Hawzah News Agency (California - US) - 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.

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.”

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.

Eventually a female employee escorted Fatima to a corner in a tunnel where passengers enter the plane and had her remove the headscarf.

“It makes me feel really angry,” she said. “I was humiliated.”

While it was happening, Fatima was messaging her family.

“She made me take it off for a sec and then was like ok,” read a text from Fatima to her family. She added that the agent barely looked at what was on her head before letting her board the flight.