A federal terrorist watchlist, mostly consisting of Muslim Americans, is Islamophobic and being used for “harassment and humiliation” and should be withdrawn, civil rights advocates argue.
Formally known as the Terrorist Screening Dataset, or “TSDS,” the watchlist is made up of more than 1.5 million people, most of whom are Muslim, according to attorneys from Muslim rights organization the Council on American Islamic Relations (Cair). Although the FBI says no one can be added to the watchlist due to their race, ethnicity or religion, Cair found about 98% of people on the list are Muslim.
This is despite repeated warnings in the last decade that domestic terrorism from the far right poses a bigger threat to US national security than Islamist extremism.
The watchlist has existed for more than 20 years, since the al-Qaida terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001 – after which many Muslims in America, or people thought to be Muslim, were routinely surveilled and profiled by various law enforcement agencies.
Cair has filed several lawsuits at different levels involving the watchlist since its creation. Now, Cair has filed a lawsuit against the federal government, the organization announced earlier this week.
Dawud Walid, Cair’s executive director for the Michigan chapter, said in a statement: “Across the nation, American Muslims targeted by the federal government’s unconstitutional, discriminatory watchlist [are] standing up and demanding justice from the government for 20 years of unjust targeting.
“The time has come for the Biden administration to end the use of the watchlist.”
The watchlist is used by many government agencies, including the FBI, the US state department, Secret Service, and other state and local agencies. According to the FBI, the watchlist is used to keep track of “people reasonably suspected to be involved in terrorism (or related activities)”, in order to keep the American people safe.
One man who found himself on the list is Mohamed Khairullah. Khairullah, the longtime mayor of Prospect Park, New Jersey, knew he was once on a federal watchlist but thought he was removed from it in 2021. But earlier this year, he found out he was still on the list when he was denied entry to a White House Eid event for which he had an invitation.
The news left him “baffled, shocked and disappointed”, he told the Associated Press at the time.
The Secret Service declined to provide AP with comment on the lawsuit, but an emailed statement to AP said: “As we stated in the past, we were not able to grant entry to the Mayor at the White House and we regret any inconvenience that may have caused.”
Khairullah said traveling became difficult in 2019, after he returned to the US from his native Syria on a visit to witness atrocities committed by Bashar al-Assad’s regime in the civil war there.
Khairullah’s designation has made flying arduous, both domestically and internationally.
The lawsuit details several instances of Khairullah and his family members being refused traditional airport security checks in favor of lengthy, invasive screenings where they were questioned for several hours and thoroughly searched and patted down before being allowed to board their flight.
It is difficult, if not impossible, to be removed from the watchlist or related databases in most cases, Cair attorneys argue.
“The mere fact that they had been placed on the watchlist in the past is retained by the government in several different databases … and can continue to harm them,” the Cair attorney Hannah Mullen said.
