Tag: racial profiling

Draft Homeland Security report called for long-term surveillance of some Muslim immigrants

The Department of Homeland Security in a draft report from late January recommended authorities surveil Sunni Muslim immigrants in the United States long-term if it were decided that they fit “at-risk” demographic profiles, Foreign Policy reported Monday.

Upon reviewing 25 terrorist attacks that took place on U.S. between October 2001 and December 2017, the draft report concluded it would be of “great value for the United States Government in dedicating resources to continuously evaluate persons of interest,” according to a copy obtained by FP.

When such immigrants reached American soil, the draft report also reportedly recommended the U.S. track them on a “long-term basis.”

The report could raise new questions about the Trump administration’s policies geared toward Muslim immigrants.

The draft identified a broad group of Sunni Muslim residing within the U.S. who were identified as possibly being “vulnerable to terrorist narratives,” because they matched a set of risk indicators, such as being young, male and having national origins in “the Middle East, South Asia or Africa.”

Kevin McAleenan, commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), requested the report on Jan. 22, FP reported, citing internal DHS correspondence.

A CBP spokesperson told the news outlet that the report they obtained was a “first draft,” which has already undergone some revisions and continues to be changed.

“[I]t is extremely important to highlight an important aspect — the document that was improperly provided to you is not a final CBP intelligence assessment, and therefore does not reflect CBP’s policy on this matter,” the spokesperson wrote.

“More specifically, the initial draft assessment in your possession not only is still undergoing internal CBP review, but, at the time of its improper disclosure, did not reflect a large number of substantive comments and revisions that have since been made to subsequent versions of the document as a result of CBP’s internal and external review process,” their email continued.

One department official who reviewed the report told FP it is the only risk-analysis product being shared around DHS and the report’s recommendations are derived from reviews of select cases — even if the report markets it as an all-encompassing review.

“First, this report would steer policymakers to implement unfair and discriminatory surveillance of particular ethnic groups,” the DHS official told the magazine.

“Second, the analysis, which is misleadingly packaged as a comprehensive analysis of post-9/11 terrorism, could lead policymakers to overlook significant national security threats,” the official added.

During his presidential campaign, Trump called for a ban on Muslim immigration to the U.S., a policy that critics say has taken the form of his travel-ban on several Muslim-majority countries.

That ban has been challenged in the judicial system, and the Supreme Court announced plans to review it last month.

[The Hill]

Trump Says Cops Need to Engage in Racial Profiling to Carry Out Counter-Terrorism Duties

Donald Trump on Monday said police officers across U.S. can’t effectively carry out their counter-terrorism duties unless they’re allowed to engage in racial profiling.

“Our local police, they know who a lot of these people are,” Trump said during an interview with “Fox and Friends” after he was asked for his idea on how cops should investigate and respond to terror plots, like the explosion that rocked Chelsea Saturday evening. “They are afraid to do anything about it because they don’t want to be accused of profiling. And they don’t want to be accused of all sorts of things.”

“We don’t want to do any profiling — if somebody looks like he has a massive bomb on his back, we won’t go up to that person and say I’m sorry because if he looks like he comes from that part of the world we’re not allowed to profile,” he added. “Give me a break.”

Trump, throughout his campaign, has pushed for the use of racial profiling — particularly in Muslim communities — as a policing tactic departments should use to combat terrorism, consistently disregarding the fact that such practices have not only been ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court but have been deemed ineffective by multiple studies.

Trump, on Monday, went on to claim that Israeli officials practice profiling and that the U.S. should look to its Middle Eastern ally, which is constantly under attack, as a model.

“You know in Israel, they profile,” Trump said. “They’ve done an unbelievable job — as good as you can do. But Israel has done an unbelievable job. And they’ll profile. They profile. They see somebody that’s suspicious. They will profile. They will take that person in … They will take that person in. They will check it out.”

At a campaign rally in Fort Myers, Fla., later Monday Trump didn’t mention his fondness for profiling, but delved into his proposal to institute “extreme vetting” measures for anyone immigrating to the U.S.

“Immigration security is national security,” Trump said. “And we can’t have vetting if we don’t look at ideology.”

All of his claims were quickly rejected by several civil rights groups and lawmakers, including Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

“Let us (be) vigilant but not afraid,” she said. “We’re going after the bad guys and we’re going to get them, but we’re not going to go after an entire religion.”

