Boston Police Can Protect Their Residents by Limiting Cooperating With the Federal Government
Muslims, people of color, LGBT people, dissidents, and immigrants have ample reasons to worry about our rights and freedoms under the Trump administration. But we don’t have to wait for the federal government to change hands to bolster our local defenses.
Advocates and activists in Boston are doing just that, by calling on the Boston Police Department to distance itself from harmful federal law enforcement programs and to stop sharing information about Bostonians with the federal government except for in narrow circumstances when it is absolutely necessary to investigate and prosecute crime.
Last week, a coalition of groups including the ACLU of Massachusetts sent a letter to the Boston Police Department cosigned by over two dozen community, religious, activist, and civil rights groups representing thousands of Bostonians and Massachusetts residents. The letter asks the BPD to enact key policy reforms to better protect vulnerable people and communities from federal targeting.
Specifically, the coalition calls on the Boston Police Department to end participation in federally funded “countering violent extremism” efforts, stop collecting and sharing information about people not suspected of actual criminal wrongdoing, remove its officers from the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force operations, and publicly endorse and lobby for passage of the Safe Communities Act, a state bill that would restrict local police from acting as federal immigration agents and ban Massachusetts agencies from contributing to any “Muslim registry” system.
These policies and programs were problematic before the Trump administration came to power. Now, with him in the Oval Office and with Jeff Sessions as attorney general, the need for reform has taken on a new urgency.
Countering violent extremism — then and now
Civil rights and civil liberties advocates have long shown the discriminatory and unjustifiable premises underlying federal “countering violent extremism” efforts. Originally formalized and implemented under the Obama administration, CVE programs in the United States aim to fold social services, health care, and educational professionals and institutions into law enforcement’s “counter terrorism” universe. The programs are grounded in discredited, scientifically disproven assumptions about a supposed connection between political and religious ideas, speech, and propensity to commit future violence.
The Obama administration went to great lengths to argue that its CVE funding programs, orchestrated through the Departments of Homeland Security and Justice, were not aimed specifically at Muslims. Civil libertarians and Muslim community organizations disputed this claim, but since the Trump administration took power, pretense of CVE’s equal opportunity targeting has collapsed. Just days after Trump’s inauguration, the administration that all future CVE grants would only target so-called “radicalization” of Muslims, to the exclusion of white supremacists and other groups included under Obama’s version of the program.
Here in Massachusetts, the Boston Police Department is a party to a federally funded CVE program aimed at Somali youth in the city. In the grant application for the project, officials described “unaccountable times and unobserved spaces” as a potential risk factor for Somali youth in Boston — as if a teenager seeking privacy is somehow suspect or an indication of possible involvement in terrorism. Other supposed risk factors for Somali youth were “mistrust of law enforcement” and “lack of opportunities.” That reads like plain discrimination in a city where police are much more likely to stop young Black people for invasive questioning and searches and where the Somali community struggles with institutional barriers to access quality education and employment.
That is not to say that CVE should be expanded, as some in Congress seem to believe. The answer to a resurgent white supremacist movement in the United States is not to double down on the CVE model by including white nationalists among its targets. The ACLU joined dozens of organizations earlier this month in opposition to attempts to expand CVE.
“Each of the undersigned groups vigorously opposes the hatred, bigotry, and xenophobia expressed by white supremacists,” our letter reads, “but extending CVE to target these groups risks diverting security resources to policing political viewpoints, instead of focusing on lawless conduct.”
Yes, let’s build a wall — to separate local law enforcement from discriminatory federal programs
In addition to calling on the BPD to stop engaging with CVE programs, our coalition seeks new protections around intelligence gathering and sharing practices to ensure Bostonians are not put at risk of improper federal targeting.
The BPD should change its privacy policy to forbid the collection and sharing of information about people absent articulable, factually-based suspicion of criminal wrongdoing. Under existing police policy, law enforcement officials can collect and share with federal agencies information about people even when there’s no reason to believe they are involved in any wrongdoing. That policy is both bad for public safety and bad for civil liberties. It has enabled both inappropriate surveillance of activist groups and, in at least one case, detention and deportation proceedings against a Boston high school student.
