Lawsuit: Dearborn has 2nd most residents on 'discriminatory' federal terrorism watchlist

A Muslim civil rights group has filed a lawsuit against 29 federal officials after discovering that more than 98% of names on a federal terrorism watchlist were Muslim, making the watchlist a "de facto Muslim registration," a staff attorney for the group said.

The Council on American–Islamic Relations filed the lawsuit Monday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts. Two of the 12 plaintiffs — all of whom were placed on the list without notice or a chance to contest the placement, said CAIR Staff Attorney Hannah Mullen — live in Michigan.

"(Our clients) have never been indicted, charged or convicted of any terrorism related crime and yet, without any notice or explanation, federal government extrajudicially sentenced our clients to lifetime second-class citizenship," Mullen said during a press conference. "That placement designates them as worthy of permanent suspicion and imposes sweeping consequences that alter nearly every aspect of our clients lives."

Dearborn has the second-highest concentration of watchlisted individuals in the country, surpassed only by New York City, according to the lawsuit.

Eleven of the plaintiffs are U.S. citizens living in eight states and two countries, and one is an asylee living in New Mexico. Michigan is the only state with more than one plaintiff: Nidal El-Takach and Moneeb Elhady. One of the plaintiffs is Mohamed Khairullah, the mayor of Prospect Park, New Jersey, who was banned from attending an Eid al-Fitr celebration at the White House because of his status on the list.

Anthony Guglielmi, U.S. Secret Service Chief of Communications, said in a statement that the Secret Service does not comment on pending or proposed litigation. "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."

CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awadcalled on the federal government to dismantle the watchlist.

"We applaud our brave clients and attorneys for taking on the federal government’s discriminatory and unconstitutional watchlist," Awad said in a statement. "This system has caused great harm to the lives of thousands of innocent people."

The 29 defendants include Attorney General Merrick Garland, FBI Director Christopher Wray, U.S. Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, CIA Director William Burns, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

The Department of Justice, Department of Homeland Security, CIA and Buttigieg did not respond for comment. Blinken, Austin and the FBI declined to comment.

CAIR studied more than 1.5 million names on a 2019 version of the list that was posted online and found that more than 98% of the entries were Muslim names, according to a report released by the group.

None of the plaintiffs have ever been arrested, charged or convicted of any type of terrorism-related offense, according to the lawsuit. The 12 plaintiffs were only added to the list based on a hunch or based on their race, ethnicity, national origin, religious affiliation, Muslim-sounding names, guilty by association or First Amendment-protected activities, the lawsuit alleges.

El-Takach, who is an engineer, has been subjected to enhanced screening, unreasonable delays, interrogations and religious questioning while flying, according to the lawsuit

He had issues while flying at least five times between July 2017 and December 2019 and was questioned for hours and had his bags searched by hand, according to the lawsuit. In July 2018, Transportation Security Administration officers searched his aircraft for explosives after going through all of his bags by hand and subjecting him to an invasive pat down. He was subjected to hours-long interrogations about his religious beliefs and practices, as well as any connections he had to Hezbollah, a Lebanese political party and militant group, according to the lawsuit.

When he traveled in March 2022, he saw his, his wife and his 13-year-old son's boarding passes were stamped with "SSSS," which indicated they were designated as known or suspected terrorists, according to the lawsuit.

As he traveled to the Dominican Republic in December, he was subjected to an hour-long pat-down and thorough luggage search, according to the lawsuit. TSA officers again patted him down and searched his luggage at the gate, then again when he entered the jet bridge to board the plane. He and his wife were interrogated when they returned to Detroit and were escorted off the plane by customs agents.

He also struggled crossing the bridge to Canada, and when he returned to the U.S., customs officers were waiting for his car and ordered him out at gunpoint before handcuffing him and taking him to another room for questioning, according to the lawsuit.

He was diagnosed with PTSD in 2019 due to his placement on the watch list. He was so afraid of traveling he did not attend his mother's funeral in Lebanon in 2021, according to the lawsuit. He stopped going to services at his mosque in hopes that if he didn't openly practice his religion, the government would stop considering him a terrorist and would remove him from the watchlist.

Elhady, who lives in Detroit, has been on the federal watchlist since 2009, according to the lawsuit. He has been stopped at airports and interrogated, had his cell phone searched and had his luggage searched by hand when he landed in the U.S., according to the lawsuit. His boarding passes have been stamped with SSSS, indicating he was designated as a known or suspected terrorist.

He was stopped for questioning eight times between 2009 and 2021 when he flew, according to the lawsuit. In 2021, when Elhady was flying from Chicago to Turkey, two officers from an unknown agency began questioning Elhady at the gate about his family and the reason for his travel, according to the lawsuit.

When he lived in Detroit and used the Detroit Windsor Tunnel to travel to Canada almost biweekly between 2010 to 2015, Customs and Border Protection officers would "swarm his car with their guns drawn and shout instructions at him to exit the car," according to the lawsuit. He would be detained in another location while officers searched his car and his person, taking one to two hours.

Elhady's brother, Anas Elhady, was put on the watchlist because of his association with his brother, according to the lawsuit. Anas is not a plaintiff in the lawsuit, but his name was cited in a CAIR report about the watchlist and lawsuit.

Anas was a college student driving home to Michigan after visiting Canada when he was detained and interrogated for hours and was left in a cold cement cell wearing only his shirt, pants and thin socks, according to the report. Customs and Border Protection officers allegedly ignored his requests for more clothing or a blanket until he lost consciousness from the cold and was taken to a hospital.

The report condemns the FBI for detaining, surveilling, harassing and destroying the lives of innocent Muslims, which CAIR says has not led to a reduction in terrorism, just to the abuse of Muslims.

"The federal government’s multi-decade effort to recruit a vast network of informants inside the Muslim community, with all the lawlessness and acts of intimidation such an effort entails, has nothing to show for it," according to the report. "The federal government’s habit of abusing Muslims is so rooted that it repeatedly overwhelms reason itself."

Although Muslims make up most of the list, federal law enforcement officials have repeatedly said the biggest threat to the country comes from White supremacists, according to the report.

"Defendants dismiss mass violence perpetrated by white Christians as 'lone wolf' events unconnected to 'organized' terrorism, while overreacting to comparable or less serious (sic) perpetrated by Muslims," according to the lawsuit. "Even though they facially satisfy the same known associate watchlist criteria, close families and friends of convicted white-nationalist domestic terrorists are not routinely added to the federal terrorist watchlist, while distant families and friends of innocent Muslims often discover that their mere association with other watchlisted individuals has caused them to be labeled potential terrorists."

The FBI list stemmed from national security changes made after 9/11, when the government began more comprehensively surveilling Americans, especially Muslim Americans. They turned this surveillance into a list of names of people who they thought were a threat, according to the report. Other agencies and countries could review the list and ask to add names to it.

The people on the list are branded as "known or suspected terrorists," and the list is "used by government agencies to harass and humiliate people when they travel, to outright forbid people from flying, to deny individuals licenses and permits, to refuse to hire people or fire people already employed, to delay or deny visas and applications for US citizenship or a US passport and subject the innocent people on the list to dangerous and invasive law enforcement actions," according to the report.

kberg@detroitnews.com