Immigration Outpost » Ethnic Profiling

February 28, 2006

Ethnic Profiling

Filed under: Background Briefs — Christina Wu @ 6:17 pm

Ethnic profiling is a dark part of American history that we as citizens, would like to forget. But since 9/11, we are witnessing a resurgence of racial profiling against the Arab and Muslim communities.

Read the article by Christina Wu.
Racial profiling never makes sense, especially in the United States, a nation of immigrants. Yet it is ingrained in our history. Racial profiling dates back to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, when the United States tried to keep out Chinese immigrants. Japanese Americans were interned during World War II, their property confiscated and sold off. People of all ethnicities, ages and professions were blacklisted during the Red Scare for their suspected affiliation with the Communist Party. And since 9/11, Arabs and Muslims have become the targets of racial profiling – a form of institutionalized racism. All these examples illustrate the national government’s history of creating broad, sweeping legislation that specifically targets immigrants based on their racial, ethnic or political associations during times of threats – real or perceived – and hysteria.Prior to 9/11, racial profiling was primarily limited to domestic crimes, targeting African-Americans, Latinos or other minorities. According to the article “Flying While Arab,” state and local police departments, led by the Drug Enforcement Administration, used racial profiling as a tool in the “war on drugs.” Since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the focus of racial profiling has shifted significantly. The same tactics that were used against African Americans and Latinos were simply shifted toward Arab and Muslim men. In fact, after 9/11, Middle Easterners were rounded up and detained for questioning. Some were even deported for minor violations that were once ignored. Since 9/11, it has also become increasingly common for the government to target the Arab and Muslim communities when performing searches at airports.

Ra’id Faraj from the Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said approximately 85,000 Arabs and Muslims from 25 Middle Eastern countries were targeted as potential terror suspects after 9/11; of these 15,000 were deportable. Most of the targeted suspects were males from the ages of 14 to 50. Many who were questioned as suspects were forced to register their names, addresses and occupations. Individuals and organizations unaffiliated with the U.S. government also targeted Arab and Muslim communities. Faraj noted that before 9/11, there were 28 reported cases of hate crimes in the Muslim community. That number rose to 400 after 9/11. According to the CAIR annual report, there was a 49 percent increase from 2003 to 2004 in civil rights cases, and the greatest increase occurred in Los Angeles.

Hamid Khan, director of the South Asian Network, a grassroots organization that helps educate those of South Asian origins about their rights, indicated that racial profiling occurs within the Indian community as well. He says Indians face an even higher level of scrutiny. According to Khan, racial profiling is just a continuum of America’s racist past. How you look defines your status in the community. Khan has dealt with cases where the FBI has shown up unannounced at people’s homes to question them. He believes this is a form of state violence because law enforcement is using different techniques to harass the immigrant community. Khan also spoke of the verbal and physical abuse many Middle Eastern immigrants said they endured once they were detained.

One of the recent highly publicized, racial profiling cases involved the Mirmehdi brothers. These four brothers were detained for simply attending a protest, which was sponsored by a designated terrorist organization, against the Iranian government. During their three and a half years in a federal detention center, the brothers say they were often abused by guards and were denied proper medical treatment. Finally, they were asked to spy on their own Iranian community as a condition for release.

Another well noted case involved Kurdish restaurant owner, Ibrahim Parlak. Parlak was charged and detained for misrepresenting facts on his political asylum application in the United States and for his alleged membership in the PKK, a designated terrorist organization. Parlak was a business owner and father during his 13 years in the United States and had never committed a crime in the United States. Parlak simply misunderstood a section in his asylum application, which asked if he had been in jail before. Parlak, who took the question to mean if he had spent time in a U.S. prison, answered “no,” even though he had spent time in a Turkish prison. As a result of this misunderstanding and alleged misrepresentation, Parlak has been ordered deported.

All of these incidences occurred within the context of the fact that all the 9/11 terrorists had Arab names. Given this background, the United States has focused on Middle Easterners as a group and pinpointed people based on their appearances. This is somewhat understandable because as human beings, we tend to judge people based on broad categories, such as race and gender. In times of threat, it is even easier to make judgments based on broad stereotypes and to avoid those we fear. For example, after 9/11, many passengers did not want to fly with someone who appeared to be of Middle Eastern descent. At the airports, restaurant customers would get up and move away from Middle Eastern patrons. In a recent New York Times article, the FBI questioned and took away three men on Sept. 30, 2001 from their New York apartment because of an anonymous tip that they looked suspicious. The three men were Egyptian and Moroccan, but were not terrorists. While it is easy to suspect people who look different from us, looks indicate nothing about a person’s behavior.

Racial profiling is never acceptable. Race should only come into play when it is used to describe and capture a known suspect on the loose. If American history teaches us anything, it says that race is helpful in providing a description of a suspect during an investigation, but using race as the sole predictor often limits actual efforts to collect intelligence information. Even worse, it compromises civil liberties.

