A senior immigration officer has said staff did not act in a racist way when an American Muslim woman was detained for 13 hours at Heathrow airport.
Ayan Mohamud, 18, who was visiting family in Leicester, said she felt she was being “judged” in the wake of the Paris terror attacks.
Leicester MP Keith Vaz raised Ms Mohamud’s case at a Home Affairs select committee meeting on Tuesday.
Sir Charles Montgomery said there was no “racist dimension” to the checks.
‘Unimaginable experience’
The Border Force director general told Mr Vaz, who chairs the committee, that he had already investigated the case before the meeting.
“I am absolutely satisfied there was no ethnic or racist dimension to this intervention,” he said.
“It was initially a straightforward case of immigration status and it became an issue of my officers’ concern for her well-being.
“What I would like to do, if you can engineer the permission of the individual, is to write to you with a more fulsome background to the case.”
Mr Montgomery dismissed the idea that women coming into the UK wearing headscarves are routinely stopped.
Ms Mohamud, who spoke to the BBC about her ordeal, claimed she was was being judged based on what she was wearing.
She said: “After the Paris incident happened, [Border Force] feel that everyone wearing a scarf needs to be checked thoroughly.”