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Law Officials, Arab-American Community Try to Reach Understanding
His second day on the job in November 2001, U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Collins was at a meeting with the Arab-American community in Dearborn. It was a tense encounter. Since the Sept. 11 attacks, many saw themselves as being unfairly targeted by federal law enforcement, and they were upset.
“It was so close to being volatile,” Collins recalled of that meeting 10 years ago. “People were … screaming.”
Afterward, Collins knew “we got to do something” to help improve relations. “We just can’t have yelling contests every time.”
And so Collins founded a program the next month called BRIDGES — Building Respect in Diverse Groups to Enhance Sensitivity — that established regular meetings between federal agencies like the FBI and Arab Americans and Muslims. With terrorism now the No. 1 priority of federal law enforcement, it was a partnership that benefited both sides: The government could more easily carry out its counterterrorism efforts, and Arab Americans could get their concerns addressed by top officials.
The BRIDGES program has garnered national attention from universities and foundations and has been emulated in other cities.
Group has been easing tensions between Arab Americans, U.S. government after 9/11
Shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the head of the Detroit FBI called the Dearborn office of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, led by Imad Hamad.
Since the hijackers were all Arabs and Muslim, “we were going to be doing a lot of investigations in the Arab community,” said John Bell, then special agent in charge. “We weren’t going to ignore that for the sake of political correctness.”
But at the same time, the FBI “wanted to be responsive to the wants and needs of the community,” Bell said, and so he wanted to meet with Hamad to talk about any possible backlash or hate crimes. It was the start of a long, at times contentious, relationship between federal law enforcement and the region’s Arab-American and Muslim population.
Today, the community — the highest concentration of Arab Americans in the U.S. — knows the FBI head “on a first-name basis” and communication is ongoing, Hamad said. It’s a remarkable partnership, say experts, albeit one that has threatened to break up at times amid complaints from some that the community is being targeted by the same entity that’s supposed to guard it.
The partnership with the Arab community was formalized a few months after 9/11 with a new program called BRIDGES — Building Respect in Diverse Groups to Enhance Sensitivity. It was the brainchild of Jeffrey Collins, who became the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan two months after the Sept. 11 attacks.
“I wanted to put a human face on federal government,” he said.
Born and raised in Detroit, Collins said he had felt the sting of profiling as an African-American youth. He remembers once being falsely accused by a grocery store of shoplifting. Moreover, his parents and the teachers at the Quaker school he attended, Friends, instilled in him the idea that “there is good in everybody.”
“I know what it feels like to be painted with a broad-brush approach,” Collins said, learning that “you judge people on their individual conduct.”
While a student at Northwestern University in Chicago, Collins encountered a racially segregated campus, which prompted him to write an editorial in the school newspaper his senior year in 1981.
“We need to bridge the racial gap,” he wrote.
Those life experiences helped shape Collins and he drew upon them when he created BRIDGES: The very word was used in that 1981 editorial.
At the suggestion of U.S. Sen. Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat, he reached out to Hamad, who became the group’s co-chairman.
The outreach helped when the Department of Justice announced in November 2001 it was going to interview thousands of Arab-American men. The plan unnerved many, and Collins sympathized with their concerns, noting these men were not suspects.
Working with Hamad and others, Collins decided to send out letters to the men notifying them of the interviews and informing them of their rights, like having an attorney present during the interviews.
“Federal law enforcement was not going to go,” Collins said, rapping his knuckles on a desk to symbolize knocking on doors. ” ‘Hello, this is the FBI. We want to talk to you.’ ”
As a result, the completion rate for the interviews was about 65%, the highest in the U.S., he said, showing that the soft touch can be more effective.
“When you’re able to build that trust and respect you’re able to get more leads … informants, translators … cooperators, things that could assist law enforcement.” Such methods enable law enforcement to get things more easily than you would “with a hammer over somebody’s head,” Collins said.
Dawud Walid, head of the Michigan branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said that BRIDGES “is a mixed bag.” He sits in on BRIDGES meetings and also with the Imam’s Committee, a separate group of Muslim leaders that meets with the FBI.
“It’s always good for the community to have a mechanism to interact with various entities — federal, state and local,” Walid said.
But “BRIDGES … treats Muslims, Arabs and Chaldeans like a suspect community,” Walid said.
Others praise it.
“BRIDGES offers something you don’t typically see, an opportunity to sit with and discuss face-to-face with decision makers in the government and the community,” said Troy attorney Shereef Akeel, who often sits in on meetings.
About once a month, about 25 Arab-American and Muslim leaders meet with 25 federal officials — from the FBI to the Department of Homeland Security — at the U.S. Attorneys’ Office in Detroit. In addition, a larger group of about 100 meets every two months and often includes state and local law enforcement.
“It created a lot of human connection,” Hamad said.
The working relationship that developed between Collins and Hamad prevented the partnership from collapsing a few times.
In July 2002, a federal agent in Detroit scrawled, “Islam is Evil. Christ is King,” on a Muslim prayer calendar during a counterterrorism raid at a Dearborn home. Amid outrage, Collins later announced the agent’s punishment — suspension for six months without pay and a transfer out of Detroit — with Hamad at his side in a show of support.
And, in October 2003, the FBI rescinded a national award it had planned to give Hamad after complaints from some that he was allegedly an extremist. At a meeting, local Arab Americans told Collins: ” ‘We’re done talking,’ ” Collins recalled. He said they told him: ” ‘What’s the point of meeting all this time, all this kumbaya stuff … and all of a sudden you yank this award from our beloved Imad Hamad? I’m out of here.’ ” Collins and Hamad managed to calm down the angry voices, and the FBI publicly cleared Hamad. BRIDGES kept going.
At the same time, Collins came under fire from some on the far right who said he shouldn’t be meeting with Muslims or Arabs.
“Our harshest critics … looked at it like, ‘Jeff, you’re fraternizing with the enemy’ … but I refused to paint with a broad brush.”
The current U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade — who previously was one of the department’s attorneys on a counterterrorism unit created after 9/11 — supports BRIDGES.
“Preventing a terrorist attack is our No. 1 priority,” McQaude said. “But it also seemed equally important to me, let’s make sure we do this in a way that honors our civil liberties … that our Arab-American and Muslim citizens feel they are part of the American family.”
Niraj Warikoo
Detroit Free Press