The Biden Administration found itself in an awkward spot this week after a New Jersey Muslim mayor was denied access to a White House event.
“Prospect Park Mayor Mohamed Khairullah, a Democrat who has served as mayor of that North Jersey borough the past 17 years, said he was within minutes of entering the White House for a celebration of Eid al-Fitr on Monday when he was told he was not cleared by the Secret Service to attend the event,” Politico reported on Tuesday, adding that “[a] specific reason was not given.”
Mayor Khairullah is a Democrat; his small 6,000+ resident community in Passaic County has the sixth-highest percentage of Arab Americans of any community in the United States.
The Monday event was a celebration of “Eid al-Fitr” which literally means ‘Holiday of Breaking the Fast’ marking the end of the Ramadan fast.
Unless the White House can come up with a specific explanation for barring Khairullah, then it will need to explain how his exclusion gels with the Biden Administration’s pushback against the so-called “discriminatory” travel bans of the Trump Administration.
