© Rob Howard/Corbis
© Illustrations: Julien Lallemand
Adama Bah, 23, student
My mother came to the United States with me in 1990, the year I turned two. We originally came from Koubia in Guinea, west Africa. My dad was here already, living in Brooklyn. Then came my brother, who is now 19, my sister, who is 17, and two more brothers who are 13 and five. I'm 23. We lived in an apartment in Manhattan.
I went to public school until seventh grade. Then my dad wanted me to learn about my religion, so he sent me to an Islamic boarding school in Buffalo, New York. What's weird now that I look back is that my parents aren't really religious, we didn't really go to mosque. But my dad heard about the school from somebody who recommended it.
I was 13 when 9/11 happened. My teacher announced that a Muslim might have done it, and that there might be hatred against Muslims. I felt 9/11 when I came back to New York for Ramadan break. Altogether, there were six classmates who had to get on a plane to come back. At that time, we covered our faces. I couldn't believe the looks. Everybody was scared, pointing. We got extra screenings, our bags were checked, we got pulled to the side. I've never had racism directed toward me before.
My parents didn't know I wore the niqab until I came home. My mom opened the door, saw me, and told my father, "You have to tell her to take this off."
I came back to New York public school for ninth grade. I left the Islamic school because I didn't like it. I remember telling my dad, "I'm too controlled there." I wore my niqab for a few months. I didn't have any problems in high school, but after a while, I thought, "This is not a mosque." So in the middle of ninth grade, I took it off.
The morning of 24 March, 2005, my family and I were in the house sleeping. Someone knocked on the door, and these men barged in. Some had FBI jackets, and others were from the police department and the DHS [Department of Homeland Security]. My mom can't speak much English, and they were yelling at her, "We're going to deport you and your whole family!" I was thinking, "What are they talking about?" I knew my dad had an issue with his papers, but I didn't think that my mom did.
Then I saw my dad in handcuffs. It was the scariest thing you could ever see; I had never seen my father so powerless.
One of the women put me in handcuffs. I panicked so badly, I was stuttering, "What did I do? Where are we going?" I'm 16 years old, in handcuffs.
They took me and my dad and put us in an [Cadillac] Escalade. I didn't recognise the building where we were taken. They put me in my own cell. I was nervous, panicking, crying. I was trying to figure out what was going on.
I was taken out of my cell to be interrogated. Nobody told me who they were. It was just me and a man. He asked me all these questions about my citizenship status. Then after a while, he said, "You know you're not here legally, right?"
It was as if one of the biggest secrets in the world had just been revealed to me. The guy's attitude didn't change when he realised I didn't know what was going on. He was nasty.
Finally, they called my dad. They gave us a document about how we could see a consular officer. My dad knows how to read English, but he said to me in Pular, "Pretend you're translating to me in my language."
Then he said, "Whatever you do, do not say you can go back to your country. They will circumcise you there." In order to get married in Guinea, a female would have to be circumcised. My dad's brothers would make sure I got circumcised.
Then the guy told my dad, "You've got to leave." To me they said, "We have to fingerprint you." When we were done with the fingerprints, they took a picture of me. I was then sitting on a bench in the main entrance when this young lady walked in. Her name was Tashnuba. I had seen her at the mosque before, but I didn't know her. I started panicking, thinking, "What the hell is she doing here?"
Finally I was brought to another room. The questions these federal agents asked me were terrorism questions. My dad had signed papers consenting to let them talk to me because I was underage. We didn't know that we were supposed to have lawyers. The FBI never told us.
The male interrogator told me that the religious study group Tashnuba was part of had been started by a guy who was wanted by the FBI. I had no idea if that was true or not. I wasn't part of the group, but I knew it was for women learning about religion. There was nothing about jihad or anything like that. They told me they'd taken my computer and my diary. But there's nothing in there that's suspicious so I wasn't worried.
Then they asked me about Tashnuba. I told them, "I don't know her."
They said, "Tashnuba wrote you on this list. She signed you up to be a suicide bomber."
I said, "Why would she do that?"
Then they told me Tashnuba and I were going to leave. They handcuffed us both. The cuffs left marks. We got back in the Escalade. I'm very traumatised when I see Escalades now. When we arrived at our destination, they put us into our own cell. Tashnuba and I looked at each other. She said to me, "You put me on a list?" I said, "No! They said you put me on a list." We both realised they had been trying to set us up.
