New screening methods target Muslims, critics charge

[babylonsister]

New screening methods target Muslims, critics charge
By Marisa Taylor | McClatchy Newspapers

* Posted on Tuesday, March 4, 2008



WASHINGTON — In the six and a half years since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, federal law-enforcement agencies have secretly established profiling techniques to screen immigrants based on their nationalities, protocols that critics charge encourage the unjustified targeting of Muslims.

The profiling, described in a February 2006 Immigration and Customs Enforcement memo that McClatchy obtained, shows that the government has relied more heavily on nationality as an indicator of security risks than was previously known.

Federal agencies have created internal lists of countries that are of "special interest" for national security reasons, wrote the memo's author, Ted Stark, supervisory special agent with the Office of Intelligence at ICE.

So many federal agencies have created different lists that U.S. officials contemplated adopting a single one to streamline the process, Stark wrote.

The proposed list, which officials said had yet to be adopted, includes 35 countries, most with significant Muslim or Arab populations. Almost 20 percent of the world's countries — including some of the United States' key allies, such as Jordan, Turkey and Egypt — are on the list.

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http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/29282.html

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. And right wing talkers have unfairly painted all Muslims with the terrorist brush

Funny, isn't it, that, aside from the two World Trade Center incidents, terrorist bombings in this country have been carried out by Americans. And the hate groups in this nation are busy bombing mosques and otherwise terrorizing law abiding Muslims in this country.

[Hugabear]

2. Meanwhile, the world's biggest terrorist resides freely in the White House

You're right, this is nothing more than racism, xenophobia, and pandering to the religious right in THIS country. I'm much more afraid of the bigots in our own country who feel the need to take the law into their own hands.

Bush has caused more death than all the "terrorists" from those countries COMBINED over the last dozen years.