Dr. Firas Al-Rawi of Mississauga said he still can’t tell his children when he’ll be able to take them to Disney World, because he still hasn’t been told why his family was refused entry to the U.S. last month.

“I’m basically waiting,” Al-Rawi, an emergency room physician at Toronto General Hospital, said Friday. “I’m waiting to hear back.”

Al-Rawi said he doesn’t know why he was barred from the U.S., as he has made trips there in the past.

Lawyers who specialize in immigration cases said the case appears to be a clear example of racial profiling, while U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials did not respond to a Star request for an interview.

Al-Rawi’s two sons and a daughter thought they would be making their first trip to the Orlando, Fla., Disney World site on Feb. 13, while Al-Rawi was registered to attend a conference for emergency room physicians.

Despite leaving numerous phone messages and sending emails, the family still hasn’t received an explanation for why they were refused entry to the U.S. at Pearson International Airport, he said.

They also don’t know if they will be allowed to fly south in the future or when they will get back their electronics seized by border officials, he said.

Al-Rawi said he has left numerous messages asking for an explanation. He is left with a painful mental image from the airport, when he had to tell his children their vacation plans were ruined.

“My kids looked up to me with hopeful eyes,” Al-Rawi said. “It broke my heart.”

He said he also doesn’t know if he should replace the cellphone, three iPads and two Macbooks that were confiscated at Pearson.

After leaving numerous voice mail messages, he did receive a message saying the electronic devices were transferred to an American government facility off the airport for testing.

When he was turned back at the airport on Feb. 13, Al-Rawi said he was told American officials were not confident he would return to Canada after the trip. He said they never asked questions that would allow him to make his case about having strong ties to Canada.

Al-Rawi immigrated to Canada from Iraq via Qatar with his family in 2006.

He and his family are Canadian citizens. He is an emergency room physician at Toronto General Hospital, owns a house and a condo, and his children are registered in school.

He said he asked to speak with the supervisor of the officials denying him entry but was told, “No, the decision’s already been made and we’re going to escort you out.”

He said he refused to sign a piece of paper, not knowing what it was, and that the border officials refused to give him a copy of it.

“I respect their right to patrol the borders, but they have to be fair and they have to be objective,” he said.

He said officials need to ask appropriate questions before drawing conclusions.

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Lawyer Khalid Elgazzar, a board member of the National Council of Canadian Muslims, said that Canadian Muslims want border security as much as anyone else, but they also want fairness.

“It certainly does seem that there’s an element of profiling that takes place,” Elgazzar said.

Elgazzar said Al-Rawi couldn’t explain why he wasn’t a flight risk if the border officials didn’t ask the right questions.

“It could be because he has a name similar to someone who’s on a no-fly list,” Toronto immigration lawyer Lorne Waldman said in an interview.

Waldman said there’s no transparent process for examining national security decisions and no easy way of learning if he is on an American no-fly list.

“He won’t be able to find out until he actually tries to board a flight,” Waldman said.

Toronto immigration lawyer Barbara Jackman said she has no doubt the family was the victim of racial profiling because of their Arabic name and because the doctor’s wife and daughter wore head scarves.

“I think it’s profiling,” Jackman said. “The Americans do it freely.”

As well, she said, “They may have been targeted by the name.

“The fact that the kids were wearing the scarves may have been the icing on the cake.

“You can’t enjoy Disney World because you’re wearing a scarf?” Jackman asked. “It’s absurd.”

Jackman said the case raises troubling questions that need to be answered: “What do they do to make sure it doesn’t happen again? Are they barred forever?”