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The well-known Sikh American designer and actor says he’s grown accustomed to multiple bag searches, invasive pat-downs and incessant swabbing.
He’ll even let you massage his feet for foreign objects without protest.
After passing through two comprehensive screenings before his Aeromexico flight from Mexico City to New York City on Monday morning, he thought he was ready to board his plane. But security personnel thought otherwise.
“The security person said, ‘Now, will you take off your turban?'” Ahluwalia told The Washington Post, noting that he’s unsure of whether the man was employed by the airport, the airline, or both. “I said, ‘I won’t be taking off my turban here.’
“A group of Aeromexico employees spoke among themselves in Spanish and then one guy came back to me wearing an orange vest over a suit and said, ‘You will not be flying Aeromexico and you will need to book a flight on another airline.”
Instead of getting angry, the 41-year-old — who several years ago become the first-ever Sikh American model in a national Gap ad campaign — turned to social media, where he used his predicament to raise awareness about discriminatory airport screenings.
On Instagram, he wrote: “I was told I could not board my @aeromexico flight to NYC because of my turban.”
“My turban and beard represent my commitment to equality and justice,” Ahluwalia said in a statement distributed by the Sikh Coalition, a nonprofit advocacy group that works on behalf of followers of the monotheistic faith, which originated in South Asia in the 15th century. “If security personnel would like to respond with bigotry and fear then I will take another flight that’s more inclusive.”
In the United States, according to the Sikh Coalition, security agents are allowed to pat down or swab a passenger’s turban with permission. Failing that, they can ask a passenger to step into a private area for a secondary screening.
Ahluwalia said airports all over the world follow similar rules, but he suspects that employees working at Aeromexico’s gate hadn’t been trained to screen Sikh passengers.
Phone calls and emails requesting comment from Aeromexico were not immediately returned.
Hours after he was barred from boarding the plane, Ahluwalia remains inside the Mexico City airport. After his story made headlines in the United States, Aeromexico offered him another ticket and told him he wouldn’t have to remove his turban, but Ahluwalia refused to accept it.
He’s now refusing to fly another, “more inclusive” airline, too.
“At this point,” he said, “I realize that this isn’t about my convenience or getting home for lunch today. I realize that if I walk away, somebody else was going to go through this experience again.”
He added: “It doesn’t feel like a choice I can make. I don’t think I can just get on that plane.”
He’s refusing to leave, he told The Post, until the three demands — noted in a Sikh Coalition tweet — are met.
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