Gov. Cuomo later warned against the very same idea.

Donald Trump on Monday said police officers across U.S. can’t effectively carry out their counter-terrorism duties unless they’re allowed to engage in racial profiling.

“Our local police, they know who a lot of these people are,” Trump said during an interview with “Fox and Friends” after he was asked for his idea on how cops should investigate and respond to terror plots, like the explosion that rocked Chelsea Saturday evening. “They are afraid to do anything about it because they don’t want to be accused of profiling. And they don’t want to be accused of all sorts of things.”

“We don’t want to do any profiling — if somebody looks like he has a massive bomb on his back, we won’t go up to that person and say I’m sorry because if he looks like he comes from that part of the world we’re not allowed to profile,” he added. “Give me a break.”

Donald Trump brags about breaking Chelsea bombing news

Trump, throughout his campaign, has pushed for the use of racial profiling — particularly in Muslim communities — as a policing tactic departments should use to combat terrorism, consistently disregarding the fact that such practices have not only been ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court but have been deemed ineffective by multiple studies.

Trump, on Monday, went on to claim that Israeli officials practice profiling and that the U.S. should look to its Middle Eastern ally, which is constantly under attack, as a model.

“You know in Israel, they profile,” Trump said. “They’ve done an unbelievable job — as good as you can do. But Israel has done an unbelievable job. And they’ll profile. They profile. They see somebody that’s suspicious. They will profile. They will take that person in … They will take that person in. They will check it out.”

At a campaign rally in Fort Myers, Fla., later Monday Trump didn’t mention his fondness for profiling, but delved into his proposal to institute “extreme vetting” measures for anyone immigrating to the U.S.

Trump’s profile in ignorance

“Immigration security is national security,” Trump said. “And we can’t have vetting if we don’t look at ideology.”

All of his claims were quickly rejected by several civil rights groups and lawmakers, including Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

“Let us (be) vigilant but not afraid,” she said. “We’re going after the bad guys and we’re going to get them, but we’re not going to go after an entire religion.”

Gov. Cuomo later warned against the very same idea.

Jimmy Fallon defends questions to Donald Trump on ‘Tonight Show’

“We cannot lose who we are in effort to protect this country. We are a nation of immigrants,” he told MSNBC.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-Manhattan), whose district includes the Chelsea neighborhood that was rocked by the Saturday night blast, compared Trump’s ideas to what the “Gestapo” secret police were tasked with doing in Nazi Germany.

“The idea that police are handcuffed because of PC is ridiculous. You can’t arrest somebody unless you have some reason to suspect them, you can’t bug someone’s home, unless you get a warrant,” he told the Daily News. “The idea of going to a situation like police states in Europe or China … I don’t think you want to go there. We want to be safe and keep our liberties.”

“We don’t want to become a police state, we don’t want our police to be like the Gestapo, and we’re doing a great job of keeping people safe while protecting our liberties,” he added.

“Israel isn’t a police state either, they have rules about warrants and bugging people without reason,” Nadler said.

The New York Civil Liberties Union said Trump was “talking out of both sides of his mouth” and suggested he didn’t even know how to correctly refer to various police tactics.

“Suspicion based policing is the opposite of racial profiling, which is unconstitutional. Based on the latest reports, it was suspicion based policing, not randomly rounding up thousands of innocent people who happen to be Muslim, that resulted in the arrest of the suspect in the Chelsea bombing,” NYCLU Executive Director Donna Lieberman said.

In fact, since the NYPD disbanded a controversial unit that had been dedicated to surveilling the Muslim communities in April 2014, the department has thwarted at least 20 terrorist attacks.

The Demographics Unit, which was created in 2003 and later renamed the Zone Assessment Unit following uproar over disclosure of its activities, was closed in April of that year after it was revealed that the unit had overseen infiltrating Muslim communities, eavesdropping on conversations and had built detailed files on people’s eating, praying and shopping habits.

And on Sunday, shortly before being sworn in as the new NYPD commissioner, James O’Neill maintained that his department had nevertheless “over the last two years … foiled 20 plots in New York City.”

“That was done by a very professional highly trained law enforcement agencies,” he said.

Despite that fact, Rep. Pete King (R-L.I.), the chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, suggested Trump’s calls should be heeded and repeated his own suggestion that U.S. law enforcement must target the Muslim community with extra surveillance.

“There should be much more surveillance of mosques,” King told The News. “It’s political correctness that we don’t do it.”

