Muslim NJ Mayor Blocked From White House Eid Event

PROSPECT PARK, NJ — The U.S. Secret Service confirmed it did not allow longtime Prospect Park mayor Mohamed Khairullah to enter a White House Eid celebration on Monday, but did not explain why.

Khairullah said that he was invited to a belated celebration with President Joe Biden to mark the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. But he received a call from the White House shortly before the event Monday, saying he was not cleared. Khairullah said that he was profiled based on his race and religious identity, and said his name is erroneously included on a federal terrorism watchlist. Federal officials have not confirmed this assertion.

“It left me baffled, shocked and disappointed,” Khairullah told the Associated Press on Monday. “It’s not a matter of I didn’t get to go to a party. 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, 47, informed the New Jersey chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations after he was told he would not be allowed to attend the event, which had hundreds of other attendants. He's in his fifth term as mayor of the Passaic County township, having served as councilman for four years before first being elected in 2005.

CAIR-NJ has called on the Biden administration to stop the FBI’s dissemination of information from what is known as a Terrorist Screening Data Set that includes hundreds of thousands of individuals. The Muslim advocacy group informed Khairullah that a person with his name and birthdate was in a dataset that CAIR attorneys obtained in 2019.

U.S. Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi confirmed that Khairullah was not allowed into the White House complex, but declined to give further details Monday.

“While we regret any inconvenience this may have caused, the mayor was not allowed to enter the White House complex this evening,” Guglielmi said in a statement. “Unfortunately we are not able to comment further on the specific protective means and methods used to conduct our security operations at the White House.”

The White House has not commented as of Tuesday afternoon.

Gov. Phil Murphy said he reached out to the White House and that he spoke to Khairullah on Monday night.

"We're trying to figure out exactly what happened," Murphy said, adding Khairullah is a "close personal friend."

When reporters asked Murphy what this issue says to the Muslim community in New Jersey, he said he hoped it was "a misunderstanding."

“I hope it says nothing to our Muslim community," Murphy said. "I assume that the White House was full of Muslim leaders from around the country."

Khairullah told CNN on Tuesday morning that he was told half an hour before he planned to arrive that he would not be allowed inside the White House. He said he had submitted his information to the White House two days before the event.

“What are we going to do about the targeting of Arabs, Muslims, South Asians, by federal agencies that are basically not telling us why we are being harassed at airports, border crossings?" Khairullah said. "And now for me to be denied entry into the People’s House is baffling.”

CAIR-NJ condemned the Secret Service for "baselessly" banning the mayor, whose family fled war-torn Syria in 1980, and called their decision "an illegal application of the FBI's secret watchlist."

“This incident lacks transparency and reeks of government overreach," said executive director Selaedin Maksut. "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?”

CAIR-NJ is holding a press conference Tuesday at its offices in South Plainfield to call for an apology, and for Khairullah to get another invitation to the White House.

“That a well-respected Muslim leader would effectively be disinvited from the White House Eid celebration, just hours ahead of time, is wholly unacceptable and insulting,” Maksut added

Khairullah has said he was stopped by authorities at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York in 2019, and interrogated for three hours and questioned about whether he knew any terrorists. The questioning happened as he was returning to the United States after a family visit to Turkey, where his wife has family.

On another occasion, he said he was briefly held at the U.S.-Canada border as he traveled back into the country with family.

Khairullah said he made seven trips to Syria with humanitarian aid organizations between 2012 and 2015 as a civil war ravaged much of the country.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.