Posted on 08/23/2006 6:15:24 PM PDT by West Coast Conservative
Muslim, Arab and South Asian passengers are racially profiled at Kennedy Airport by Homeland Security officers, including hundreds who were singled out for detention on the day of the recent London terrror arrests, civil liberties groups said Wednesday.
The groups highlighted the case of a New Jersey family that was detained and interrogated after a flight from Dubai last week. The family, a mother and her 20-year-old twin daughters from Montclair, NJ, said they were plucked from the baggage area, held six hours without food or water by Customs and Border Protection agents and questioned about their views of Iraq.
Nahgam Alyaqoubi and her daughters, Arwa and Sumia Ibrahim, naturalized American citizens, said 200 other passengers of Arab, Muslim or South Asian backgrounds were detained on Aug. 15 in a roped off area, days after the London bomb suspects were arrested.
The family joined officials from the American Civil Liberties Union and other rights groups at a news conference in Council on American-Islamic Relations office in in Manhattan to condemn what they say was an increase in racial profiling. They also criticized Rep. Peter King for endorsing profiling.
Arwa Ibrahim, who along with her sister, is enrolled at Rutgers University, said they were born in Iraq and moved to the United States at age 5. She said the experience was disturbing because they were forced to sit on the floor without food or water and were treated rudely when they asked questions of the officers.
"It was a really humiliating experience -- humiliating because we were treated like animals," she said. "We were treated really horribly by the officers that were there, we were yelled at, we were told to get back, threathened with arrest and threathened to have to stay longer if we complained."
(Excerpt) Read more at newsday.com ...
The women in the article are American citizens.
Until somebody contradicts their version, it's six hours.
For some, six hours without food and water is a hardship. I wouldn't do it voluntarily. Would it have been difficult to give them food and water?
What took Homeland Security so long to resolve this?
Sorry, my give a damn's been busted for a while and just cannot get it to work.
If it took six hours to process these people, the "officials" weren't trained.
OK, it's not illegal to investigate folks who belong to a cult that wishes to overthrow the United States.
Did they have on mooselimb uniforms?
I don't think so. I'm used to delays when I travel. I just carry a book. However if I was getting detained with other Americans because my own had blown some stuff up I would be very verbal about not having anything to do with those people.
I didn't notice there were 250 people detained. I think that may answer the question why it took so long to process them.
Fear. These agents didn't know what they were doing.
About friggin time! If the Pennsylvania Dutch start causing problems, we should profile them too!
Don't like it? Then go home!
I fast at least 6 hours every night.
I re-checked. 200 plus them. Their count.
They were home. The girls and their mother in this article are Americans.
You're not quarantined in a smelly airport when you do it, though.
The wife and I were in the Czech Republic when 9/11 went down, and we were on the first Lufthansa flight to land at SFO (San Francisco) about 5 days later. We flew from Prague to Munich and then to SFO. Boarding scrutiny in Prague was tight, but Munich screening was tighter than a bull's ass at fly time, thank you. The German airport security was (hush) profiling!, and we sat at the boarding ramp for about an hour past departure time as passengers obviously of a (hush) certain ethnic group trickled onto the plane. Comforting? Yes. Did we care a whit about their feelings? Not one freaking iota.
We still travel to and from the CZR, and we still see profiling of certain ethnic groups in Prague and Munich/Frankfurt. Is this wrong? NO!! It comes with the territory, now that their countrymen have decided to wage terrorist war upon the rest of civilization. So live with it, certain ethnic groups, or YOU figure out some way to keep your scumbags off of my airplane. At some point in time, and I pray not because of another 9/11, our ACLU rear end kissing libs will understand that our best airport defense is to profile instead of wasting valuable screening resources on strip searches of babies and grannies in wheelchairs.
Six hours is not enough, a person can go for a week or more without water and a month or more without food. Get serious! Poor babies, these!
Six hours is not enough, a person can go for a week or more without water and a month or more without food. Get serious! Poor babies, these!
Yeah, I see what you mean. Smelly airports always make me hungry:')
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