They didn't detain her parents, they just detained her. Later I found out why they'd taken my dad. After I'd been reported as a suicide bomber, the FBI started investigating my whole family. That's how they found out about my dad being here without papers.
The FBI drove us to Pennsylvania, across state lines, without my parents' permission. We got to the juvenile detention centre late at night. The female guard told me and Tashnuba we had to get strip-searched.
I was in tears. My own mother doesn't look at me naked. I said, "It must be against some law for you to do this to me."
The female guard said, "It's not. You no longer have rights."
She said, "Lift your breasts."
I lifted my breasts.
She said, "Open your legs."
I opened my legs.
She said, "Put your hands in there, to see there's nothing."
I said, "There's nothing there!"
She said, "Just do it."
I did it.
She gave me a blue uniform and told me to take a shower in five minutes, and then she left. I sat at the corner of the shower and held myself and cried. I was thinking, I cannot believe what I just went through. When I got to the cell, I could see Tashnuba in the corner, praying. There was one blanket, and it was freezing cold. We stayed up the whole night talking about everything. I don't know how we fell asleep, but I remember at one point we were both crying.
Nobody told me what was going on. I wasn't brought before a judge until probably my fourth week there, and it was via video conference. An article came out in the New York Times about why Tashnuba and I were there, that we were suspected of being suicide bombers. I never saw the article while in prison. After that came out we got extra strip-searches, about three times a day, and the searches got stricter. They would tell us to spread our butt cheeks, and they made racist comments. If I talked back, I would be put into solitary confinement.
Those first three weeks, my family didn't have any idea where I was. They had to do research to find out, and hire a lawyer. The lawyer, Natasha, came to see me. She said, "There's a rumour about you being a suicide bomber." I said, "Are you serious? If you knew me, you would laugh and say, 'Hell, no.'" She said, "They're not charging you with anything except overstaying your visa."
My mom came to visit me. It was the worst visit ever because she didn't want to say anything. When I asked about my dad, she just said, "He's fine." She knew he was being held in New Jersey.
After a while, my lawyer called. She said she had good news. "I have a way to get you out of jail. You're going to have to wear an ankle bracelet."
I said, "I'll wear anything."
The day that I was supposed to be released from the detention centre, I said goodbye to Tashnuba. I wanted to let her know it was going to be OK, but I couldn't hug her or it would've been solitary confinement for her. So I said, "May Allah be with you, and be patient." I haven't spoken to her since then. As soon as she was released, it was back to Bangladesh.
I stayed there six and a half weeks. By the time I came out, I was 17. I thought everything was going to go back to normal, but I knew deep down things would never be normal again.
I wore the ankle bracket for three years. You can still see my bruises from it. My heel always hurts. I also had to be under curfew, which was 10pm and then 11pm. I was only ever charged with overstaying my visa. I was never charged with anything related to terrorism.
My dad got deported around 2006. I didn't see him for a long time after I got released from juvie. He was in New Jersey. I wasn't allowed to go, because it was outside the distance I could travel with my ankle bracelet. They made an exception to let me travel to New Jersey just before he was deported. I was crying the whole time.
I had to drop school to work to support my family. I would work three or four jobs, whatever I could find. For days there would be no food in the house. Finally we met a social worker who told us we could get public assistance. Nobody tells you about this stuff. I didn't want my brother and my sister to work at all. I didn't want them to miss out on what I missed out on. I feel like it's too late for me now.
In 2007, Adama was granted asylum on the grounds that she would face forcible circumcision if deported to Guinea. In court, her mother gave testimony on her own harrowing experience of being circumcised. Adama had the ankle bracelet until she got asylum.
I always apologise to people when they ask me, "Where are you from?" because I have a long paragraph to answer that. I am half-Iraqi and half-Palestinian. My father is a Palestinian from Jenin, and my mother is an Iraqi from Hilla. I was born in Baghdad, but I left when I was 40 days old. After my birth, my parents moved us to Jordan for a few years. I grew up between Jordan, Iraq and Saudi Arabia.
I came to the United States in September 2005. Moving here was extremely easy. From the moment I applied for a fiance visa (my fiance Niki is Iranian-American), until the moment I became a United States citizen, I had the most incredible, positive experience with immigration.
A few days after I arrived in the Bay Area, I started finding my new political voice: as an Arab in the United States. I'd never thought of myself in that context before, but it was the only thing that people wanted to talk to me about. So I started getting more involved in politics. Once I got my green card I became the Iraq project director with Global Exchange, an international human rights organisation based in San Francisco. My work was to reach out to Iraqi parliamentarians and put them in touch with American congressmen.