A recent case shows exactly the harm of this kind of information sharing. In that case, a Boston police officer assigned to an East Boston high school documented a verbal fight that occurred in a cafeteria. In the incident report, the officer identified as a gang member a young man who wasn’t even involved in the dispute but happened to be standing nearby. The young man didn’t commit any crime, and apparently he wasn’t suspected of any criminal offense. (Police officers in cities across the country can designate people as “gang members” in secretive databases without so much as an allegation of criminal activity; the government for using unsubstantiated claims of gang affiliation to illegally detain teenagers.) The information in that report eventually made its way into ICE’s hands. As a result, ICE found, detained, and initiated deportation proceedings against the young man.
We only know about this story because his lawyer has gone public, detailing exactly how ICE came to learn of her client. She says he isn’t a gang member and is fighting his deportation order. We don’t know how many other times this has happened to young people of color in the city. We do know what could prevent it from happening again.
The federal government has a long arm, but there’s a lot local and state law enforcement can do to limit its ability to target and hurt our communities. We urge the Boston Police Department and the city’s leadership to make these commonsense reforms and for activists in other cities to demand the same of their leaders.
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Press ReleaseDec 2024
Free Speech
National Security
ACLU and Partners Urge Supreme Court to Block TikTok BanACLU and Partners Urge Supreme Court to Block TikTok Ban
WASHINGTON — Today, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), and the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University filed an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to block the enforcement of a law that would effectively ban people in America from using TikTok as soon as January 19, 2025. Earlier this month, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit rejected TikTok’s challenge to the law. TikTok has asked the Supreme Court for a temporary injunction to prevent the app from being banned while the court considers whether to take the case, saying that unless the justices intervene, the law will “shutter one of America’s most popular speech platforms the day before a presidential inauguration.” “The Constitution imposes an extraordinarily high bar on this kind of mass censorship,”said Patrick Toomey, deputy director of ACLU’s National Security Project. “The Supreme Court should take up this important case and protect the rights of millions of Americans to freely express themselves and engage with others around the world.” The brief argues that the D.C. Circuit failed to fully address the law’s profound implications for the First Amendment rights of the 170 million Americans who use TikTok. While the lower court’s decision correctly recognized that the statute triggers First Amendment scrutiny, it barely addressed users’ First Amendment interests in speaking, sharing, and receiving information on the platform. The court also perplexingly attempted to cast the government’s ban on TikTok as a vindication of users’ First Amendment rights, which it is not. The rights groups also explain that the law was intended to suppress certain content and viewpoints that many legislators believe could be amplified on TikTok, including the risk of foreign “propaganda.” But under the First Amendment, the government must meet a very high bar to restrict speech based on concerns about its “motivating ideology” or “perspective,” and the government has not come close to meeting that bar here. “The government should not be able to restrict speech, especially to the extent here, based on guessing about the mere possibility of uncertain future harm,” said David Greene, civil liberties director at EFF. “The Supreme Court should put the TikTok ban on hold while it considers the DC Circuit’s erroneous ruling.” Finally, the brief underscores that the government can’t impose this type of sweeping ban unless it’s necessary to prevent extremely serious and imminent harm to national security. But the government has not provided evidence of impending harm, or evidence that banning TikTok is the only available way to address its concerns. As the brief explains, the D.C. Circuit improperly treated the government’s invocation of “national security” as a trump card and failed to hold the government to its burden. “Restricting citizens’ access to foreign media is a practice that has long been associated with repressive regimes, and we should be very wary of letting the practice take root here,” said Jameel Jaffer, executive director at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. “It would do lasting damage to the First Amendment and our democracy if the Supreme Court let this ban go into effect even temporarily.” You can find the brief online here: https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/24/24A587/335380/20241217144322392_24A587%20TikTok%20v%20Garland%20Amicus%20Brief%20pdfa.pdf -
Press ReleaseDec 2024
National Security
Religious Liberty
ACLU Statement on New White House Strategy to Counter IslamophobiaACLU Statement on New White House Strategy to Counter Islamophobia
