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Gulet Mohamed, a 19-year-old U.S. citizen from Alexandria, entered the arrivals terminal nearly two hours after his United Airlines flight landed. His attorneys said he had been kept after the flight by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents.
As he emerged from the gate around 8:40 a.m., his brother Abdi Mohamed, 28, sprinted over and hugged him, shouting "Gulet!" repeatedly.
A sea of media then engulfed the teenager, even before he had a chance to embrace his mother. Mohamed - dressed in a worn hooded sweat shirt and sweat pants, his baby face framed by a fuzzy beard - smiled and pulled his hood over his face.
"My voice has been heard," he said moments later. But "there's other Muslims and non-Muslims that are still being tortured."
The American Civil Liberties Union plans to sue the U.S. government Wednesday on behalf of 10 citizens or legal permanent residents who have been placed on a no-fly list and, in some cases, stranded abroad.
In the suit, the ACLU accuses the government of violating the plaintiffs' constitutional rights.
The number of names placed on the list has increased significantly since the attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound aircraft on Christmas Day, U.S. officials said. Some Americans have been barred from flying home from overseas because their names were listed.
The ACLU says Americans are being deprived of their rights as citizens and of due process.
"It really is abominable that they would treat U.S. citizens this way," said Ben Wizner, a staff lawyer at the ACLU's National Security Project. "There is simply no legal basis for placing a U.S. citizen into involuntary exile. And to use a secret government list without any process to accomplish that goal is so un-American and so unconstitutional."
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