In the fall of 2006, Niki and I decided to move to DC. Before the move, I had a trip with Global Exchange to Jordan and Syria, then I had a speaking event in New York city. My flight back to the Bay Area was on 12 August, 2006. In the morning I went to JFK. I checked in everything and I went through the security checkpoint. It did not beep, but the officers still took me to the secondary checkpoint. It was the first time I'd gotten a secondary check. They asked me to sit down, they tested my shoes for explosives, and they asked me for my driver's licence and boarding pass. They went away with my documents for a few minutes, and then they came back. I took my driver's licence and boarding pass back, bought my breakfast, and was eating some grapes and cheese when this TSA [Transportation Security Administration] officer approached me. He said, "Can I talk to you for a minute?"
I walked with him toward the boarding counter. Another two people were waiting for us there: a woman from JetBlue [Airways] and a guy in a suit. They didn't say anything, so I said, "Hi." The JetBlue woman was nice. She said, "Hi," but she looked worried.
The first man who took me, I came to learn his name was Inspector H. He said something to the effect of, "People are offended because of your T-shirt. People complained."
I looked down at my T-shirt to see which one I was wearing. It was black, and said in both Arabic and English, We Will Not Be Silent. An artist group in New York had made the shirt and given it to me as a gift. For me, the message meant, "We will not be silent about the murders that are happening in Palestine or Iraq." They had other T-shirts in Spanish. At the time I'd said, "Whoa, it's such a smart idea, because the Spanish one makes it seem like it's about immigration, and the Arabic one makes it seem like it's about wars."
Inspector H asked me, "What does it say?" I said, "It's the same thing that it says in English. We will not be silent."
He said, "Oh, but we can't be sure that's the translation."
I was so confused that I didn't know how to answer. Then he said, "We want you to take the T-shirt off, or put it on inside out."
I said, "It's my constitutional right to wear this T-shirt. If you have any regulations against Arabic T-shirts, show them to me and I will take it off or cover it."
I was very polite, but it was becoming a scene and people were looking at us. A fourth guy came - very hostile. He talked to me without looking at me. He said, "You've got the nicer guys here, so you should just do whatever they've told you."
I was like, Whoa, whoa, whoa - where is this going? The woman from JetBlue saw the escalation, and said, "Why don't we just reach a compromise? We will buy you a T-shirt and put it on top of this one."
I said, "That's not a compromise. I will cover this T-shirt with the other T-shirt that you will buy, just because you are not letting me board. But I will pursue the case with a constitutional rights organisation as soon as I arrive in California."
They had a conversation about the T-shirt. They said, "What type of T-shirt should we buy him? Should we buy him the I Heart New York T-shirt?"
The hostile one said, "No, we don't want to take him from one extreme to another."
I interrupted them. I said, "Why do you assume that I don't like New York? Because I have a T-shirt in Arabic?"
The JetBlue woman left and returned a few minutes later with a grey T-shirt that said New York. I said, "This is not over. I'm going to pursue this through a constitutional rights organisation."
And the hostile guy said, "Do whatever." They weren't apologetic. I felt so humiliated. I walked back to my grapes and cheese and sat there, feeling self-conscious.
After I'd sat there for five minutes, they called me again. Someone from the boarding counter took my boarding pass and tore it up. He said, "We need your seat." My seat was in the front of the plane. He issued me another in the back of the plane.
I asked him, "Why did you change my seat?" I'd booked in the front because I don't like sitting in the back near the bathroom.
He said, "We need the seat for a toddler. Bring your things and board the airplane now."
I was the first to board. All of the flight attendants were whispering and looking at me for 10 minutes. Of course it's not the same historic equivalent of putting African-Americans on the back of the bus, but I had just been reading about it. I sat down for the rest of the flight. I just looked at my TV. I was feeling watched. I later learned, during the lawsuit, that a flight attendant had been put behind me to watch my movements, and she was writing down the channels that I looked at. She had noted that I watched Fox News and some sports channel or whatever.
I landed and I got out. I was expecting to see an officer, but no one stopped me. I went to the baggage claim area and Niki was waiting for me there.
In August 2007, Niki and I filed a lawsuit with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). It was both a First Amendment freedom of expression and a Fourth Amendment due process under law lawsuit against JetBlue and the TSA. The case took for ever. At a court hearing, the JetBlue and TSA legal defence argued that it was OK to humiliate me because I'd grown up in Iraq and I was used to being humiliated. In his written ruling, the judge said, in a much more judgely and legal way than I'm saying, something to the effect of, "Are you serious? This is your argument?!"
