The 33-year-old Jordanian engineer opened the letter from the Justice Department expecting to find the green card he had applied for, but he was stunned to find that government investigators wanted to talk with him about terrorism.
“Your name was brought to our attention because, among other things, you came to Michigan on a visa from a country where there are groups that support, advocate, or finance international terrorism,” said the letter from U.S. Atty. Jeffrey Collins.
There was no sleeping that night.
“I was shocked. My wife shook all night,” said the engineer, who agreed to be interviewed on the condition that his identity not be revealed. He will cooperate with the government, he said, but with trepidation–and with an attorney at his side.
This man’s story is not unusual, here or in other U.S. communities that are home to 7 million people of Arab descent. Anxiety is high in many Detroit-area homes, but particularly in Dearborn, the blue-collar enclave with about 30,000 people of Arab origin, roughly 30 percent of the city’s population. Dearborn, as evidenced by bilingual storefronts on pharmacies, markets, restaurants, real estate and law offices, has the largest concentration of Arabs in the nation.
It is in Dearborn where U.S. security interests and individual civil liberties are clashing.
The Justice Department sent letters to about 650 Arab men in Michigan as part of a nationwide effort to gather information on the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The letters went out to about 5,000 Arab men age 18 to 33 who entered the country since last year, creating fear and uncertainty among the recipients.
While the letters say the interviews are voluntary, the government wants a response by Tuesday. While the letters say the government has “no reason to believe that you are, in any way, associated with terrorist activities,” the assurance is undermined by the secrecy surrounding the arrests of some 1,200 other Arabs, more than 600 of whom are still in custody.
There is no mention of what would happen to those who don’t respond to the letters, but the prevailing thought among Dearborn-area Arabs is that failure to cooperate is an invitation to trouble.
“We are in a very, very bad position,” said Osama Siblani, publisher of the Dearborn-based Arab American News.
Siblani is convinced that the government’s singling out of Arabs is ethnic profiling that would not, if challenged, pass legal muster. Still, those who get letters, he said, have no choice but to contact investigators.
“I would like to say, `Do not cooperate,’ just to make a point of resisting it. But if you do, it would be misinterpreted as supporting terrorism,” Siblani said.
“They say this is voluntary, but if you do not volunteer you know they will knock on your door,” he added. “You have people here who came to get away from totalitarian regimes, and for them this is the feeling of deja vu. This is scary.”
Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft last week sweetened the incentive to cooperate by offering special U.S. visas and paving the way to citizenship for non-citizens who provide “useful and reliable” information on terrorists. These so-called S visas are sometimes referred to as “snitch visas.”
Open to abuse?
Imad Hamad, Midwest regional director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, called the visa incentive “a cosmetic” offer that will be “used and abused.”
“I have serious reservations about it because it cheapens citizenship. The honor of citizenship is not something to be traded,” he said.
“This might indicate a sign of national weakness and desperation. I can understand offering financial rewards for information, but not citizenship,” Hamad added.
In a tightly knit Arab community–there are about 220,000 Arabs in the Detroit metropolitan counties of Wayne, Oakland and Macomb–people keep track of each other. They are likely to know the resident status of their colleagues and who might be here illegally. The value of this kind of information has soared since Sept. 11.
“If that’s what this country is reverting to to get intelligence, then we’re in a lot of trouble,” said Doraid Elder, an attorney who represents the Jordanian engineer and several other Dearborn Arabs.
“This is going to create a lot of problems because people will be making things up just to stay in this country,” Elder said.
The Jordanian engineer, who lives in Dearborn with his wife and two children, both U.S. citizens, said he has “no information that could benefit anyone.”
“I’m an Arab. I’m a Muslim. And I honestly do not like politics. . . . I do not poke my nose anywhere,” he said.
Elder said his client and several others, including a doctor and U.S. citizen, were mistakenly sent the letters. As permanent residents, they do not fit the profile, Elder said. The U.S. attorney’s office acknowledged the likelihood that some letters were sent by mistake.
Resentment toward the interrogations is by no means universal, even among Arabs. American flags hang from Arab households and “God Bless America” bumper stickers are plentiful.
“This is the country that raised me. You can never appreciate this country until you leave it,” said Hussein Saad, a grocery owner who came here from Lebanon in 1971. “If you’ve done nothing wrong, what have you got to worry about?”
Many confused
Hamad says that is false comfort because the government has not been clear about what information it wants and what constitutes wrongdoing. Contributions to charities that have links, even tenuous ones, to terrorist groups could be used against people, Hamad said.
“People are confused and intimidated. Some show it bluntly and some keep their anger bottled up inside. They’re trying to better understand the new era since Sept. 11,” Hamad said. “People don’t know where this is going to end.”
About 75 demonstrators marched Thursday night in front of Dearborn City Hall to protest, among other things, the treatment of Arabs, who were conspicuously absent. “They’re scared to be here,” said Jessica LaBumbard, one of the protest organizers.
At the modest brick bungalow of Mustapha Hammoud, who came to Dearborn from Lebanon in 1986, the family conversation at a sundown Ramadan meal was dominated by the topic of the government targeting young Arabs.
`America has a torture gate’
“America has a torture gate you have to walk through,” said Hammoud, referring to the mistreatment of Japanese, blacks and other minorities. “Maybe this is our turn.”
They recited complaints about attitudes toward Arabs since Sept. 11. They included anger at the media portrayals of Arabs, anger at the government’s public handling of the letters, anger at the strong suggestion of profiling and anger that their patriotism might be called into question.
“I stood there and took the oath. If anybody questions my patriotism, I’ll be in their face,” said Elvana Hammoud, one of six Hammoud children and a marketing executive for Detroit Edison.
Abed Hammoud, an assistant Wayne County prosecutor and unsuccessful candidate for mayor in last month’s election, said the practicality of the investigation needs to be questioned.
“Imagine, as a prosecutor, going after 18- to 33-year-olds in Detroit and asking them if they’ve been approached by a drug dealer lately. Aren’t we supposed to be at war with drug dealers?” he said.
Abed Hammoud said he believes in the importance and wisdom of the government. But the portrayal of the Arab community and the public manner of the investigation are disturbing, he said.
“It kills me when Fox News says we are at war. With whom?” he said. “Arab-Americans in our country?”
