(CNN) Former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg on Tuesday recalled the time he tried to use his foreign language skills to help a family caught up in the middle of a protest.

Buttigieg speaks eight languages -- "some better than others," he said at a CNN town hall -- including Norwegian, Maltese, Arabic, Spanish and Dari.

The day President Donald Trump's 2017 travel ban went into effect, Buttigieg said he went to a protest at a Houston airport. In his first month in office, Trump issued an executive order banning entry for 90 days by citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries: Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen. The order also indefinitely halted refugees from Syria. Mass protests erupted at airports across the United States in opposition to the ban.

Within a few hours, Buttigieg said there were hundreds of people at the protest.

Buttigieg, who at the time ran unsuccessfully to be the chair of the Democratic National Committee, said he had heard a rumor there was an Iranian family that was not being allowed through because of the ban.

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