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A 12-year-old girl and her family are searching for answers after Air Canada employees forced her to remove her hijab while waiting to board a flight at San Francisco International Airport.

Fatima Abdelrahman was travelling from California to Toronto on Aug. 1 with fellow players and her coach on the U.S. Squash team to play in an international tournament against Canadian opponents.

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tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Air Canada forced 12-year-old Muslim girl to take off her hijab after already passing security Back to video

After passing through security and having her passport and boarding passes checked, she waited at the gate to enter the aircraft. As her group began walking onto the plane, an Air Canada agent approached Fatima, demanding she take off her headscarf.

“The agent pulled me aside and said, ‘you’re going to need to take your scarf off’ and I said, ‘I can’t’ and he said, ‘no, you need to,’ ” Fatima said. “I knew I had done absolutely nothing wrong.”

Photo by Sabreen Abdelrahman - supplied

Two other Air Canada employees then approached Fatima, reiterating she must remove the head covering because she wasn’t wearing one in her passport photo.