Persecution at the border

When people cross back into the United States from a huge Toronto-area Christian conference called "Show Me Your Glory," it is a safe bet that some of them will be stopped. Another safe bet is that none of them will be held at the border for five hours to be searched, interrogated and fingerprinted for no apparent reason, like UB students Hassan Shibly and Karema Atassi were when they went to a religious conference last year.

The difference: Shibly and Atassi went to a conference called "Reviving the Islamic Spirit," and yes, they are Muslims. However, they are also American citizens who showed proper identification at U.S. customs. The Department of Homeland Security stopped them specifically because they went to this religious conference, according to the lawsuit Shibly, Atassi and the American Civil Liberties Union filed last week. The ordeal Shibly and Atassi went through is indicative of racial profiling that still goes on in a post-Sept. 11 national security environment - a practice that is not only wrong, but ineffective in the war on terrorism.

Shibly and Atassi joined many other Muslims and non-Muslims alike at the RIS conference, which, ironically enough, works to foster better relations between Islamic and non-Islamic communities. According to the ACLU, the conference is a peaceful gathering that has received the support of the Toronto city government and the Commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The DHS still apparently took issue with conference attendees, singling out Shibly and Atassi at the border as having gone to the meeting. And according to the ACLU, many more attendees - all Muslims - were detained at the border.

Many of the detainees were interrogated, without knowing the reasoning for questioning, with several detained for six and a half hours overnight while not a single charge was filed. This type of wholesale questioning without cause is unfair and inappropriate, and circumstances make any denial of racial or religious profiling moot. The DHS needs to admit the folly of this profiling that sums up to nothing more than harassment, considering the interrogations and detainments delivered no charges, let alone convictions.

The lack of any charges being filed in the interrogations shows how ineffective any sort of racial profiling really is. While detaining so many innocent Muslims for an extended period, nearly filling their detainment areas, the borders possibly became unable to process other problems. Racial profiling also leads to lackadaisical analysis of other, more telling, criminal traits like behavior. A 2001 memo circulated among top national security officials said that racial profiling was ineffectual, with the authors telling the ACLU, "There are at least one million Americans of Middle Eastern decent in the United States. Do we consider them all potential terrorists?"

There was no reason for American customs officials to persecute these UB students. Their lawsuit is honorable and we hope it compels border officials across the nation to think twice before pulling someone over because of their religion or what they're wearing on their head. Border officials should think twice about racial profiling because it's wrong, and even if that means nothing to them, they should think twice because racial profiling hurts our security.