WASHINGTON – The Biden administration today released the first-ever national strategy to counter Islamophobia and related forms of bias and discrimination, including hate against Arab, Sikh, and South Asian Americans. In advance of the strategy, American Civil Liberties Union and its partners had urged the administration to overhaul government programs that reflect anti-Muslim discrimination. In particular, we have called for urgent action to constrain governmental agencies from continuing to exercise their authorities and technology to wrongly surveil and investigate, watchlist, and question and detain Muslims at the border, as well as deny immigration benefits to people from Muslim-majority countries. While the White House raised expectations that many of these issues would be addressed, the final strategy ended up falling far short. The following is a statement from Hina Shamsi, director of the ACLU’s National Security Project: “While this strategy acknowledges discrimination and its harms, it does little to end them and is a squandered opportunity. For decades, American officials have invoked national security to pass laws and implement programs that disproportionately harm Muslims and people perceived to be Muslim. A serious anti-discrimination strategy would concretely address multiple bias-infused government practices that deny our communities equal participation in civic life and our democracy, like federal watchlisting, surveillance, and investigation. We’re profoundly frustrated that the administration didn’t take even the basic, overdue step of recognizing that anti-Muslim discrimination is uniquely normalized and embedded in government policies.” -
VirginiaDec 2024
National Security
Trabelsi v. Crawford, et al. – Lawsuit Challenging Unlawful Detention and Inhumane Treatment of Acquitted ManTrabelsi v. Crawford, et al. – Lawsuit Challenging Unlawful Detention and Inhumane Treatment of Acquitted Man
Our client, Nizar Trabelsi, is in the United States against his will. The federal government brought him here from Belgium more than a decade ago and charged him with terrorism-related crimes. At trial, the government’s case failed: a federal jury found Mr. Trabelsi not guilty. But instead of allowing Mr. Trabelsi to return to Belgium after his acquittal, the United States placed him in highly restrictive immigration detention and began an ongoing effort to force him to Tunisia, where he was born and where he will very likely be tortured. Mr. Trabelsi’s detention violates the Constitution, immigration law, and the extradition treaty between the United States and Belgium. Through this lawsuit, he seeks to return to Belgium, and he demands an immediate improvement of his detention conditions. -
Press ReleaseDec 2024
National Security
Immigrants' Rights
Federal Judge Rejects Acquitted Man’s Argument That His Immigration Detention Is UnlawfulFederal Judge Rejects Acquitted Man’s Argument That His Immigration Detention Is Unlawful
ALEXANDRIA, Va. — This week, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia ruled that the court does not have jurisdiction to decide whether the government can continue to detain Nizar Trabelsi, a Tunisian national who was brought to the United States against his will for prosecution and was cleared of all charges last year. The ruling means the United States will be able to continue to detain Mr. Trabelsi while it attempts to deport him to Tunisia, where he was born and where, as an immigration judge ruled earlier this year, he will likely face torture. The court also concluded that even if it did have jurisdiction over Mr. Trabelsi’s case, his claims challenging the government’s detention of him would fail. “Reviewing claims that the government is holding someone unlawfully is at the core of the judicial function, and we’re heartbroken for our client that the court got this so wrong,” said Brett Max Kaufman, senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s Center for Democracy. “The government’s arguments in defense of Mr. Trabelsi’s detention makes a hash of the Constitution, immigration laws, and its own extradition treaty.” In 2013, the United States forcibly extradited Mr. Trabelsi from Belgium to face criminal charges in the United States. In July 2023, after almost 10 years of highly restrictive pretrial detention, a federal jury cleared Mr. Trabelsi of all charges. But instead of releasing Mr. Trabelsi or returning him to Belgium, the U.S. transferred him to immigration detention, wrongly treating him as an applicant for admission and placing him in the deportation process. Over the years, the Belgian government has issued multiple formal diplomatic requests asking the U.S. to facilitate his return, but the U.S. has refused to send him back. Mr. Trabelsi filed a lawsuit challenging the government's authority to detain him. He also sought immediate improvements to his detention conditions. Those claims were not part of the court’s ruling today, and will continue to be litigated on a separate track. “Mr. Trabelsi only wants to return to Belgium after being illegally extradited to the United States, held for ten years, and then acquitted by a jury of any crimes,” said Nicole Hallett, clinical professor of law and director of the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic at the University of Chicago Law School. “He cannot be held indefinitely and we will continue to fight to make sure that justice ultimately prevails.” Mr. Trabelsi is represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, the University of Chicago Law School’s Immigrants’ Rights Clinic, the ACLU of Virginia, and Professor Jonathan Hafetz of Seton Hall Law School. The complaint in Trabelsi v. Crawford was filed against Jeffrey Crawford, warden of the Farmville Detention Center where Mr. Trabelsi is being held; Liana Castano, ICE field office director for the Washington Field Office; Alejandro Mayorkas, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security; and Merrick Garland, U.S. attorney general.