King declined to address Trump comments directly but called the actions of the disbanded NYPD Demographics unit “the way it should be done.”

“What the NYPD did for years for years was the right thing to do,” he said.

“President Obama and Hillary Clinton, when they say we need more outreach to the Muslim community, that’s a politically correct statement. There’s no harassment at all towards the Muslim community that’s all just propaganda,” King added. “As a general policy we should be surveilling the Muslim community, absolutely. That’s where the threat is coming from, and it’s totally constitutional.”

“The same thing was done in the Italian and Irish communities,” he said, referring to targeted policing of the Westies Gang and Italian mafia in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.

(h/t New York Daily News)

Reality

Donald Trump is putting forth a proposal that would be a clear violation the 1st, 4th, and 14th amendments to the United States Constitution, as well as existing laws.

Racial profiling is the practice of targeting individuals for police or security detention based on their race or ethnicity in the belief that certain minority groups are more likely to engage in unlawful behavior.

Racial profiling is patently illegal, violating the U.S. Constitution’s core promises of equal protection under the law to all and freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. Just as importantly, racial profiling is ineffective. It alienates communities from law enforcement, hinders community policing efforts, and causes law enforcement to lose credibility and trust among the people they are sworn to protect and serve.

Science has also proven, across multiple peer-reviewed studies, that racial profiling is no more effective than a random screening.

However, should America decide to go trough with a President Trump’s suggestion, we should be racially profiling white Christian males because you are more than 7 times as likely to be killed by a right-wing extremist than by Muslim terrorists.

UNC Professor Charles Kurzman and Duke Professor David Schanzer explained last June in the New York Times, Islam-inspired terror attacks “accounted for 50 fatalities over the past 13 and a half years.” Meanwhile, “right-wing extremists averaged 337 attacks per year in the decade after 9/11, causing a total of 254 fatalities.”

Media

http://youtu.be/GVFebjbs4jA

Half-Indian Supporter Racially Profiled and Escorted Out of Trump Rally

A man who identified himself as half-Indian was escorted out of a Donald Trump rally on Thursday out of concern that he was a protester, but the man insisted he was a Trump supporter and said he feels that he was racially profiled.

Jake Anantha, an 18-year-old from Charlotte, was approached by a member of Trump’s security team and then ushered out by police. He was told that he resembled another man who had previously disrupted Trump rallies.

“I told him I’ve never been to another rally in my life,” Anantha said. “I’m a huge Trump supporter. I would never protest against Trump.”

Anantha is a registered Republican, according to state voter records, who registered to vote in March. Anantha, who said he’s a student at Central Piedmont Community College, was wearing a pro-Trump shirt with another pro-Trump shirt underneath.

“I do think it’s because I’m brown,” Anantha said, explaining why he believes he was kicked out. He added that he was “totally shocked.”

Trump’s campaign did not respond to requests for comment about the incident. Requests for comment from the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department have not been returned.

It’s not unusual for known demonstrators who have been previously spotted at Trump rallies to be asked to leave. A Muslim woman, Rose Hamid, was also kicked out of the rally Thursday night. She had been escorted from at least one Trump rally in the past for peacefully protesting and had previously been interviewed by major media outlets, including CNN.

Attempting to verify his political beliefs, Anantha said he was a conservative and expressed views in line with those of Trump, including opposition to Black Lives Matter protesters, who were demonstrating Thursday night outside the venue, and his belief that “radical Islam is a large threat to our country.”

“I couldn’t believe what was going on,” he said of the incident. “Obviously now I’m very angry. I’ve wasted a bunch of time coming here. I may have wasted six months of my life supporting Donald Trump, who doesn’t even let me come to his rallies.”

While Anantha said he was now questioning his support for Trump, he maintained he won’t be voting for the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton.

“I couldn’t do that,” he said.

(h/t CNN)

Media

Footage of Jake escorted by security:

 

Trump Says He’d Racially Profile and Deport US Citizens Over ‘Extreme Views’

In an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity, Republican nominee Donald Trump said that as President he would start racial profiling United States citizens, and should their views be “extreme” he would have them deported.

As an example, Trump used the father of Omar Mateen, the man who killed 49 people at Pulse nightclub in Orlando — in spite of his status as a U.S. citizen.

“I’d throw him out,” Trump said of Seddique Mateen, according to the Washington Post. The former reality TV star said that racial and religious profiling is something our country should start practicing in the interest of protecting itself.

