Under scrutiny, always
An Arab-American community and its legions of FBI watchers
DEARBORN, MICH.--Assad has lived here for 12 years, in this little brick house off the main street in this Detroit suburb. His children, 6-year-old Fatima and 3-year-old Hassan, were born here. He owns a thriving million-dollar company. But in the past few months, tired of being harassed and afraid he no longer be-longs, Assad has been building another house and another business--in Lebanon. "I want to be prepared for the worst," he says. "When I came here, I thought I would spend the rest of my life here. I thought of the U.S. as heaven on earth. But not anymore."
The war on terror--the domestic version--is being fought on these streets. This city of 100,000 is home to approximately 30,000 people of Middle Eastern descent, the largest concentration of Arab Muslims in the country. On Warren Avenue, kebab shops nestle next to car dealerships. The American flag flies high above Lebanese bakeries. And residents like Assad work to live their lives and raise their families in peace and freedom.
Roundup. Those freedoms are precisely what law enforcement authorities say they are trying to protect as they continue to chase leads in the largest investigation in the nation's history. Since Congress passed the USA Patriot Act a little over a year ago--which gave authorities more power to investigate--federal and state police have rounded up and questioned men from Middle Eastern countries, tapped phones, and detained thousands of people secretly. These tactics, they say, have resulted in arrests of alleged terrorists in Portland, Ore., and Buffalo.
Last week, U.S. Customs Service agents raided businesses and homes here in Dearborn and arrested seven people who they allege may have helped transfer money to Yemen. But one attorney who has met with the men says they were arrested after they tried to register their money-transfer business with authorities. Community leaders say the matter is overblown. "This is another case of linking all criminal behavior with terrorism because the suspects happen to be Arab or Muslim Americans," says Haaris Ahmed, director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Michigan.
Many ordinary people in these communities have had their lives turned inside out by the investigations. Before the recent arrests, dozens of young men here had disappeared over the past year, detained on immigration violations and quietly deported. People lining up to buy their baklava worry about whether they are being followed. Many--men and women--say they feel more and more removed from an America they thought they knew. A poll conducted this summer by the Council on American-Islamic Relations showed nearly half of the 945 Muslims questioned said their lives had deteriorated over the past year. "There is tremendous fear, not only in Arab-American but other ethnic communities," says Kary Moss, executive director of the Michigan branch of the American Civil Liberties Union. "Fear of hate crimes, fear of deportation, even if they are here lawfully. There is fear of what may come next."
Flashing lights. Assad doesn't know why he should be scared, but he is. He asks that his full name not be used. A tall Lebanese-American with a confident stride, he says he was stopped by police last month while walking out of a mall in Chicago, where he had just bought his son a Sony PlayStation. According to Assad, the police said mall security had reported him as suspicious, so they questioned him for two hours, calling each number he gave them to verify his identity. More police kept arriving, first plainclothes, then the FBI, until Assad found himself standing in the parking lot surrounded by a half-dozen police cars, lights flashing. The highly visible incident hurt his reputation, he says. "It is easy to accuse anyone now. It happened before with the Japanese; it may happen again."
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