The arrests continue the law enforcement tactic we've seen used on thousands of Muslim immigrants post-9/11 – the use of immigration law as a pretext for arresting people. The FBI then interrogates the suspects about terrorism without the presence of a lawyer, without having to name any evidence or charge. As immigration law expert Cyrus Mehta has said, this method of arresting people on suspicion, then deciding how or whether to charge them, "turns our Consititution on its head."
Holding a teenage girl prisoner so she can be questioned, with no one to monitor the situation, is an extreme tactic. The FBI has publicly stated that there is no serious belief that these girls present a threat. If no solid grounds to interrogate these girls about terrorism surfaces, then this incident will ultimately bring shame on our government.
CAIR-NY shares in the Muslim community’s deep concern over the recent arrest and detention of two 16-year-old Muslim girls from New York City. Despite the continuing protests by immigrant and civil rights communities following 9/11, the Federal government’s implementation of ethnic and religious profiling and its use of immigration proceedings to circumvent the constitutional protections of the criminal justice system persist.
Following 9/11, CAIR-NY and other civil rights organizations witnessed firsthand the government’s targeting of Muslim men for investigations, false accusations, detentions, and deportations. Immigrant Muslim men were singled out for Special Registration, solely on the basis of their national origins, and thousands were deported from this country as a result of this program.
Despite the vigorous surveillance and crack-down on our communities, however, the Federal government’s efforts have not resulted in any successful terrorism prosecutions, nor have they shown any evidence that these methods have made America safer for anyone.
Today, it appears that the profiling of Muslim men has grown to include Muslim women and children. In this case, two minors are being linked to terrorism based at least in part on their interest in and observance of the Islamic religion. In one of the cases, a girl was questioned by FBI agents, at one point posing as youth counselors, without the advice or presence of an attorney.
Neither of the girls has been formally charged with any crime, but both have been detained indefinitely in facilities far away from their homes and families. Their hearings are held in secret. Any substantive evidence against them has yet to be revealed.
Concerns have also been raised regarding the conditions in the girls’ detention facility, including reports that their ability to observe religious practices has been restricted. Given the Federal government’s previous track record and manner in which these two cases have been handled thus far, CAIR-NY and the Muslim community are justifiably outraged at the government’s continuing disregard for the civil rights of American Muslims.
As a community-based civil rights organization, we sincerely hope that these cases do not develop into a new example of baseless religious profiling and unfair targeting of American Muslims, both of which have become disturbingly frequent in post-9/11 America. Cases involving minors necessarily require heightened attention to their treatment during detention, their access to legal advice and social support services, and the need to come to a swift and just conclusion. CAIR-NY calls upon all community organizations and elected officials to join us in closely monitoring the legal and humanitarian issues in both cases to see that justice is done for these young girls.
If you'd like to be apprised of the grassroots efforts supporting the girls and their families, please contact
Teachers and Classmates Express Outrage at Arrest of Girl, 16, as a Terrorist Threat
By Nina Bernstein
At Heritage High School in East Harlem, where the student idiom is hip-hop and salsa, the 16-year-old Guinean girl stood out, but not just because she wore Islamic dress. She was so well liked that when she ran for student body president, she came in second to one of her best friends...
Now Ms. Carr, a speech pathologist who calls herself "a typical American citizen," is as outraged as the girl's teachers and classmates, who have learned that the girl and another 16-year-old are being called would-be suicide bombers and are being held in an immigration detention center in Pennsylvania.
"They have painted this picture of her as this person that is trying to destroy our way of life, and I know in my heart of hearts that this is bogus," said Ms. Carr, who welcomed the Guinean girl to her house daily and knows her family well. "I feel like, how dare they? She's a minor, and even if she's not a citizen, she has rights as a human being."
According to a government document provided to The New York Times by a federal official earlier this week, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has asserted that both girls are "an imminent threat to the security of the United States based on evidence that they plan to be suicide bombers." No evidence was cited, and federal officials will not comment on the case.
...
"I just can't fathom this," said her art teacher, Kimberly Lane, who has repeatedly called the youth detention center but like Ms. Carr was not allowed to speak to the girl, who has no lawyer. Among the unanswered questions they raised was why, if she was really a suspect, no F.B.I. agent had shown up to search her school locker or question her classmates, who sent her letters of support.
"This is a girl who's been in this country since she was 2 years old," Ms. Lane said. "She's just a regular teenager - like, two weeks ago her biggest worry was whether she'd done her homework or studied for a science test."
Until now, attention has focused on the other 16-year-old, a Bangladeshi girl reared in Queens who could not deal with the hurly-burly of her West Side high school and withdrew into home schooling. Yesterday, on a motion of the government, an immigration judge closed the Bangladeshi girl's bond hearing to the public and adjourned it to next Thursday, said Troy Mattes, a lawyer who is taking over the case but has yet to meet her.
By the Bangladeshi girl's account, reported by her mother, the girls did not meet until March 24, after their separate arrests in early-morning raids on immigration charges against their parents. Both grew up in Islamic families. But while the Bangladeshi girl had grown increasingly pious, and uncomfortable in the urban culture of the High School of Environmental Studies on West 56th Street, the Guinean girl, a 10th grader, embraced every aspect of Heritage High, at 106th Street and Lexington Avenue, her teachers said.
"She is, yes, an orthodox Muslim, but completely integrated into this school," said Jessica Siegel, her English teacher in a class in which topics like teenage pregnancy and world politics were discussed...
"She's a wonderful, wonderful girl," Ms. Siegel said. "She's about the last person anyone could imagine being a suicide bomber."
The English teacher's most vivid recollection was of a day two months ago when she heard a kind of roar in the hallway of the school, which is full of colorful student collages and life-size sculptures in papier-mâché. The teenager had stopped wearing her veil, and she beamed as her fellow students, seeing her face for the first time, cheered.
After the class read "Night," the Holocaust memoir by Elie Wiesel, the girl wrote a paper about genocide in the Sudan, she recalled. But she was so excited about a field trip to see Christo's "Gates" in Central Park, Ms. Siegel said, that she skipped an appointment at immigration - a teenage impulse the teacher now worries might have set off problems with federal authorities. Her father is now in immigration jail facing deportation.
At Woodrow Wilson Houses a few blocks from the school, a sticker on the family's apartment door reads, "Allah is our protector." Yesterday no one was home, but across the hall, Christine Anderson, a neighbor, shook her head in disbelief when she learned why she had not seen the girl or her father in recent weeks.
"Why would they take the lady's daughter?" she asked. "They're nice people, and hard-working people. I've been here four years. I know she's not a problem child."
Ms. Lane, the art teacher, said that when Heritage High first learned that immigration agents had picked up the girl, one of her best friends asked if someone from the school might have denounced her as an illegal immigrant. "I remember telling her the government doesn't go after 16-year-old girls," Ms. Lane said. "And in the last few days, I'm wrestling with the fact that, yes, it does."
