Israeli Style Checkpoints Come to America
Published on January 14, 2003 by the NCM Civil Liberties Watch
"Israeli Style Checkpoints Come to America"
by Jalal Ghazi, New California Media
Palestinian Americans seeking greater freedom in America are finding themselves reliving the torment they experienced in the Middle East. They are now detained at checkpoints recalling the way they were humiliated at similar checkpoints in Israel.
Checkpoint is an ugly word to Palestinian Americans who remember being detained for hours while Israelis with blue car plates were allowed to drive through without delay.
The acting Chief Border Patrol Agent in Detroit, Loreta Mossam, said that border patrol agents in Michigan have installed random checkpoints on secondary roads in Port Huron and Trento in Detroit to catch “illegal aliens” and “potential terrorists”. Similar checkpoints were installed in New Hampshire, New York, Vermont and Washington.
Both Mexican workers and Arab Americans were outraged because police regularly detail people who make harmless mistakes such as failing to notify the INS when they change schools or addresses. U.S. citizens from the Middle East and Latin America are treated like foreigners even if they were born and raised in the U.S.
Arab Americans continue to suffer from hate crimes after Sept. 11 especially in the Detroit area, the home of the largest Arab American population in the U.S.
Anthony D. Romero, executive director of American Civil Liberties Union, said that it is hard for federal agents not to violate people’s civil rights or to target Middle Easterners by profiling.
Federal officials say that Middle Easterners will not be profiled because all cars will be stopped. In actual practice, with traffic congestion in Detroit, it will be difficult to resist the need to speed things up and stop only those who fit a profile.
Checkpoint critics also point out that it is not necessary for citizens to carry proof of citizenship while non-citizens must always carry that proof. But how will the federal agents at the checkpoints know who is a citizen and who is not? Many Arab Americans in the region are second generation who have never been to Palestine.
Advocates of the checkpoints programs say that it is acceptable to infringe upon people’s freedoms in times like these because it will bring security to all Americans. They say that law–abiding citizens have nothing to worry about except for brief delays. This is little comfort to law-abiding Palestinians who face detention and deportation for minor immigration violations.
Palestians and Arabs are now experiencing the same discrimination that the Irish, Jews and African Americans endured. And we should not forget the Alien Land Laws of 1913, 1920, and 1923 which "prohibited Asian immigrants from owning land and other forms of property through the legal construction of nonwhites as aliens ineligible to citizenship" (Lisa Lowe, Immigrant Acts 13).
Nor should we forget President Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066, signed on Feb. 19, 1942, which allowed military commanders to transfer all Japanese to internment camps. What Arab and Muslim American are going through will also go in history as another dark period. The question is when will it be over?
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