For example, take the “war on drugs and crime” that occurred during the late 1980s. The Maryland state police department used racial profiling to crack down on guns and drugs, which went against the official policy of law enforcement. They attacked Latinos and African-Americans disproportionately based on the advice of racial profiling proponents. Police often used race as the sole factor in their search for narcotics and weapons. In the 1990s, police used profiles to stop drivers on the highway, 17 percent of the drivers on a Maryland Interstate were African-Americans, but 70 percent of those stopped were African-Americans. The results? The number of arrests remained stagnant and did not yield a higher return rate on criminals, considering law enforcement’s focused efforts. In targeting African-Americans and Latinos, law enforcement ignored potential white suspects, while dragging many innocent citizens into their broad sweeping crackdown.

Again, this proves that while it may be reasonable to use race to describe a known suspect, ethnic profiling often fails when used to target an entire immigrant community. Since only a small number of African-Americans and Latinos actually participated in criminal acts and the drug trade, the police wasted their resources by spreading their enforcement efforts far too widely and indiscriminately. As a result, the police alienated the African-American and Latino communities, who were reluctant to come forward with important and relevant information, which was crucial in the fight against crime. Police would have been more effective if they had the cooperation of the very citizens they alienated. This same lesson should be applied to the Middle Eastern communities today.

In April 2002, a Justice Department study found that police stopped and searched Latino drivers 11.4 percent of the time, African-Americans 10.2 percent and whites 3.5 percent. Latino and African-American drivers were also subject to more force and issued more tickets than white drivers. Police have even taken racial profiling to a new extreme. In Suffolk County in New York, county executive Steve Levy wanted to extend the federal immigration agents’ powers to county police officers. Levy was hoping to train local officers and give them broader power to question people about their immigration status and even detain undocumented immigrants. This would have given officers power to stop an immigrant for a traffic ticket, but to also check their immigration status. Latinos would have be the main target for Levy’s plan.

After the London transit attacks, there was also renewed racial profiling in New York City’s subway system. New York Assemblyman Dov Hikind, a Democrat, wanted to introduce legislation that would allow police to focus in on Middle Easterners when conducting searches on the subway. Hikind argued that if most of the terrorists looked like Middle Eastern men, why not target this group? In one Los Angeles Times article, a Pakistani engineer named Ahmed Mohammed was searched while visiting New York City. He felt this was an unacceptable intrusion into his personal freedom and that he was targeted based on his appearance.

As the above examples show, if we use race and ethnicity as a basis for potential terrorist suspects we will yield the exact same historical results. Racial profiling in post 9/11 will target many innocent people, while ignoring other important indicators that law enforcement should focus their efforts on, such as behavior and intelligence information. Ethnic profiling will also cause the Arab, Muslim and Middle Eastern communities to become resentful, alienated and angered at law enforcement.

Focusing on those who look suspicious will draw police resources away from those who act suspicious. Law enforcement must take a look at the most effective way to spend its limited resources and energy. Rather than alienating them, police should make use of these immigrant communities to help gather and analyze information. If the nation needs to fight against foreign terrorist groups, the most resourceful groups to gather intelligence from are the Arab, Muslim and Middle Eastern communities.

Americans must also keep in mind that prior to 9/11, the two most deadly terrorist attacks were carried out by average, white American men – Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols. Based on these facts it is clear that we have no idea what the next terrorists will look like.

An important point to remember is that the 9/11 terrorist attacks were carefully planned. The hijackers waited patiently to launch the attack on the World Trade Center and managed to capitalize on our security weaknesses. If the hijackers were as clever as they proved to be, the next terrorists will surely come from a different region in the world. They will not be dark-skinned Arabic men. They will look like anyone. And then this will send us back to the issue of racial profiling, which is essentially a wasted effort and inadequate predictor of future terrorist attacks.

The results of 9/11 should force the United States to reflect upon who we are as a nation. Based on our historic pitfalls, it is clear that racial profiling can only serve as a detriment to us and an advantage to our enemies.

Sources

1. CAIR Annual Report

< xhref="http://www.cair-net.org/asp/execsum2005.asp" mce_href="http://www.cair-net.org/asp/execsum2005.asp" >http://www.cair-net.org/asp/execsum2005.asp

2. Flying While Arab: Lessons From the Racial Profiling Controversy

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0HSP/is_1_6/ai_106647777/pg_2

3. Professor Kotler Lecture – Monday, January 30, 2006

4. Roozbeh Farahanipour – Monday, January 30, 20065. Ibrahim Parlak – Monday, January 23, 2006

6. Ra’id Faraj, CAIR

7. Mohsen Mirmehdi

8. Hamid Khan - South Asian Network

9. Enemy Aliens: Double Standards and Constitutional Freedoms in the War on Terrorism — David Cole

Chapter 3: Ethnic Profiling

10. “Profiling Fears Surface in Subway; Some call the New York searches an intrusion on personal freedom. Others want police to be able to openly focus on Muslim commuters”

Los Angeles Times
August 8, 2005

11. “Trespass Arrests of Foreigners Face Challenge; In New Hampshire, police frustrated with federal inaction caught illegal immigrants.”

Los Angeles Times

August 6, 2005

12. “Calls for racial, ethnic profiling renewed after transit attacks”

San Francisco Chronicle

August 10, 2005

13. “For Illegal Immigrants, The Deportation Threat Declined After 9/11. Now Comes Steve Levy With a Different Idea”