LONDON — A trip to Disneyland that was supposed to be a dream vacation for a British Muslim family has instead become the latest flashpoint in an international debate over Islam and security.
A group of 11 relatives was preparing to embark Dec. 15 from London’s Gatwick Airport to Los Angeles when authorities barred them from boarding a plane, according to accounts from the family and their member of Parliament. Family members said no one had explained to them why they weren’t permitted to fly to Southern California. But in multiple media appearances Wednesday, Mohammad Tariq Mahmood said he believed his religion may have played a role in the U.S. decision to bar him, his brother and nine of their children from the flight.
“We were devastated,” Mahmood told the British TV station ITV. “We’d planned this trip for two months — the kids were excited — and all of a sudden some person just comes and says ‘you’re not allowed to board the plane,’ with no explanation.”
He added: “We were alienated, the way we were just taken out the room.”
Their representative in Parliament, Stella Creasy, called on British Prime Minister David Cameron to press U.S. authorities on the matter, and suggested that presidential candidate Donald Trump’s hostile rhetoric toward Muslims could be affecting American decision-making. Earlier this month, Trump, the Republican front-runner, called for a “total and complete” ban on Muslims entering the United States.
U.S. officials strongly denied that the Muslim family members were targeted based on their religion but said they were barred from commenting further by federal laws protecting the privacy of air travelers.
Still, Mahmood said, the reason they were banned seemed “obvious” to him.
“It’s because of the attacks on America,” he told the Guardian. “They think every Muslim poses a threat.”
Creasy, who represents an area in northeast London where the family lives, wrote in a column for the Guardian that the lack of information about the case is “fueling resentment and debate.”
“Online and offline discussions reverberate with the growing fear that UK Muslims are being ‘trumped’ — that widespread condemnation of Donald Trump’s call for no Muslim to be allowed into America contrasts with what is going on in practice,” she wrote.
Creasy said in an interview that she had gone public with the Mahmood family’s case because she had spent a week trying to get answers from the U.S. Embassy in London and had “hit a brick wall.” By late Wednesday afternoon, she said she still had not received any substantive responses from either the British or American governments.
A Downing Street spokeswoman, speaking under the condition of anonymity, said the government was looking into the matter and that the prime minister “will respond in due course.”
Creasy told The Washington Post that others have since come forward with similar stories of having been blocked from boarding U.S.-bound flights – including, she said, a British civil servant.
“Nobody is suggesting that American officials shouldn’t be able to manage who comes into their country,” she said. “But this is happening on U.K. soil, and there is a growing concern that it is the religion of these people that is the issue.”
A U.S. State Department official told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee last week that the United States has revoked more than 122,000 visas since 2001, including about 9,500 that were pulled due to terrorism concerns.
In remarks prepared for the committee, Michele Thoren Bond, assistant secretary for the agency’s Bureau of Consular Affairs, said the State Department? has “broad and flexible authority to revoke visas” and will use its authority “to protect our borders.”
Under U.S. immigration law, a traveler cannot be denied admission into the country due to “religion, faith or spiritual beliefs,” according to a U.S. Customs and Border Protection statement. The agency said the law lists more than 60 reasons for inadmissibility, including “health-related, prior criminal convictions, security reasons, public charge, labor certification, illegal entrants and immigration violations, documentation requirements and miscellaneous grounds.”
The State Department and the White House would not comment on the British family’s case.
