden. Khairullah believes his unexplained inclusion on a terror watchlist is to blame.
"Our crimes are our names, ethnicities and religion," Khairullah said at a press conference Tuesday. "I call on President Biden to correct the injustices of previous administrations by disbanding this illegal list and correcting ill-advised and racist policies."
Khairullah has suspected he was on an FBI terror watchlist since 2019, when he began to face aggressive questioning and searches while traveling. The Council on American-Islamic Relations told the mayor on Monday that a person with his name and date of birth had appeared a list that was leaked in January.
The list, which includes 1.5 million names, has created hardships and stigma for thousands of innocent American citizens, CAIR officials said during a press conference at the New Jersey chapter office in South Plainfield on Tuesday. The list includes mostly Muslim and Arabic names, CAIR attorneys found.
“This is clearly a discriminatory list,” said Selaedin Maksut, executive director of CAIR-NJ. “We are asking that the White House take this as an opportunity to once and for all disband the watchlist, to no longer have government agencies use this discriminating list in their vetting and in their spying on American citizens.”
White House remains silent on the list
A U.S. Secret Service spokesman declined to say why Khairullah was turned away from the White House, adding that the agency was “not able to comment further on the specific protective means and methods used to conduct our security operations at the White House."
On Tuesday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre dodged questions about why the Prospect Park mayor was turned away and whether he was named on the FBI’s terror watchlist.
“All I can tell you is that this is under the purview of Secret Service,” she said at a White House press briefing.
Biden, she said, had welcomed nearly 400 Muslim Americans to the White House to celebrate Eid, the Muslim holiday marking the end of Ramadan. Jean-Pierre would not say whether anyone else was denied entry to the event.
More: Muslim New Jersey mayor stunned after being barred from White House Eid celebration
U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr. and U.S. Sens. Bob Menendez and Cory Booker wrote to the head of the Secret Service and the White House social secretary on Tuesday calling for an explanation.
“We also urge you to provide Mayor Khairullah with the substantive reasons he was denied admission and urge you to initiate a review of Mayor Khairullah’s status so that in the future he may be able to attend events and represent his constituents at the People’s House,” they wrote.
They commended Khairullah’s public service as mayor for five consecutive terms and called for the Biden administration “to erase xenophobic policies of the past and turn a new chapter for America.”
“The son of immigrants, we know Mayor Khairullah’s patriotism and public service is shaped by his upbringing and values that are molded by his commitment to help others,” the elected officials wrote.
Responding to reporters’ questions, Gov. Phil Murphy said Tuesday that he was “trying to figure out what exactly happened.” He noted that Khairullah was at his Eid celebration at the governor’s mansion in Princeton on Saturday. “He’s a great mayor and is a very close personal friend of mine,” Murphy said.
How does someone get on a terrorist watchlist?
Khairullah said he has repeatedly faced questioning while traveling since 2019. Returning to JFK Airport from Turkey that year, he was held for three hours and asked if he had met with terrorists, and his phone was seized.
About two years ago, he was detained and questioned at the Canadian border in a glass-walled area. His children could see him from outside under questioning and asked why they couldn’t be with him. The experience, he said, was “inhumane” and “humiliating.”
Civil liberties advocates say people have ended up on the terror watchlist because of where they've traveled and who they know or have encountered. In some cases, individuals said they had been placed on the list after they refused to be informants for law enforcement.
Muslims, Arabs, people who are politically engaged and active in their communities, and people in leadership positions are more likely to be named, said Gadier Abbas, an attorney for CAIR, who has reviewed the leaked watchlist.
“The more associations you have, the more likely it is that someone will use guilt by association to target you on the watchlist,” Abbas said.
Muslims and Arabs who travel to certain countries may get unwarranted scrutiny from law enforcement, Abbas said. Khairullah, a humanitarian activist, has delivered aid to refugees in Syria, Turkey and Bangladesh. He has not been to Syria since 2015, he said, and his airport detentions began years later.
Khairullah said he had been asked to cooperate as an informant for the FBI in Syria and told the agency he had no relationships in Syria at that point.
The Syrian American mayor said he has not been able to get any information from the FBI about the list or why he is repeatedly stopped. He has no meaningful way to challenge it, he said.
“If I, with my reputation, could be a target of this unintelligent list that is racist and discriminatory, what about the 1.5 million others?" the mayor asked.
The FBI National Press Office declined to discuss Khairullah’s case on Tuesday.
“Our standard practice is to neither confirm nor deny whether any individual may be included on the U.S. Government's federal terrorist watchlist or subset list,” the office responded in an email. “We refer you to the Secret Service for more information on the matter.”
Who is on the No Fly List?
The FBI operates the federal Terrorist Screening Database, commonly called the terror watchlist. It includes the Selectee List and the smaller, more restrictive no-fly list. Other government agencies can nominate individuals to the list, according to the FBI. Foreign governments can also provide names to the FBI, said Abbas, who has represented hundreds of Americans in lawsuits challenging their inclusion on the watchlist.
The list includes thousands of U.S. citizens and green card holders and hundreds of thousands of foreign nationals, he said. At the press conference, CAIR showed a redacted page with Khairullah’s name that they said came from the Selectee List.
Christopher Piehota, former director of the Terrorist Screening Center, told Congress in 2014 that nominations cannot be based solely on race, ethnicity, national origin, religious affiliation or activity protected under the First Amendment.
“Mere guesses or inarticulate ‘hunches’ are not enough to constitute reasonable suspicion,” he said.
Federal officials say they regularly review the lists and that names are added and removed as result. In fact, Omar Mateen was on the terrorist watch list for 10 months but was taken off before he killed 49 people at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, in June 2016.
Inclusion on the list can have a far-reaching impact, Abbas said. Americans have been prevented from traveling, or have been detained, interrogated and searched at airports. Others have faced difficulties applying for immigration benefits, renting trucks, getting bail or getting government jobs or contracts.
People on the list have also been questioned at home by law enforcement or pulled over in their cars for questioning, Abbas said. Even if they leave the United States, they can face problems because the list is circulated to other countries, he said.
“As far as we can tell, not a single person who has committed an act of terrorism was on the watchlist when they did so,” Abbas said.
On Tuesday, Khairullah, Muslim leaders and immigration advocates called for the list to be disbanded. If it has to exist in some form, it should be “specific and narrow” and there should be a concrete way to verify that a person belongs on the list, said CAIR-NJ Communications Manager Dina Sayedahmed.
“A bloated and unfair watchlist does not make us more secure,” she said.
CAIR also called for an apology and for a White House meeting with Khairullah to talk about the watchlist.
Maureen Groppe of Paste BN contributed reporting.