“But look,” said Trump, “we have — whether it’s racial profiling or politically correct, we’d better get smart. We are letting tens of thousands of people into our country. We don’t know what the hell we’re doing.”

“And frankly, the Muslims have to help us, because they see what’s going on in their community,” he said. “And if they’re not going to help us, they’re to blame also.”

Regarding Seddique Mateen, Hannity asked, “What do we do when we find somebody that has extreme views? Do we throw them the hell out?”

“I’d throw him out,” Trump said as the audience cheered. “If you look at him, I’d throw him out. You know, I looked at him. And you look, he’s smiling.”

(h/t Raw Story)

Reality

Donald Trump is putting forth a proposal that would be a clear violation the 1st, 4th, and 14th amendments to the United States Constitution, as well as existing laws.

Mateen is a U.S. citizen, a status that is considered irrevocable except in extremely rare cases in which naturalized citizens become “denaturalized.” Typically, to be denaturalized one must get caught forging documents, falsifying important information or concealing of relevant facts, refusal to testify before Congress, membership in groups attempting to overthrow the government and dishonorable discharge from the military.

Racial profiling is the practice of targeting individuals for police or security detention based on their race or ethnicity in the belief that certain minority groups are more likely to engage in unlawful behavior.

Racial profiling is patently illegal, violating the U.S. Constitution’s core promises of equal protection under the law to all and freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. Just as importantly, racial profiling is ineffective. It alienates communities from law enforcement, hinders community policing efforts, and causes law enforcement to lose credibility and trust among the people they are sworn to protect and serve.

Media

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RHP11SJTrI

Trump: U.S. Must “Start Thinking About” Racial Profiling

Donald Trump said Sunday that in the wake of the mass shooting in Orlando, it’s time for the United States to start looking at racial profiling as a preventative tactic.

The presumptive GOP nominee said in a phone interview with CBS’ Face the Nation:

Well I think profiling is something that we’re going to have to start thinking about as a country. Other countries do it, you look at Israel and you look at others, they do it and they do it successfully. And I hate the concept of profiling but we have to start using common sense and we have to use our heads.

“It’s not the worst thing to do,” he added.

Trump’s comments come one week after 49 people were shot and killed in a gay nightclub in Orlando, the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history. Following the massacre, Trump renewed his calls for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the U.S., saying it would have prevented the attack despite the fact that shooter Omar Mateen was born in the U.S.

On Sunday, the GOP politician also said attacks like Orlando would stop if those in the Muslim community would “report” suspicious things.

“When you look at, when you look at people within the Muslim community and where people are living and they don’t report, and a good example of that would be San Bernardino,” he said. “I mean, they had bombs all over their apartment floor and people saw it and nobody reported them, and 14 people were killed, many injured.”

Mateen, Trump added, had definite “red flags” before the attack. “You look at his past, I mean? I’ve never seen a past quite like that,” he said of Mateen. “You look at his record in school, you look at a lot of other things. There were a lot of red flags, this was not a very good young man.”

Trump said he’s working with the National Rifle Association on the details of a policy that would ban people on the no-fly list from purchasing guns.

“We understand there are problems with that because some people are on the terror watch list that shouldn’t be on,” he said. “So I’m working with the NRA, we’re discussing it and again the NRA has the best interests of our country, it just has the absolute best interests of our country.”

Asked about GOP leaders’ criticism of him in recent days, especially over his renewed focus on the Muslim ban, Trump said those Republicans should stop “talking so much” and just “do their job.” The issue is compounded, he added, when the media focuses more on his detractors in the GOP than his supporters.

“I think that honestly they should go about their business and they should do a wonderful job and work on budgets and get the budgets down and get the military the kind of money they need and lots of other things, and they shouldn’t be talking so much,” he said. “They should go out and do their job, let me do my job.”

(h/t CBS News)

Reality

However according to Trump’s suggestion, we should be racially profiling white Christian males because you are more than 7 times as likely to be killed by a right-wing extremist than by Muslim terrorists.

UNC Professor Charles Kurzman and Duke Professor David Schanzer explained last June in the New York Times, Islam-inspired terror attacks “accounted for 50 fatalities over the past 13 and a half years.” Meanwhile, “right-wing extremists averaged 337 attacks per year in the decade after 9/11, causing a total of 254 fatalities.”

Media