That's What You Get for Being Black and Muslim

Saadiq Long, the Muslim U.S. Air Force veteran who was secretly placed on the no-fly list in 2012 and then smeared by a fabricated news report last December claiming he was arrested in Turkey “as a member of an ISIS cell,” left Turkey last week and has now returned to the U.S. The U.S. government, which worked to secure Long’s release from a Turkish deportation center, gave him a waiver from the no-fly list to enable him to fly back home.

[...]

The smearing of Long as an “ISIS fighter” by the rabidly anti-Muslim website “Pajamas Media,” based on anonymous government officials, was a sham. From the start, Long and his family were held only in a deportation center after the Turkish government claimed he intended to stay in the country without the proper visa — largely due to the fact that he was on the U.S.’s no-fly list.

[...]

But consider the permanent damage done to Long’s reputation and future job prospects. The fabricated report from Pajamas Media was uncritically repeated by all sorts of news organizations (including in Long’s hometown in Oklahoma where his family lives) and was trumpeted by some of the loudest and most toxic anti-Muslim activists: Pam Geller, Ann Coulter, and Sam Harris.

Even after The Intercept presented abundant evidence that the story was fabricated [...] , and even after a local Oklahoma TV station that originally repeated the story confirmed that it was false, Pajamas Media announced that it stood by its accusations [...] . Thanks to all of that, this false report, linking Long to ISIS, will be attached to his name online forever.

  The Intercept

Not only that, but he's still on the US no-fly list "without any explanation or recourse."

That means that he is currently unable to fly from New York back to Oklahoma where his family resides, or to another country of his choosing, even if he agrees to extra searching or traveling with air marshals (both of which he’s offered previously). Underscoring the absurdity of the no-fly list, he’s free to board a crowded train or bus (or obviously enter crowded shopping malls, landmarks, and street corners), and the fact that he has now flown multiple times without incident — to the U.S. and within it — seems to have no bearing on the U.S. government’s ongoing Kafkaesque, due process-free refusal to allow him on a plane.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.