The defence had crazy theories about me planning this thing all along. They said I planned it to take money from them, to make a political point. They interrogated me for weeks or months to prove that I went to the airport wearing that T-shirt "on purpose", as if it's a crime to wear a T-shirt. They harassed me, Niki, and my friends.
Toward the end of 2008, a year and a half after we filed the lawsuit, I got a call from my lawyers at ACLU. They said JetBlue and the TSA wanted to settle out of court, and that the judge wanted us to settle, too. They said, "They are giving you $240,000, and $240,000 will give a clear message that what happened to you was wrong."
I have to admit that I was very sceptical about the settlement because I was afraid that it would be read the wrong way. But my lawyers were right; it did actually have a huge impact. JetBlue and the TSA at first tried to make the settlement secret or put some other conditions on it. How ironic that would be: I go to an airport wearing a T-shirt saying I will not be silent, then they give me $240,000 and I become silent. I wasn't going to do that. So they ended up giving me the $240,000 settlement, which got a lot of media attention. Although JetBlue and the TSA ended up paying hundreds of thousands of dollars, they have not admitted wrongdoing to this day.
After the outcome, I felt more comfortable with staying here. I was naturalised in DC in the spring of 2009. It was an amazing ceremony. We were sworn in by a judge who is an immigrant himself. He gave an excellent speech about how the United States is not a place where it's all good or all bad, and that he grew up being discriminated against. There are many of us who will be discriminated against, and who will have hard lives. But the bright side is that this is still a country where many of us can fight back.
Yasir Aladdin Afif, 20, student and computer salesman
When my parents split up in 2003, my dad won custody of me and my two younger brothers, Adam and Sherief. After the divorce, he decided to move back to Egypt. I was 13 at the time. In 2008, we came back to the United States together - me, my dad, my brothers, and my dad's new wife, an Egyptian woman - for a week and a half. My dad wanted us to come back so that my brothers and I could visit our mom, since we hadn't seen her in so long.
At that time, I was 18 and studying linguistics at Ain Shams College in Egypt. But I realised I had better options back in California. So, during that week and a half in Santa Clara, I set up a job and I found an apartment for the fall.
Soon after my dad got back to Egypt, he had a heart attack and passed away. It felt horrible. I went back to Egypt and stayed for almost a month to get everything sorted out, to make sure my brothers were in the same school. The plan is to bring them to the US when the youngest, Adam, turns 18 next year.
I started my first year in college, studying business marketing. I love it. Now I'm a sophomore. At the same time, I work for a computer company doing commercial sales. I work full-time because I have to be financially stable enough to support my brothers in Egypt.
In the spring of 2010, I got a call at work from my roommate. He told me he'd had two FBI agents knocking on the door who wanted to speak to me. So I called them and said, "Hi, this is Yasir Afifi. How can I help you?" The agent said, "Hey, Yasir. Oh, it's nothing, we received an anonymous tip from someone who said that you may be a threat to national security."
I didn't think there was an anonymous tip. I was sure it was just something the FBI said to people. I think I fit some type of profile for them - I'm Arab-American, I'm Muslim, I fly to Egypt a lot to see my family, and I'd recently come back from Dubai for a computer expo.
I said, "I'd love to co-operate and answer any of your questions, once my lawyer tells me that's the right thing to do."
He wasn't too happy to hear that. Then he said, "OK, whatever, that's fine. I'll be waiting for your phone call."
I didn't really have a lawyer, so I called a prepaid legal service. The lawyer there told me, "You don't have to do anything unless they have a warrant or some evidence against you."
Once I understood that, I asked her to call the FBI agent and to push him away. I didn't really care how they'd react. I have no reason to speak with any FBI agent. Fortunately they never called me again after that. I thought it was going to be the last I'd hear from them.
About six months later, in October, I took my car to my mechanic for an oil change. When the car was fully elevated, I noticed this black device under the back of it. I asked the mechanic to pull it out, and he handed it to me. He was somewhat freaked out. There was a big, black rod attached to something that looked like a walkie-talkie. It looked like a tracking device. I had a feeling it was the FBI who'd put it there.
