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New York Times – Oct. 2, 2006
Wait ends for father and son exiled by FBI terror inquiry
By Randal C. Archibold
Two American citizens of Pakistani descent returned to the United States on Sunday, five months after they were denied permission to fly home to California unless they submitted to an interrogation by F.B.I. terrorism investigators.
The men, Muhammad Ismail, 45, and his son, Jaber, 19, of the Northern California farming town of Lodi, returned from Pakistan on a flight that landed at Kennedy Airport in New York around 3:30 p.m. Eastern time. They were scheduled to arrive in California on Sunday night or early Monday on a connecting flight, their lawyer said Sunday.
The Ismails are an uncle and cousin of Hamid Hayat, a Lodi man who was convicted in April in federal court of providing material support to terrorists. Mr. Hayat told investigators he had attended a terrorism training camp during a long stay in Pakistan and intended to carry out unspecified attacks in the United States. Mr. Hayat's father, Umer, was convicted on a lesser charge of lying to investigators about the amount of cash he carried to Pakistan on a 2003 trip, but a jury deadlocked on terrorism charges.
The Ismails were not charged in the case. They attributed their predicament to being related to the Hayats, the only people to have been charged in what federal prosecutors have described as an investigation into possible terrorism links in Lodi.
Julia Harumi Mass of the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, who is representing the Ismails, said the pair had no terrorism connections. In a complaint in August to the Department of Homeland Security, she urged the authorities to explain any accusations against them and why they had been denied permission to fly home.
Legal experts said the matter raised questions about balancing terrorism investigations against American citizens' right to travel freely without having been charged with a crime or detained as a suspect.
On Sept. 6, nearly a month after Ms. Mass's complaint, the Homeland Security Department notified her in a letter and telephone call that unspecified records had been modified "to address any delay or denial boarding" the pair had encountered. Ms. Mass said she took that to mean they were cleared to fly, and the Ismails arranged financing and bought tickets home.
"I never imagined that the country I was born in would stop me from coming home for five months and separate me from my family, especially when I was not charged with a crime," Jaber Ismail said in a statement released through the A.C.L.U…
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/02/us/02terror.html
Los Angeles Times – Oct. 3, 2006
Workplace bias against Muslims,
Arabs on rise, advocates say
By Alana Semuels
The restaurant manager from Morocco, the Armenian caterer from Syria and the Yemeni sailor aren't all Muslims and hail from different homelands. But all three say they suffered discrimination at work after Sept. 11, 2001, because of their national origin or perceptions that they were Muslim.
Now, they are among those who have filed lawsuits through the California offices of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission - reflecting increasing discrimination against people of Middle Eastern and South Asian descent, according to advocacy groups.
"I did not think this would happen when I came here," said Abdellatif Hadji, who moved from Morocco to the United States in 1989 and recently filed an EEOC suit against a Mendocino County restaurant where he was a manager. "America is the land of opportunity."
Reports of workplace discrimination against people perceived to be Muslim or Arab soared after the Sept. 11 attacks and then declined, government statistics indicate. But some advocates say they've seen a resurgence in the last year that corresponds to global political events.
"Anytime there's anything in the news . . . that is related to the Middle East, you see a spike in hate-motivated and employment-related incidents," said Kareem Shora, director of the legal department of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.
After 9/11, the EEOC introduced a category of employment discrimination against people who are or are perceived to be Arab, Muslim, Middle Eastern, South Asian or Sikh. Nationwide statistics from the EEOC indicate that such complaints - so far exceeding 1,000 - have decreased each year since 2002.
However, the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations says it processed more civil-rights and workplace discrimination complaints in 2005 than ever before. The annual total jumped to 1,972 in 2005 from 1,522 in 2004. The discrepancy may indicate that victims fear reporting discrimination to the government.
"We only see the tip of the iceberg," said Joan Ehrlich, district director of the EEOC office in San Francisco. "It's probably not even reflective of the amount of discrimination going on because people are afraid to come to the government for help."…
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-eeoc3oct03,1,3563037.story
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