I Was a Muslim Teen Under NYPD Surveillance. But Now I Have More Hope Than Ever.
When I was 20 years old, I sued the largest police force in the country over its blanket surveillance of countless New York Muslims — me among them.
The decision to join the lawsuit was a difficult one, to say the least. I was terrified that going public about my experience would open me up to suspicion and backlash from my community and beyond, and that my budding academic and professional career could be damaged forever.
My fears were proven wrong. Our lawsuit against the NYPD has led to a strong settlement proposal, and my community is readier than ever for the mounting challenges facing American Muslims today.
It started when I was a 19-year-old community college student in Brooklyn. I received a Facebook message from a young man who said he wanted to become a better Muslim. He contacted me because he knew I was volunteering in a community-based charity that was aiding low-income families and the homeless.
We had some Facebook friends in common, so I introduced him to a few of my friends at the charity. Immediately, he began getting involved with our organization. He met many of my friends and came to my family’s home, even spending the night once.
My new friend was anything but. After a few months, he publicly revealed himself as an NYPD informant. I was stunned and terrified. I was born and raised in Brooklyn and I hadn’t done anything wrong. Yet my charity — and my family —had been infiltrated by one of the most powerful police forces in the country, if not the world.
As I would later find out, my “friend” the informant was part of a broad NYPD effort to penetrate the most intimate facets of Muslim life in New York City. Plainclothes officers fanned across the city to map Muslim “hot spots,” collecting information on mosques, charities, and innocent conversations in popular cafes. Informants infiltrated mosques, feeding photographs and names of congregants into police databases. An entire religion was viewed as suspicious.
My charity barely survived the damage the informant caused. Members and volunteers retreated out of fear. We were asked not to hold meetings at the mosque that had previously hosted us. Our ability to fundraise was significantly hampered.
The damage to my organization, however, was the tip of the iceberg. When we learned from the about the full extent of the NYPD’s infiltration of New York Muslim life, it was like an earthquake had struck and our communities’ worst fears were confirmed. Mosques became even more anxious that newcomers were sent by the police. A chill swept through cafes and other businesses. Nobody knew whom to trust and people grew more afraid to voice their views openly. The world felt like it was closing in on us — because it was.
I felt powerless. I needed to push back. In 2013, I joined five other plaintiffs — three religious and community leaders and two mosques — to sue the NYPD. This week, we announced a settlement with the police department that will prevent a repeat of what we lived through. If the settlement is approved, the NYPD won’t be able to launch investigations based on discriminatory premises. They will also limit the use of informants and will be checked by a civilian representative with extensive authority to monitor the department’s compliance and to report violations. (Click here for more details on the terms of the settlement.)
This settlement is even better than an last year, thanks to a federal judge who ordered it to be strengthened. Given that many of us had assumed we wouldn’t find justice in the courts, I can’t overstate how encouraging it was to hear Judge Charles S. Haight, Jr. express the need to protect all New Yorkers from discriminatory policing.
Yet even as we taste victory in our struggle to reform the NYPD, a bigger fight is only beginning. The 2016 election season left my community stunned and fearful of the rising anti-Muslim sentiment across this country. Many relatives and friends are worried about the many ways we might be stigmatized because of our faith.
My mother wants to visit family in Pakistan this year, yet I’m afraid of what she might face at the airport. A Syrian asylum seeker friend doesn’t know what her future holds. Iranian friends worry they won’t see their family members again. I, too, am scared to travel internationally — could I one day be refused reentry into the country of my birth?
These fears can be gripping. But they are also steadily countered by hope, in no small part thanks to the support of allies nationwide. I’ve received more messages than I can count from non-Muslim friends and peers asking what they can do to help. They want to know which Muslim civil rights groups they should donate to, whether I have friends who needed protection, what kinds of books about Islam I recommend. American Muslims are not alone in rejecting hate.
My personal resistance started in 2013, but in many ways, it feels like it’s just beginning. Last week, I was accepted into New York University’s M.A. program for Near Eastern Studies. I hope to produce research on human rights and social justice through the prism of Islam, to help people understand the goodness that is inherent in my faith. I also hope to spend the summer in an intensive Hebrew-language program at Middlebury College, which will enrich my own appreciation of Semitic languages and history while building bridges to the Jewish community.
On January 13, one week before inauguration, I gave a Friday sermon at the Islamic Center at NYU. Standing before hundreds of people, I reminded my community of the importance of hope and the need for resilience, and I asked people to be ready to put themselves on the line to protect and amplify the voices of the city’s most vulnerable residents. The despondency that felt palpable at the start of my sermon gave way to a renewed sense of confidence.
We know as well as anyone that resisting discrimination does more than just achieve a narrow goal — it also brings communities together and demonstrates what’s possible. Our successful struggle for the right to practice our faith proves to me that we’ll be able to face whatever comes our way.
Asad Dandia graduated New York University with a Bachelor's in Social Work with a focus on community organizing. He hopes to continue advocating for marginalized communities as he pursues a Master's in Near Eastern Studies this fall at NYU.
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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.