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The federal government is being sued by a dozen people, including Prospect Park, New Jersey Mayor Mohamed Khairullah, who want to put an end to a secret terrorism watchlist they claim targets Muslims when they travel.
(Video Credit: NJ Spotlight News)
Four months ago, Khairullah was en route to attend an Eid al-Fitr celebration at the White House when he was reportedly informed by the Secret Service that he would not be allowed to do so.
“In 2019, I discovered that as a Muslim and as an Arab, I am a second-class citizen in my country and the birthplace of my children,” the Muslim mayor stated at a press conference alongside representatives of the NAACP and Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which filed the suit on the plaintiffs’ behalf.
“Khairullah’s name and birthdate were among the 1.5 million entries on a 2019 version of a so-called no-fly list a hacker leaked in January, saying it had been obtained from a CommuteAir server. CAIR said an analysis showed the list is nearly entirely populated by Muslim names or the names of people who appear to be of Middle Eastern descent,” the Gothamist reported.
“The lawsuit argues names are placed on the list with no due process — and no way to get a clear explanation of why an individual is on it, or even an official acknowledgment their name appears. And it says some of the plaintiffs — from several states, and in some cases, U.S. citizens living overseas — have suffered harassment from foreign governments after the U.S. shared their names,” the media outlet noted.
.@MayorKhairullah of #NewJersey‘s Prospect Park is one of our 12 plaintiffs in our new lawsuit challenging the federal watchlist. We applaud him and all our clients for their bravery in standing up to oppose this discriminatory program. pic.twitter.com/qo6tuY75mI
— CAIR National (@CAIRNational) September 18, 2023
Muslim NJ mayor ‘shocked’ after he was blocked from White House party, ‘profiled’ by Secret Service https://t.co/sWfzr4j4Jz pic.twitter.com/0ul2z3WaH6
— BPR (@BIZPACReview) May 4, 2023
The suit contends that one of the plaintiffs, a U.S. citizen residing in Saudi Arabia, “was detained, strip-searched, and publicly subjected to search by an explosive-sniffing canine by Austrian government agents.”
Khairullah goes on to assert that he believes he was removed from the watchlist, which was previously known as the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Dataset, at some point before he was disinvited by the White House. A CAIR attorney named Hannah Mullen claimed during a press conference that federal agencies often use someone’s previous status on the list as a reason to scrutinize them.
An attorney with CAIR’s Legal Defense Fund, Gadeir Abbas, noted that he has represented a number of individuals who have wound up on the watchlist, but none of them have ever even been charged with terrorism-related crimes.
“As far as I can tell, the watchlist is for those people the government chooses not to charge with crimes,” he remarked during a press conference.
Today, we filed a major lawsuit with 12 plaintiffs seeking an end to the government’s secret watchlist that almost exclusively targets Muslims for harassment and humiliation when they travel. 1/4 pic.twitter.com/0lyF5cItRY
— CAIR National (@CAIRNational) September 18, 2023
“CAIR and the plaintiffs said the watchlist is unconstitutional. They named officials with several agencies — including the FBI, the Terrorism Screening Center, the Department of Transportation, and ICE — as defendants,” the Gothamist continued.
“The lawsuit says none of the plaintiffs have ever been charged with terrorism-related offenses, but their appearance on the watchlist ‘designates them as worthy of permanent suspicion and imposes sweeping consequences that alter nearly every aspect of plaintiffs’ lives,’” the media outlet added.
The suit goes on to claim that individuals have been publicly humiliated and subjected to surveillance when they travel. It also says that Muslims have been kept from attending family functions such as weddings and funerals. The complaint asserts that some of them have been denied jobs, gun licenses, visas, and U.S. citizenship and that they have been “effectively exiled from the United States.”
The lawsuit is seeking to have current policies and practices that are applied when placing individuals on federal watchlists declared unconstitutional.
Our 2023 Muslim Community Watchlist Snapshot Report showed that more than 1/3 of Muslim respondents reported having “SSSS” placed on their airline boarding passes. Of those respondents, 40% were men. Read the report below to learn more ⬇️https://t.co/aZrGXjnAHx pic.twitter.com/zSbvRBKltl
— CAIR National (@CAIRNational) September 19, 2023
“It also seeks an injunction ordering that anyone placed on a watchlist should be given a reason for their inclusion and that the plaintiffs should be removed from any watchlists with the records of their names expunged,” the Gothamist said.
“It says the watchlist process should be reformed to ‘eliminate the discriminatory focus on Muslim identity and religious practice.’ And it looks to change law enforcement practices, barring government agencies from detaining people at the border without warrants, or searching electronic devices for people who are detained without warrants,” the media outlet concluded.
CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad declared, “This system has caused great harm to the lives of thousands of innocent people. As this litigation moves forward, we again call on the federal government to dismantle the watchlist.”
We applaud our brave clients, attorneys and advocates for taking on the federal government’s discriminatory & unconstitutional watchlist. This system has caused great harm to the lives of thousands of innocent people. 3/4
— CAIR National (@CAIRNational) September 18, 2023
A Secret Service spokesperson told VOA News, “As we stated in the past, we were not able to grant entry to the Mayor at the White House and we regret any inconvenience that may have caused.”
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