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Muslim mayor from NJ and 11 others sue to end FBI's secret terrorism watchlist
By
Louis C. Hochman
Published Sep 18, 2023
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Kyle Mazza/NurPhoto/Shutterstock
By
Louis C. Hochman
Published Sep 18, 2023
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A dozen people are suing the federal government to try and end the use of a secret watchlist they say almost exclusively targets Muslims for scrutiny when they travel.
Among the plaintiffs in the federal suit is five-term Prospect Park, New Jersey Mayor Mohamed Khairullah, who was on his way to an Eid al-Fitr celebration at the White House in the spring when the Secret Service told him he couldn’t attend.
“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,” he said at a press conference alongside representatives of the NAACP and of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, 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 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 acknowledgement their name appears. And it says some of 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.
One, 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,” the lawsuit says.
Khairullah said he believes he was removed from the watchlist — formerly known as the FBI's Terrorist Screening Dataset, and also used to populate lists by other agencies — sometime before being disinvited to the White House. CAIR attorney Hannah Mullen said during the press conference agencies will often use a person's former status on the watch list as a reason for scrutiny.
Gadeir Abbas, an attorney with CAIR’s Legal Defense Fund, said he’s represented several people whose names appear on the watchlist, but none have ever 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 said at the press conference.
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 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.”
It says they’ve been publicly humiliated and subject to surveillance when they travel, as well as prevented from attending family functions like weddings and funerals. In some cases, they’ve been denied jobs, gun licenses, visas, U.S. citizenship “and even effectively exiled from the United States,” according to the lawsuit.
The FBI declined comment Monday, citing the pending litigation.
Khairullah’s White House story caught widespread attention in the spring, but he said he believed he first appeared on the watchlist since at least 2019, when he started having difficulty traveling. The former teacher and volunteer fireman, whose family fled from Syria during his childhood, said he started having trouble getting boarding passes online, and was subject to elaborate screenings at airports in person.
But Ayah Zaki, a civil rights attorney with CAIR’s New Jersey chapter, said the organization is aware of several other people whose travel was disrupted by the watchlist. He described a Bergen County resident in his 20s detained at Newark Airport after traveling to see family in Turkey, asked questions including “have you been in contact with terrorist organizations?”
“He was made to feel as if he’d committed a crime when in fact he did nothing wrong,” Zaki said. He described another case of an Imam from New Jersey who was denied access to painkillers in his belongings for several hours, and who he said missed a connecting flight during his travel.
The lawsuit looks to have current policies and practices related to putting individuals on federal watchlists declared unconstitutional.
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.
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.
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Race And Justice Unit
Louis C. Hochman
After about two decades in (mostly) New Jersey-focused commercial print, digital and digital-but-radio-adjacent news, Lou stumbled into member-supported news in early 2021, as the editor and CEO of Montclair Local. There, he (hopes he) expanded enterprise, brought more sophistication to digital storytelling and moved the nonprofit newsroom closer to long-term financial sustainability. He helped lead the Local to its fourth consecutive General Excellence award from the New Jersey Press Association — the NJPA's highest honor with judges noting the paper's work to strip away layers of government opacity, to hold power to account, to make news accessible for more members of the community, to share the stories and concerns of more facets of the community and to tell compelling stories across multiple media. He's excited to continue the same ethic — news as a public service — at NYPR as the New Jersey and suburbs editor, drawing on the extraordinary talents of reporters including Karen Yi and Nancy Solomon. Lou lives in Philly (that commute!) with his partner and their two cats, about whom and about which he speaks incessantly.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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