The profiling of Arabs in America did not start with Trump

A Ramadan parade on Fifth Avenue in Brooklyn, New York City. AFP

For decades now, Arabs, in particular Palestinians, and supporters of Palestinian rights have been the weak link in America’s civil liberties chain.

During this period, when a US president or Congress has sought to take measures curtailing a range of civil liberties, some of them have exploited the misperception that exists among many Americans of the danger Arabs supposedly pose to justify their actions. They feel comfortable in doing this because they understand that the negative stereotypes associated with Arabs make the measures more acceptable and opposition to their efforts less likely to occur.

Examples abound. On three separate occasions in the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan’s administration sought to roll back civil liberties, they began their assault with an attack on Arabs’ rights. They assumed that little public support would be forthcoming in defence of Arab civil liberties. On the other hand, if their targets had been people of another ethnicity, stronger opposition might have been more likely.

In 1981, the Reagan administration issued an executive order that dismantled reforms by the previous administration, of Jimmy Carter, to outlaw domestic surveillance by the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, using Arabs as the scapegoats to justify this measure. As a result, for five years, the FBI infiltrated and disrupted Palestinian student groups nationwide – finally disbanding the effort with nothing to show but agents’ hours wasted and millions of dollars spent.

Mr Reagan’s Department of Justice was also able to rewrite US extradition law, making it easier to fulfil the requests of foreign countries to extradite individuals without due process protections. They did so, using the case of a Palestinian visa holder whose extradition had been requested by Israel. Based on this case, Congress rewrote the laws affecting all extradition requests.

The profiling, surveillance and immigration programmes established during previous US administrations did little to uncover or prosecute actual cases of terrorism

It was also under Mr Reagan that the Immigration and Naturalisation Service released its “Alien Terrorist and Undesirables Contingency Plan”, detailing steps under provisions of the McCarran-Walter Act to imprison, try in secret and deport large numbers of aliens based solely on their ethnicity or their political beliefs or associations.

Consistent with the approach taken, the “Plan” makes several references to Arab immigrants. In fact, the test case used to lay the groundwork for this “Plan” was the arrest of seven Palestinians and the Kenyan wife of one of them, charging them with nothing more than their political beliefs and association.

In 1995, then-president Bill Clinton issued an executive order “prohibiting transactions with terrorists who threatened to disrupt the Middle East peace process” that was followed by the Omnibus Anti-Terrorism Act of 1995. Both efforts introduced draconian measures that would seriously erode civil and political rights guaranteed to US citizens and residents under the Constitution and international law.

The law, for example, gave far-reaching powers to law-enforcement agencies, removed the presumption of innocence for those under investigation and allowed for prohibition of “material support deemed by the president to benefit terrorist organisations”.

It also established procedures allowing the government to detain and deport people based on secret evidence with no opportunity for the detainees to defend themselves, and allowed law-enforcement agencies to conduct surveillance on individuals or groups based purely on their beliefs and associations.

Using the executive order and new legislation, the Clinton administration unleashed a nationwide profiling programme at airports, which harassed and questioned hundreds of Arab and Arab-American airline passengers, even before checking in for their flights, based solely on their dress, appearance or Arabic names.

After 9/11, George W Bush’s administration and Congress upped the ante. While intelligence failures and lax airline safety requirements were at fault in allowing terrorists to be trained in the US and carry out their horrific attacks, Mr Bush issued a series of orders that resulted in the roundup and deportation of thousands of innocent Arab students, workers and visitors. They also ordered tens of thousands of Arab and Muslim visa holders to report to immigration offices where many more were held for deportation.

The anti-terrorism legislation that passed through Congress allowed expanded surveillance by law enforcement, including warrantless wiretapping, searching library records and an expanded use of profiling. Using the expanded powers given to them by the administration, law-enforcement agents infiltrated mosques and Arab social clubs, entrapping a few gullible individuals in plots that were often organised by the law-enforcement agencies themselves.

This is only a partial history, but it lays the predicate for the actions being taken by the current administration of President Donald Trump: threats to civil liberties like freedom of speech, assembly and academic freedom; expanded authority given to law-enforcement agencies to use unconstitutional measures to detain and deport individuals based on their ethnicity or political beliefs; and an expanded interpretation of the “material support” argument used by the Reagan and Clinton administrations to abuse the protected rights of citizens and residents.

There are differences to be sure.

While the measures taken during the Reagan, Clinton and Bush administrations were based on exaggerated fears of terrorism in the US, it’s important to note that a review of the profiling, surveillance and immigration programmes established during these administrations did little to uncover or prosecute actual cases of terrorism. At the end of the day, despite billions of dollars spent and precious law-enforcement resources expended, these programmes did little more than contribute to an expansion of law-enforcement powers and erosion of rights.

In the case of the Trump orders, there’s hardly a pretence of fighting terrorism – rather, an exercise in the brutal use of power to create fear and force institutions and individuals to cower and submit.

What Mr Trump’s policies share with those of his predecessors is the use of Arabs, in particular Palestinians, and their supporters as convenient scapegoats to justify the erosion of rights and liberties. The US President knows that amid Israel’s war on Gaza, his support base will enthusiastically back his efforts. He also knows that liberals in Congress, who might otherwise oppose his policies, will be hesitant to offer full-throated support to the victims of his policies if it appears that they are defending Palestinians or critics of Israel.

For Mr Trump, it’s the perfect storm. For those who care about defending rights and liberties, it’s just another example of Arabs, Palestinians and those who defend them being the weak link in the civil liberties chain.