Thread by @ahilan_toolong

@paulkrugman @WangCecillia I had hoped to ignore 9/11 this year, but this is too much. I was a junior atty @ACLU in NY on 9/11. I will never forget that day. I _also_ will never forget the nearly 1k people, mostly Muslim immigrants, indefinitely jailed in the Ashcroft raids. 1/

Fed officials repeatedly barred me from meeting them until we threatened to sue. Eventually I saw arnd 100 of these husbands, fathers, hard-working immigrants, treated like "terrorists" bc of their faith. The worst was Metro Detn Center, where BOP shackled them hand and foot. 2/

But treatment at New Jersey's immigration jails was also awful. The ACLU extensively documented this at the time. aclu.org/other/septembe… @JameelJaffer met many of them too, as did @CUNY_CLEAR 's Ramzi Kassem, who was my law student translator for most of my trips. 3/

I have many vivid memories of the blatant racism. One time the guards questioned whether Ramzi should be allowed to leave - they implied he was a detainee. I had to show our authorization letter, which fortunately listed him by name. 4/

There were lawsuits too. CCR brought Turkmen v Ashcroft (companion to Iqbal v Ashcroft) to challenge this grotesque discrimination. scholar.google.com/scholar_case?c… 5/

@leegelernt and others @ACLU brought Al Kidd to challenge the indefinite imprisonment without charges of a Muslim American. (@neal_katyal defended the Govt in the Supreme Court) scholar.google.com/scholar_case?c… 6/

SCOTUS bent over backwards to avoid holding any higher-ups accountable. And I haven't even gotten to targeted killing, torture, Gitmo, warrantless shutdown of charities, dragnet infiltration of Muslim communities, mass electronic surveillance, etc., all of which we challenged. 7/

These were manifestations of a "mass outbreak of anti-Muslim sentiment" in the Govt itself. The Govt's Islamophobic response to 9/11 is comparable to the war on drugs, insofar as it warped the law in ways we will live with for decades, in areas far removed from 9/11's context. 8/

@paulkrugman can't erase this history. I remember it, as do other human rts lawyers, organizers, and clients who have fought for justice for years. To a few of my comrades: "happy" anniversary. @nranjana @HinaShamsi @ShakSpeak @JennieACLU @mtajsar @HamdanNaji @PeterBibring
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