No cause existed for Asad Dandia to think that he was being watched by state surveillance when he received a message from a young man by the name Shamiur Rahman in March 2012.
Rahman simply seemed motivated to pursue a deeper understanding of Islam and volunteer for charitable causes. Dandia was pleased to assist as a Muslim community organizer in New York City.
The young man quickly grew to be a fixture at social gatherings, meetings, and initiatives to assist people in their own homes. Rahman even spent a night at Rahman’s family home.
Rahman confessed on social media almost seven months later that he worked for the New York City Police Department (NYPD).
Dandia eventually filed a class-action lawsuit alleging that the city of New York targeted Muslim communities for surveillance as part of the country’s wider “war on terror.”
Four years later, the city settled and consented to unfavorable political and religious investigation.
However, Dandia notices a similar pattern in the recent detention of pro-Palestinian student protesters from other countries.
He is one of the activists and experts who have observed an increase in patterns and practices, from unwarranted surveillance to widespread executive power use.
According to Dandia, “what I endured was very similar to what students are experiencing today.”
He noted that a lawyer who defended him is currently working on the case of permanent resident and Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil, who faces deportation for his pro-Palestine activism.
Khalil has been charged with a crime and given no evidence to support the claim, which is consistent with President Donald Trump’s administration’s assertion that he supports terrorism.
According to Dandia, the common thread between their experiences is the idea that Muslim, Arab, and immigrant communities are inherently suspect. Even if what Trump is trying right now is unheard, it is based on established customs and laws.
From neighbors to adversaries
According to scholars and analysts, the combination of harsher immigration laws and rhetoric that emphasizes national security is one of the highlights.
The “war on terror” largely began after the attacks on September 11, 2001, which targeted New York City.
In the days that followed, former president George W. Bush began detaining numerous immigrants over alleged ties to terrorism, almost all of whom were Muslims, Arabs, and South Asians.
According to the American Immigration Council, a nonprofit based in Washington, the initial sweep saw 1,200 arrests. In the end, many were deported.
However, the immigration raids did not lead to a single terrorism-related conviction. The government was still promoting the deportations as being “linked to the September 11 investigation,” according to a 2004 report from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
According to Spencer Ackerman, a reporter who covered the war on terror and is the author of the book Reign of Terror, “Muslim communities were treated not as fellow New Yorkers who were living through the trauma of an attack on their city, but as potential accessories, witnesses, or perpetrators of a follow-on attack.”
According to the ACLU report, some detained individuals were confined to their hands and legs while others were confined to their cells. Some were detained for a long time after the government found them guilty of any wrongdoing.
Fear exists in “the homeland.”
According to Nikhil Singh, a history professor at New York University, the US began to look for enemies within its own communities during a time of increased fear.
According to Singh, “the notion that the US was fighting these non-state groups who didn’t have borders started to suggest that the fight against those enemies could take place anywhere, even in what the Bush administration began to refer to as “the homeland””.
He argued that those detentions after September 11 used a broad sense of executive power to support the alleged lack of due process for terror suspects.
The executive is obligated to maintain the safety of the country, and for this reason, needs to be able to suspend fundamental rights and ignore constitutional restraints, according to the statement.
The ACLU’s New York branch’s executive counsel Art Eisenberg argued that the practice of discriminating against immigrant communities goes back more than just the “war on terror” to address national security concerns.
The beginning of the 20th century is where policing, surveillance, and covert work are conducted, according to the author. The New York City police intelligence bureau was previously known as the Red Squad, but it had earlier been known as “the Italian squad,” according to Eisenberg.
Eventually, those operations changed to include, among others, the Black Panthers, civil rights activists, and new sources of potential dissention.
He continued, noting that the “war on terror” had accelerated that targeting. And those actions can have an impact on local communities.
More than one-third of Pakistanis in a Brooklyn neighborhood known as “Little Pakistan” were deported or made to leave the area in the years following the September 11 attacks.
Later, when it became clear that Dandia’s organization had been spied on, donations started to run out, and the mosque where meetings were held instructed to go outside instead.
No one had been formally charged. However, Dandia claims that the organization eventually shut down because of the chilling effects of the surveillance.
Why should you worry if you’re not doing anything wrong, people always ask? Dandia remarked. However, the government is in charge of making decisions about what is right and wrong.
Escalating attacks
Critics claim that ambiguous allegations of terrorism are still being used as a pretext to silence opposition under the Trump administration.
The Department of Homeland Security claimed in a statement that Khalil’s arrest demonstrated that his association with Hamas, a Palestinian armed group, was “aligned” with campus protests against Israel’s occupation of Gaza.
A 30-year-old Turkish graduate student named Rumeysa Ozturk was taken away on her way to dinner on Wednesday when masked federal agents grabbed her.
Without providing specifics, the Department of Homeland Security also accused Ozturk of engaging in “in support of Hamas” in that case.
Hamas has been classified as a foreign terrorist organization by the US since 1997. Citizens and residents of the US are not permitted to offer “material support” to these organizations.
However, Yale University professor of law and history Samuel Moyn claimed that the most recent arrests did not go against that standard.
The fact that they no longer make up accusations of material support for terrorism, Moyn told Al Jazeera is “funny.” They are relying on the assertion that these viewpoints conflict with US foreign policy.
Singh argued that Trump can use the legacy of the “war on terror” while pursuing his own goals, including a crackdown on immigration, with the seemingly arbitrary detentions.
According to Singh, “the immigration agenda intersects with the war on terror.” The former gives you a framework for broad presidential power while the latter involves gradually robbing away at traditional constitutional rights.
A broad view of presidential power, according to Ackerman, could lead to further human rights violations, even if they were unchecked.
He predicted that if institutionalized abuses were never to be held accountable, they would continue and grow. That is the lesson of a lot of noxious human history, not just the war on terror.
