A Muslim mayor from the north, interrogated at the airport for three hours, took the phone with patrol agents

A long-time mayor of New Jersey, a Muslim, said he believed he was racially profiled when he and his family were detained at an airport for hours after returning from Turkey last month.

Mohamed Khairullah, mayor of Prospect Park since 2005, wrote on Facebook on August 2 that US Customs and Border Protection agents had confiscated his phone after he stopped for hours at the international airport John F. Kennedy. "Arab and Muslim Americans know this story very well," he wrote.

He appeared in a video posted on YouTube on Sunday stating that lawyer Ahmed Mohamed, litigation director of the Council for American-Islamic Relations in New York, had helped him finally get his phone back.

Khairullah said at a press conference on Friday that the trip to Turkey to visit his family had started under difficult conditions. He presented his 14 month boarding card. It is marked "SSSS" – selection of secondary security screening – or "highest level of research", he said. Khairullah is married and has four children.

When the family returned to New York, they were detained by CBP agents for almost three hours and asked questions that Khairullah described as "excessive profiling."

"They started asking me," Are you aware of the formation of terrorist groups there or did you meet terrorists? "And that's when I felt insulted after serving my community for more than 18 years as an elected representative," Khairullah said in a video posted on YouTube on Sunday. "I felt that I had been chosen primarily because of my name and identity."

When Khairullah did not want to answer the questions that he considered offensive, the agents told him that they should grab his phone. He did not recover for almost two weeks.

"It's profiling that happens every day to American citizens who happen to be Muslims," ​​Mohamed said. "And the only reason they are brought back to the secondary inspection and questioned this way is because of their faith, what they wear, and the direction in which they pray."

Khairullah fled Syria in 1980, became a US citizen in 2000, and a year later a member of the Prospect Park City Council, which has a population of approximately 6,000. He has also served as a volunteer firefighter for five years and has made numerous relief trips abroad, according to his website.

"All these hours of community service obviously do not matter when I call Mohamed Khairullah," he said at the press conference.

Khairullah said that he could sue after being detained at the airport and seizing his phone, but he's mainly talking about what happened to prevent other people from facing the even "frustrating and terrifying experience".

"It's not just about me, it's about civil rights, it's about ending profiling and Islamophobia," Khairullah said.

CBP spokespersons did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Representative Bill Pascrell Jr., D-N.J., Offered his support to Khairullah in a statement on Friday.

"Mayor Khairullah's narrative describes the profiling against Muslims, where he was targeted by the authorities as a criminal threat or even a threat to national security for no reason, the mayor deserves answers about his detention," he said. communicated. "We have heard too many rumors about Americans being harassed for their names, their skin color and their national ancestors."