Legislators Question White House’s Denial Of Passaic Co. Mayor

PROSPECT PARK, NJ — Federal legislators are calling on Joe Biden’s administration and the U.S. Secret Service to answer why a longtime New Jersey mayor was disinvited from a White House celebration this week.

Mayor Mohamed T. Khairullah of Prospect Park said he received a call shortly before he was scheduled to arrive at the White House for an Eid-al-Fitr celebration, telling him he had not been cleared for entry. Khairullah has been mayor of the Passaic County town since 2005, and claims he has been unfairly targeted. He had already traveled to Washington for the event, where several hundred other Muslim leaders gathered with the president.

Related article — Muslim NJ Mayor Blocked From White House Event

Democratic U.S. Senators Cory Booker and Robert Menendez, as well as Congressman Bill Pascrell Junior (D-NJ-9), asked White House officials to clarify their decision in a letter sent Tuesday. The legislators requested that the U.S. Secret Service and the President's Social Secretary “provide our offices with information in a format and classification level that facilitates a detailed explanation of what occurred and why.”

The letter also urged officials to provide Khairullah with "substantive reasons he was denied admission,” and to “initiate a review of Mayor Khairullah’s status."

“Mayor Khairullah is a devoted public servant, close friend and the longest-serving Muslim mayor in New Jersey,” wrote Booker, Menendez, and Pascrell. “As a former volunteer firefighter, Mayor Khairullah has continuously demonstrated dedication to public safety. 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.”

Khairullah and the New Jersey chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-NJ) have called on Biden’s administration to end dissemination of the federal “watch list” that they say illegally targets Muslims and others.

During a news conference Tuesday in South Plainfield, Khairullah and several other speakers condemned the list as illegal, discriminatory and unconstitutional. They also called on the Secret Service and other federal agencies to stop using and distributing the list, which CAIR says has more than 1.5 million names, a majority of which are “Arab or Muslim sounding.”

CAIR told Khairullah that a person with his name and birthdate was in a dataset that their attorneys obtained in 2019.

Khairullah said Tuesday that he has no idea why his information is on the list and that no one in the federal government will tell him, adding that there’s “no reason to believe I’m an unsafe person.” Khairullah noted that he has been detained a few times and questioned while traveling, experiences that he called “humiliating.”

“I’m not upset about not being at the White House,” said Khairullah as quoted in the Associated Press “I’m about human rights. I have a platform to address this issue, but about 1.5 million others don’t ... an incident like this makes me question the progress I thought we had made.”

He's in his fifth term as mayor of the Passaic County township, having served as councilman for four years before first being elected as mayor in 2005.

Khairullah's family fled Syria in the 1980s. He said he made seven trips to Syria with humanitarian aid organizations between 2012 and 2015 as a civil war ravaged much of the country.

In a separate statement, Booker said he was "profoundly disappointed" in how the White House and Secret Service handled the situation and called for Khairullah to be re-invited.

"I believe excluding him was the wrong decision. This incident is not just insulting to our ideals and to Mayor Khairullah but also to the community he serves," he said. "The people of Prospect Park, the citizens of New Jersey, the New Jersey Muslim community, and Mayor Khairullah deserve an explanation as to how and why this happened and an apology. I also believe that Mayor Khairullah deserves another opportunity to visit the White House.”

This story contains reporting by the Associated Press.