Of the millions of tons of stuff that comes through Kennedy International Airport in travelers’ suitcases each year, some of it is not supposed to be there.

Like the tusks of hundreds of threatened African elephants.

A Philadelphia art and antiquities dealer, Victor Gordon, was arraigned on smuggling charges in federal court in Brooklyn on Tuesday after, the authorities said, they seized about a ton of carved ivory that he had had a confederate bring into Kennedy in his luggage between 2006 and 2009.

The seizure is one of the largest American seizures of elephant ivory on record, the United States attorney’s office said.

Mr. Gordon, 68, had his agent purchase raw ivory and get it carved and then stained or dyed so that it appeared old and therefore not subject to endangered species law, federal prosecutors in Brooklyn said. He then sold the carved tusks through his shop in Philadelphia, Victor Gordon Enterprises, they said.