When I got home, some of my friends and I Googled the serial number of the tracking device. "Federal Property Tracking Device GPS, $1,500, $4,200, $3,200" came up. As we were Googling the information, my friend posted a blog about it on Reddit, the social network site. He posted this comment: "Me and my friend went to the mechanic today and we found this on his car. I am pretty confident it is a tracking device by the FBI but my friend's roommates think it is a bomb. Any thoughts?"
Within two or three hours we'd made the front page on Reddit and received maybe 3,500 comments. We even started getting calls from the ACLU [American Civil Liberties Union]. One person found out what exactly this device was. It was an Orion Guardian ST820, made by the company Cobham. Cobham sells the device exclusively to military and law enforcement personnel.
I think the FBI are as smart as they get, and if they didn't want me to find the tracking device, I probably would have never found it. Maybe they were just trying to scare me or somebody else, if not the whole community.
Two days after I found the device, I came home at around five o'clock and my roommate said to me, "There are two people standing next to your car." I walked back outside. There was a man and a woman standing at the back of my car, exactly where the device had been.
When I opened the car door, the man said, "Hey, did you know your tags are expired?"
I replied, "Yes, I know. Does that bother you?"
He just laughed it off and looked the other way, so I got into my car. As I was leaving the complex, I saw two brown, unmarked SUVs. When I got into the street they started flashing their lights, so I pulled over. Then I realised there were three cars: the man and woman from before were in a black Caprice. I was feeling pretty intimidated.
A police officer wearing an FBI vest came up to my window and said, "Did you know your tags are expired?" I said, "Yes. Is that why you pulled me over?"
After I showed him my licence, registration and insurance, he asked me to speak to the man and woman from the Caprice. The man showed me his FBI badge. His name was Vincent, and the woman was called Jennifer.
Vincent asked me, "Do you know why we are here?"
I said, "No, but I have an idea."
Then he asked, "Where is the device that you found under the car?"
I asked, "Are you the person who put it there?"
"Yes. We need that device back."
I replied, "Do you have a search warrant or anything proving that this is your device?"
Then Vincent got a little frustrated, and he said, "Yeah, I can get you a search warrant. I'll get it for you within an hour."
I asked him, "Why didn't you bring it with you now?"
And then Jennifer started coming into the conversation with a real soft tone, and she was very charming. She told me, "We're trying to help you."
I walked them back to my house, went in and picked up the device, and then I handed it to Vincent. He said, "We'd love to ask you a couple of questions."
I hadn't spoken to my lawyer, but at the same time, it didn't make any sense for me not to answer their questions. I knew I wasn't doing anything wrong, so I didn't want them to say, "Why are you avoiding our questions?"
What I expected was what happened; the questions were pretty simple. Vincent asked me, "Have you ever been to Yemen, for any type of training?" "Never been to Yemen," I replied. Then he asked me if I had ever been to Syria or Iran, and if I'd ever been in any type of training. I told him no.
I tried finding out why they were here by asking them some simple questions myself. The more I asked, the more I understood from Jennifer how much she knew about my personal life. She told me things like, "We know you're flying to Dubai in two weeks."
She also knew I was looking for a new job. The only way she could have known all this was either through my phone or email. So, I was 100% sure they didn't only have a tracking device under my car - they also had my phone and email tapped.
It ended with them telling me, "Sorry to bother you; you're boring. No need to call your lawyer."
I thought by "boring" they meant that I wasn't too significant to them. I'd have to say I was more confused than scared, and maybe a bit pissed, too, about them invading my privacy.
Fortunately I didn't hear from the FBI again, but each time I leave the United States, I have problems when I come back. I got stopped when I came back from Egypt about two weeks ago. When I stepped off the plane, there was an officer waiting for me. When he saw my passport, he said to another officer, "That's him!"
They searched my bags. I had to stay for almost four and a half hours before they finally gave me back my passport and told me, "You're good to go."
I think the FBI are probably still watching me. The total invasion of my privacy bothers me. Two people, or maybe more than two people, know my whereabouts every day. As an American citizen, you're not supposed to be subjected to that. I hope people my age, or Muslim-American youth, can use me as an example to understand what their rights are and how to assert them, to be confident in what they are doing as long as it's not anything wrong, and to never be intimidated by any federal agency.
- These excerpts are extracted from Patriot Acts: Narratives Of Post-9/11 Injustice, edited by Alia Malek and published by McSweeney's Voice Of Witness.
Indians were hunted down like cattle.
Black where run down by dogs and hung from the trees.
I didn't bother to take the time to listen to anything that happened to these muslims.
Welcome to America where everyone is a victim.