Issam Abu Issa was turned away from America at Kennedy Airport on Friday as he came from London. As our Eli Lake reports at page one of today’s New York Sun, he was coming to America to meet with the House Financial Services Committee about financial improprieties in the Palestinian Authority under Yasser Arafat. He says our officials at the border told him he wasn’t welcome because he supposedly laundered money for terrorists.

Mr. Abu Issa, a 1981 graduate of the University of San Diego, has been to America a half dozen times in recent years, including a visit last year to the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C.,where the audience included national security officials from the Bush administration.

Readers of The New York Sun were introduced to him in a front-page profile on Feb ruary 6, 2003, in which Mr. Abu Issa spoke of “a liberal, democratic Palestinian state based on having a harmonious relationship with its neighbors.”

It is border blunders like Friday’s that feed the stereotype that the American government assumes all Arabs are terrorists.

If Mr. Abu Issa really were a terrorist, the border authorities should have arrested him, not turned him away at the border. And since he is not a terrorist — in fact he is a leading Palestinian reformer and democrat — he deserves an apology.

The best move would be for the relevant officials — Secretary of State Powell and the secretary in charge of “homeland security,” Tom Ridge — to offer that apology in person and in Washington so they could take the opportunity to learn more about what Mr. Abu Issa is really about.