Multiple Muslim Americans were harassed by border patrol officers and repeatedly questioned about their religion while returning from international travel, according to a lawsuit filed Thursday.
Three men — Abdirahman Aden Kariye, Hameem Shah and Mohamad Mouslli — filed the lawsuit with the American Civil Liberties Union against the Department of Homeland Security.
“Just as border officers may not single out Christian Americans to ask what denomination they are, which church they attend, and how regularly they pray, singling out Muslim Americans for similar questions is unconstitutional,” the lawsuit said.
Kariye said the persistent questioning every time he entered the country has caused him to fear leaving the U.S. at all. During a 2020 incident, a Customs and Border Patrol agent threatened to “make things harder” for Kariye if he didn’t cooperate, according to the suit.
The suit says the questioning and detainment violated the men’s First Amendment rights against religious discrimination.
“Religious questioning by border officers is unconstitutional, and it’s past time for the government to be held to account,” said Ashley Gorski of the ACLU in a press release. “This invasive questioning serves no legitimate law enforcement purpose.”
The men said they were quizzed about their religious practices, how often they prayed and whether they were Sunni or Shi’a.
The lawsuit also asks the federal government to expel all records from the detention of the three men. The ACLU said Muslims have been harassed by Homeland Security officers as “part of a broader 20-year practice.”
Kariye, an imam in Bloomington, Minnesota, said he’s had five different discriminatory incidents since 2017. Mouslli, from Gilbert, Arizona, has dealt with four similar incidents since 2018, the suit said. Shah, a resident of Plano, Texas, said he was detained at Los Angeles International Airport in 2019.
“What I experienced at the hands of CBP when coming back to my own country still haunts me,” Shah said. “I thought that being an American meant that I and others are free to practice any religion that we choose.”
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