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Rights Groups: U.S. Government Targeting Muslims via U.S. Immigration System

May 26, 2011 Comments off

Rights Groups: U.S. Government Targeting Muslims via U.S. Immigration System (PDF)
Source: Center for Human Rights and Global Justice (NYU School of Law) and the Asian American Legal and Education Defense Fund

The U.S. government’s aggressive use of the immigration system in its counterterrorism efforts discriminates against Muslims and violates international human rights law, said the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice (CHRGJ) at NYU School of Law and the Asian American Legal and Education Defense Fund (AALDEF) as they released a Briefing Paper on the issue today. The Briefing Paper, Under the Radar: Muslims Deported, Detained, and Denied on Unsubstantiated Terrorism Allegations, exposes the many ways in which U.S. officials take advantage of the lax standards and lack of transparency that mark the immigration system as particularly ripe for abuse.

The Briefing Paper includes a number of case studies that suggest extremely problematic patterns of the U.S. government’s targeting of Muslims through the immigration system. The Briefing Paper details how the U.S. government is:

  • Making unsubstantiated terrorism-related allegations against Muslim immigrants without bringing official charges in cases involving ordinary immigration violations.
  • Subjecting Muslim immigrants to detention in cases involving minor violations that, ordinarily, do not entail detention.
  • Imposing flimsy immigration charges—such as false statement charges for failure to disclose tenuous ties to Muslim charitable organizations—in a manner that targets Muslim immigrants for religious and political activities and affiliations.
  • Applying overbroad statutory language of the terrorism bar provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) to remove, bar, and detain Muslims.
  • Relying on vulnerable immigration status to coerce Muslim immigrants to become informants for federal law enforcement officials.

+ Full Document (PDF)

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