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Officials Dispute Report of Dearborn Being No. 2 Terrorist City in America
U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade joined a coalition of civil rights groups and local officials on Friday morning to decry a report, supposedly based on leaked government documents, that ranked Dearborn second in the country for the number of people on the suspected terrorist watch list.
“We cannot name even one case, one time, where Arab Americans or a Muslim from the city of Dearborn has committed an act of terrorism,” said Dawud Walid, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations- Michigan Chapter. “We know of no such cases. This community of Arab Americans and American Muslims has been overwhelmingly law abiding and involved in the civic and political process of the United States of America.”
The press conference on the steps of Dearborn City Hall came after the online news organization “The Intercept” published what it claimed was information from leaked classified documents including a list of suspected terrorists.
The article says Dearborn, with a population of about 96,000, had the second largest number of suspects on the watch list, trailing only New York, with 8 million people. Houston, San Diego and Chicago rounded out the top five. The Intercept suggested Dearborn made the list because of its large Muslim and Arabic population.
More than a dozen people stood up against the report at the press conference, including congressional candidate Debbie Dingell, Dearborn Mayor John “Jack” O’Reilly, Dearborn Police Chief Ronald Haddad and representatives from the ACLU, NAACP and several Arab-American and Muslim groups.
CAIR-Michigan and other groups have asked U.S. Rep. John Conyers to inquire into whether such a document exists and if so to hold hearings as to how the list was compiled, Walid said.
Barbara McQuade, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, questioned the authenticity of the document during the press conference.
“To the people of Dearborn, I say to you: ‘I stand with you. I’m here to serve you, to work with you, to protect you.’ To the people outside of Dearborn, I’m here to tell you that we should all be so lucky to have neighbors like the great neighbors in Dearborn,” McQuade said.
McQuade, too, said no one from Dearborn has ever been prosecuted for terrorism. Her office has handled some national security risk cases from the wider area.
“Of the alleged document, I am skeptical of the accuracy and very skeptical of those numbers,” McQuade said.
Her office prosecutes terrorism acts and threats to homeland security.
“We also work to protect civil rights,” she noted.
The watch lists are imperfect, she said. She has seen individuals included because they had the same name as a suspected terrorist. The administration is working on a process for how people can remove themselves from the no-fly list.
“I know this to be a wonderful community,” McQuade said. “I spend a lot of time here in Dearborn, and I know it to be a community of great patriots who love America.”
Dearborn, with its large Arab and Muslim population, has been the target of fear mongers in recent years, she said.
“I am concerned this irresponsible report has given them more ammunition to try to spear the community unfairly,” McQuade said, adding that she has never seen the report the article was based on or anything like it.
“The numbers just don’t really jibe,” she said.
Haddad said he also had not seen the article, but noted Dearborn has seen a 35 percent reduction in crime in the last six years.
Every day residents report crimes to police and are willing to stand up in court and testify, he said.
“Our community will stand up,” Haddad said. Residents would, and occasionally have, reported suspected terrorist activity, Haddad said.
“Most people are not terrorists, and most will never tolerate acts of terrorism,” he said.
The report feeds stigmas against the Arab and Muslim community, said Nabih Ayad, chair of the Arab American Civil Rights League.
Dearborn has been through a lot since 9/11 because it has the largest concentration of Muslims and Arabs outside the Middle East, Ayad said.
“This report, in all sincerity, is a bunch of (expletive),” Ayad said. “It comes out and says that literally there are 22,000 or up to 30,000 individuals in this city that basically have terrorists ties. That’s so unfortunate for this community.”
“These numbers are totally fabricated, unfounded, unfair and unjust to this community,” he said. The report implies that every man, woman and child of Arab descent in Dearborn is a terrorist, Ayad said.
Walid noted that by the FBI’s own calculations, non-Muslims committed 94 percent of terrorists attacks on American soil in the last 20 years.
Still, the members of the Arab American community struggle with being unfairly placed on the no fly list and suspected of terrorist links, Ayad said. His group runs a hotline at 844-CANT-FLY for those who are on the list to get help.
Arab Americans represent $7 billion for the economy in southeastern Michigan and reports like this hurt the economy by deterring investment, Ayad said.
The National Network of Arab American Communities, an ACCESS project, has organizations in four of the five cities listed on the watch list report, said Rachid Elabed, head of the network.
“They are also the cities with the highest concentration of Arab Americans in this country,” Elabed said.
Last year the network launched a Take On Hate campaign to address the growing resentment towards Arab Americans and to try to create a way for people to remove themselves from such watch lists.
“Our community should not be singled out or targeted,” Elabed said. “We should be treated with fairness just like any other community.”
His group was “concerned and disappointed” to discover Dearborn had made the list for no other apparent reason than the high number of Arab Americans in the area.
“Our community takes pride in its heritage,” Elabed said. “We are doctors, lawyers, students, professors, and above all Americans. Our heritage is not a threat to national security.”
The American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee works to fight the stereotypes of Arab Americans and to celebrate their heritage, said Fatina Abdrabboh, director of its Michigan branch.
“The news of this indictment, the symbolic indictment, the cultural indictment and ultimately the political indictment of an entire community through this document runs directly against the efforts of ADC Michigan,” Abdrabboh said.
The accusation “makes what we do that much more difficult and puts us steps and steps and steps back,” she said.
History shows that racial profiling does not work to stop crime, but does marginalize people and discourages community involvement from those groups.
“To put Dearborn, Michigan as No. 2 on the terrorism watch list is really a slap in the face to our community, and speaks volumes as to the potential nefarious intentions,” Abdrabboh said.
ACLU Michigan several years ago stumbled upon an FBI document that said sometimes when completing an “assessment” of individuals, ethnic backgrounds can be relevant, said Mark Fancher, with the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan.
ACLU requested more information under the Freedom of Information Act and got one report that said federal officials needed to pay special attention to Michigan because of the high number of Arab Americans. Sunni Muslims were especially likely to be open to recruitment by terrorist organizations, Fancher quoted the report.
The ACLU tried to get more information, but was denied. The court cited concerns over national security.
“We believe for the protection of us all, we need transparency,” Fancher said.
O’Reilly said U.S. Rep. John Dingell was already looking into the matter in Washington.
The mayor said the numbers comparing Dearborn to large metropolitan areas just do not make sense, especially to someone who grew up here.
“There can’t be any truth to this,” O’Reilly said. “This is not a place where you can be invisible. This a community where everyone is engaged, everyone is involved.”
Katie Hetrick
Press and Guide