Muhammad Ali Jr. briefly detained at airport for second time

Muhammad Ali Jr., son of the late legendary boxer, was reportedly detained and questioned at a Washington airport Friday by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), hardly a month after he was detained for several hours at a different U.S. airport, The Associated Press reported.

Ali’s lawyer, Chris Mancini, said that when Ali attempted to board a JetBlue Airways flight at Reagan National Airport to Florida on Friday he was detained for 20 minutes. According to the AP report, Ali spoke to Department of Homeland Security officials by telephone and showed his driver’s license and passport before he was allowed to board his flight home.

{mosads}This comes a month after Ali and his mother Khalilah Camacho-Ali were reportedly pulled aside and asked if they were Muslim while arriving at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport in Florida from a Black History Month event in Jamaica.

Mancini said that while Camacho-Ali was let go, her son was questioned for almost two hours about his origin, where he was born and his religion.

Ali is a Muslim, was born in Philadelphia and holds a U.S. passport.

“To the Ali family, it’s crystal clear that this is directly linked to Mr. Trump’s efforts to ban Muslims from the United States,” Mancini said, referring to President Donald Trump’s executive order after the first incident.

Ali was reportedly meeting with lawmakers in Washington this week about President Trump’s travel ban and the February incident at the Florida airport.

President Trump this week signed a revised executive order that bans citizens from six Muslim-majority countries from entering the U.S. It is set to go into effect next week.

Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D) was apparently on Ali’s Friday flight. She snapped a photo with him and wrote: “On way home on DOMESTIC FLIGHT Muhammad Ali Jr. detained AGAIN by @DHSgov. Religiously profiling son of ‘The Greatest’ will not make us safe.”

On way home on DOMESTIC FLIGHT Muhammad Ali Jr. detained AGAIN by @DHSgov. Religiously profiling son of ‘The Greatest’ will not make us safe pic.twitter.com/KO3IVnRFax

— D Wasserman Schultz (@DWStweets) March 10, 2017