COLORLINES - National Security

Feds Use Counter-Terrorism Laws to Fuel Deportation Machine

by Seth Freed Wessler on May 15 2012, 8:41AM

A decade after September 11, 2001, the government is wielding it’s broad counterterrorism powers against non-citizens who pose no threat and who face deportation as a result.

Topics: Immigration, National Security

Bloomberg’s Fear of Muslims Helped Drive the NYPD’s Shameless Spying

by Seth Freed Wessler on March 15 2012, 9:28AM

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s defense of the NYPD’s spying on Muslim communities shouldn’t come as a surprise. The Mayor’s had a tense relationship with Muslim and Arab communities for nearly a decade.

Topics: Criminal Justice, NYPD Spying, National Security

A Closer Look at Ray Kelly’s Multi-Billion Dollar Army of Spies

by Seth Freed Wessler on March 1 2012, 10:33AM

New York Police Department has argued that it’s spending billions to spy on Muslim Americans in order to foil terror plots. That assertion simply doesn’t hold up against the few facts they’ve been willing to share.

Topics: NYPD Spying, National Security

Muslim Students Reeling From Shocking News of NYPD’s Spying

by Seth Freed Wessler on February 24 2012, 9:01AM

On campuses all over the Northeast, horrified students are discovering they were targets of surveillance, simply because they joined a Muslim student group. But domestic religious profiling is now routine for both NPYD and the FBI.

Topics: Criminal Justice, NYPD Spying, National Security

Muslim Americans to NYPD: Enough Already, the Commish Must Go

by Seth Freed Wessler on January 27 2012, 9:48AM

This week’s revelation that NYPD leaders lied about their participation in an anti-Muslim film that was then shown to 1,500 trainees was just the latest in a growing string of evidence that the department is systematically profiling the city’s Muslim residents.

Topics: Criminal Justice, NYPD Spying, National Security

U.S. Somalis Can’t Support Families During Famine, Thanks To Anti-Terror Laws

by Channing Kennedy on December 16 2011, 9:42AM

A single small bank in Minneapolis has been the only way for many U.S. Somali immigrants to send money home. Now, community organizers like Hassan Warsame are fighting to keep its program running.

Topics: Global Affairs, National Security

FBI Uses Maps to Track Muslims and Fight Fake Crime

by Jamilah King on October 25 2011, 10:00AM

Back in 2004, FBI Special Agent Bill Shute set out to prove a point. A self-described “visual learner,” Shute thought that if you took arrest data from court records and local police and dumped it into Microsoft mapping software, you…

Topics: National Security

Muslim Woman Kicked Off Southwest Flight After ‘It’s a Go’ Mix-Up

by Jorge Rivas on October 10 2011, 2:57PM

Southwest Airlines flight officials did not let Irum Abbasi re-board because the crew was “uncomfortable” with her on the plane.

Topics: National Security

Former Marine Evelyn Thomas on the Fight to End Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell

by MIchael Lavers on September 27 2011, 9:34AM

Thomas was among a disproportionate number of black women who were kicked out of the military for being lesbian or bisexual. But she joined the fight that, last week, finally put an end to the practice.

Topics: Gender & Sexuality, National Security

Obama’s Unprecedented Use of State Secrets to Defend Religious Profiling

by Asraa Mustufa on September 8 2011, 9:31AM

President Obama vowed as a candidate to end George W. Bush’s use of the state secrets privilege to get lawsuits thrown out of court. Instead, the administration is wielding it in previously unused ways to defend widespread profiling of Muslim Americans.

Topics: 9/11 Anniv., National Security

A Family Affair: Who’s Left Behind After the FBI’s Fake Terror Stings

by Lyric Cabral on September 8 2011, 9:30AM

The FBI is paying thousands of untrained informants to spy on law-abiding Muslim Americans. The program has justified itself with a series of prosecutions that are as questionable as they are high-profile. Here are the families who were left behind.

Topics: 9/11 Anniv., National Security, Photo

The 9/11 Story I Choose to Tell: We All Belong to Each Other

by Rinku Sen on September 7 2011, 9:18AM

I can’t call myself a person who values inclusion and compassion and then pick and choose those whom I accept. I can disagree, but I can’t disown. Not if I want to help build a nation that constructs rather than destroys, that frees rather than enslaves.

Topics: 9/11 Anniv., Immigration, National Security, Rinku Sen

The $43 Million Islamophobia Machine

by Julianne Hing on September 1 2011, 10:05AM

A new report by the Center for American Progress untangles the wealthy web of conservative activists who’ve funneled millions of dollars over the last decade into an anti-Muslim crusade.

Topics: National Security, Politics

Muslim “Terrorists,” White “Lone Wolves,” and the Lessons of Oslo

by Michelle Chen on July 27 2011, 10:13AM

The key lesson from Oslo is that fear blinds, not just those who act on violent impulses but also those who bear witness to it. Americans should finally examine the ripple effects of political ideas with which they’ve grown dangerously comfortable.

Topics: Global Justice, Media, National Security

How Peter King Helps Push Dangerous Myths About ‘Muslim Radicals’

by Shani O. Hilton on July 26 2011, 9:50AM

While the New York Republican begins another round of Muslim scapegoating, the attacks in Oslo show how easy it is for the American media to jump to conclusions.

Topics: National Security

Black Activists Take on US Airways for Saggy Pants Incident

by Jorge Rivas on July 20 2011, 12:14PM

Advocates are calling on the airline to publicly apologize to 20-year-old Deshon Marman.

Topics: National Security

History Repeats Itself in Peter King’s Fear of Black ‘Prislam’

by Shani O. Hilton on June 16 2011, 10:41AM

In round two of the Republican legislator’s hearings on so-called radicalization among Muslim Americans, committee members fuss over a familiar threat: black men who convert in prison.

Topics: Criminal Justice, National Security

Report Documents Fake Terror Threats Concocted by FBI and NYPD

by Seth Freed Wessler on May 23 2011, 9:38AM

Study details three cases in which racially profiled young men were entrapped and convicted for roles in domestic terrorism plots that didn’t exist until cops created them.

Topics: National Security