Press Room

Must Read News

Things Have Changed

By Jean AbiNader
MOVE magazine
Posted on Monday September 30, 2002

(publication of the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators)

Fall 2002, vol. 7 no. 3

After September 11, balancing national security with constitutional guarantees is the challenge facing law enforcement authorities and those safeguarding civil liberties. Recent legislation and executive orders that apply to the population in general primarily affect immigrants from Arab and Muslim countries.

Dragnets based on racial profiling have not resulted in more effective law enforcement or prevention. Of the more than 1200 people detained in the United States after September 11, none have been found to be associated with terrorism. The charges against the 86 people convicted were often so minor that they might well never have been filed if the individuals hadn’t been caught up in the antiterrorism dragnet.

With heightened public concern, racial profiling becomes an easy means to “do something” to promote homeland security. Cases of “Middle Eastern looking people” refused access on flights have been well documented and discrimination cases are pending at the state and federal levels. There has been a clear spike in stopping cars based on the ethnicity of the drivers. Yet we know from multiple studies that this is not an effective use of profiling.

Rather than building on what has been learned since September 11, current efforts involve detaining hundreds of individuals and compiling dossiers on thousands of individuals and groups – targeting the Arab-American, Muslim-American and immigrant communities.

This profiling will fail because these communities are not hiding terrorists or concealing information. Even the Attorney General has praised the cooperation they have received in investigations. Furthermore, recent arrests of non-Arab/Muslim suspects again undermine the validity of racial profiling.

Rather than arouse the American public to be on the lookout for “suspicious actions,” law enforcement should be strengthening community-policing efforts that build on a partnership with those communities that have the most to gain from a successful counterterrorism effort, but not at the cost of their civil liberties.