For 13 years, Mohamed Khairullah has been the mayor of Prospect Park, N.J., a town of nearly 6,000 people where he previously worked as a volunteer firefighter.
But none of that mattered when he got off a flight in August and was pulled aside by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers who questioned him for hours, probing him about whether he had met with any terrorists during a family vacation to Turkey. Though the agents eventually agreed to let him go, they insisted on holding onto his phone for nearly two weeks, Khairullah told reporters at a Friday news conference.
“I believe that my constitutional rights were violated,” he said.