A “racist” man was escorted off a flight in front of a cheering crowd as one passenger yelled at him “this is not Trump’s America”.
The confrontation broke out on Flight 1118 from Chicago to Houston on Saturday when a Pakistani man and woman wearing traditional clothing were boarding the plane, according to KHOU.
A witness described how the man asked the couple if they had a bomb in their bag.
“The person ahead us turned around and asked where my boyfriend was from; my boyfriend said it’s none of your business,” she said, explaining that her boyfriend is of Indian descent.
“At that point he said all illegals and all foreigners and need to leave the country.”
After a flight attendant was alerted to the incident, the man was told he needed to get off the plane.
Mobile footage of part of the incident shows the man protesting, telling the member of staff: “I didn’t say anything.”
As a flight attendant insists he leave the aircraft, he gets up from his seat and starts to collect his belongings, along with a younger, female companion.
One passenger announces: “White supremacist getting thrown off the plane”
He tells the person recording the video: “Happy flight home,” adding: “I hope you stay there.”
The young woman travelling with him holds up her middle finger to the person filming.
“Get out of here,” the woman recording the footage yells, adding: “Racists aren’t welcome in America. This is not Trump’s America.”
As other passengers start cheering, the woman recording the video says: “Goodbye, racist.”
Jonathan Guerin, a United Airlines spokesman, told The Washington Post: “We removed two passengers for making others feel uncomfortable on the flight and for saying some inappropriate things to customers on the flight.
“Most customers appreciate a place where they feel safe and where they’re not going to be attacked and we want to provide that.”
Trump has been blamed for the rise in Islamophobic hate crime in the US in recent months.
The number of anti-Muslim hate groups in the country has nearly tripled since 2015, the Southern Poverty Law Center said, with the number of groups increasing from 34 in 2015 to 101 in 2016, the Associated Press reports.
The number of hate groups overall tracked by the watchdog group also increased to 917 last year from 892 the previous year, the report said.
“2016 was an unprecedented year for hate,” said Mark Potok, a senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center.
The report blamed the increase in part on “incendiary rhetoric” from the campaign of Trump, which included threats to ban Muslim immigrants and “mandate a registry of Muslims in America.”
It also cited as factors “the unrelenting propaganda of a growing circle of well-paid ideologues” - well-paid employees of anti-Muslim groups, the group said - and radical Islamist attacks such as the June 2016 massacre at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida.