Actions taken by CAIR on anti-Muslim FBI training and related incidents

• San Diego CAIR chapter, various mosques in the surrounding area, and many civil rights groups submitted a letter to the San Diego FBI asking for clarification on media reports about FBI anti-muslim training and instructors.
• CAIR national sent a letter to FBI director Robert Mueller calling for swift reforms on the agency's use of anti-Islam training material and instructors.
• CAIR called on the CIA not to use one of the Islamophobic counter-terror trainers who were exposed on NPR for allegedly smearing a respected Ohio Muslim.
• CAIR has in the past called on the Obama administration, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense, and Congress to provide oversight for apparently widespread anti-Muslim bias in the training of law enforcement, security and military personnel nationwide
•  CAIR noted the release of an 80-page report by Political Research Associates (PRA), titled “Manufacturing the Muslim Menace: Private Firms, Public Servants, & the Threat to Rights and Security,” which details a systemic failure to regulate content in counterterrorism training.
• CAIR’s New York chapter (CAIR-NY) called on the New York Police Department (NYPD) to investigate how a notorious anti-Muslim propaganda film came to be used in mandatory counterterrorism training.
• CAIR and the University of California, Berkeley’s Center for Race and Gender released a report that documents growing Islamophobia in the United States and offers recommendations about how to challenge the troubling phenomenon.

Source: CAIR facebook page

What is FOIA?

• FOIA is a law that gives you the right to access information from the federal government.
• Often described as the law that keeps citizens in the know about their government. 
• Under the FOIA, agencies must disclose any information that is requested – unless that information is protected from public disclosure. 
• The FOIA also requires that agencies automatically disclose certain information, including frequently requested records. 
• As Congress, the President, and the Supreme Court have all recognized, the FOIA is a vital part of our democracy.

How are FBI trainers and curriculum chosen?

I have searched, and searched all over the internet trying to find a link, article, something to tell me how the instructors are chosen. After scouring the FBI website I am still at zero. There is nothing on the internet, which I find to be really surprising. However, this is an excellent idea for a FOIA Request.

FBI agent training

Listed below is the training that all FBI agents go through according to the FBI website:

"All special agents begin their career at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia for 20 weeks of intensive training at one of the world’s finest law enforcement training facilities. During their time there, trainees live on campus and participate in a variety of training activities. Classroom hours are spent studying a wide variety of academic and investigative subjects, including the fundamentals of law, behavioral science, report writing, forensic science, and basic and advanced investigative, interviewing, and intelligence techniques. Students also learn the intricacies of counterterrorism, counterintelligence, weapons of mass destruction, cyber, and criminal investigations to prepare them for their chosen career paths. The curriculum also includes intensive training in physical fitness, defensive tactics, practical application exercises, and the use of firearms. For more information, see our New Agent Training webpage. Over the course of their career, agents are also updated on the latest developments in the intelligence and law enforcement communities through additional training opportunities."

However, according to Spencer Ackerman, some the curriculum taught to FBI agents in training is anti-Islamic. Apparently the FBI recommended anti-Islam reading to their trainees, as well as showed powerpoint presentations putting Muslims in negative light. One example of graphs shown during these instructional courses is the following:

The course was taught by a man by the name of William Gawthrop, a known opposer of Islam. In the past Gawthrop has claimed that the mindset of the Prophet Muhammad is a source of terrorism. He was also an important figure in the birther movement. He has claimed that all Muslims are potential terrorists and the more devout a Muslim is, the more dangerous they are.

The FBI claims that is has stopped any anti-Islam training.

Lawsuit aginst Arizona immigration law

The Justice Department in July 2010 filed a lawsuit challenging the state's immigration policy, claiming the "invalid" law interfered with federal immigration responsibilities and "must be struck down." 

The suit named the state of Arizona as well as Gov. Jan Brewer as defendants. In it, the Justice Department claimed the federal government has "preeminent authority" on immigration enforcement and that the Arizona law "disrupts" that balance. It urged the U.S. District Court in Arizona to "preliminarily and permanently" prohibit the state from enforcing the law.

 

The full case can be found here.

 

 On July, 28 a federal court in Pheonix blocked the following provisions from the law:*

 •    The requirement that police officers investigate the immigration status of all individuals they stop if the officers suspect that they are in the country unlawfully;
•    The mandatory detention of individuals who are arrested, even for minor offenses that would normally result in a ticket, if they cannot verify that they are authorized to be in the U.S.;
•    The new statute imposing state criminal penalties for non-citizens failing to register with the Department of Homeland Security or failing to carry registration documents;
•    The provision for warrantless arrest of individuals who are deemed by state or local police officers to be "removable" from the U.S.; and
•    The new state statute making it a crime for alleged undocumented immigrants to work.

 

The court blocked the provision that would create an Arizona ban on undocumented persons applying for, soliciting or performing work. However, the court did not block the provisions that prohibit day laborers from being hired if the party hiring them impedes traffic. The civil rights coalition maintains these sections violate free speech protections and are confident that they too will ultimately be barred as unconstitutional under the First Amendment.

*All of the following information was taken directly from the ACLU website

Information by the justice department can be found here at their website.

Boycott in Arizona over new immigration law

In early 2010 after Arizona signed into effect  its new Immigration law, hundreds of people, organizations, and even cities enacted a boycott against the state of Arizona. Civil rights leaders called out for the ban, a coalition called boycott Arizona was formed, and cities such as San Fransisco and Los Angeles have declared ends to deals and contract with Arizona. Conventions throughout Arizona were canceled and moved to other states and people were discourged from going to Suns and Diamond back games.Tourism, which is one of Arizona's largest industries, was also been boycotted.


The boycott was similar to a tourism boycott put into place in the 1980s after Arizona refused to recognize MLK day as a national holiday. After millions of dollars in losses the holiday was recognized.

Immigration in Arizona

The newer, tougher immigration laws in Arizona, which played a huge part in influencing the one produced in Oklahoma, were put in effect last year. The law gives law enforcement in Arizona the right to demand the status of people on whom they have "reasonable suspicion" and to arrest them if they are unable to provide the correct documents. It also makes it illegal to transport aliens or to hire laborers off the street in the state of Arizona. All of the measures are included in Oklahoma's HB 1446

The biggest argument for the law is that immigrants are taking jobs away from Americans. I was not able to find any statistics supporting or negating this argument, but article after article that I have read says that illegal immigrants do not if act take our jobs. Jobs that we want, anyway. Illegal immigrants, because of their illegal status, typically take jobs that Americans do not want, especially labor jobs. One farmer was even quoted saying that aliens are more reliable workers than Americans. The second largest argument that I was able to find was that the new laws would lead to decreased crime. Apparently, the presence of immigrants causes increased crime, especially in the state of Arizona, but is that really true? I looked at crime reports published by the Arizona DPS in the years of 2002 and 2010. The reports can be found here and here. The numbers of immigrants to the US has been increasing steadily since the 1990's, more notable in the past decade. But in 2002 the number of crime index offenses in the state of Arizona was 341,101 and in 2010 the number was 250,252. That's a difference of 90,576 offenses, a pretty big number.


Arguments against the law were more in number and, in my opinion, stronger. They are:

• The law will most likely lead to racial profiling, because it is highly unlikely that whites or even blacks will be asked to show their documentation. The "reasonable suspicions" that officers will be acting under will most likely be based on ethnicity, especially if that person has an accent. The result of this type of profiling will be demeaning to the minorities suspected, especially Hispanics and Mexicans.
• The law will be extremely expensive for the state of Arizona which already has a state defecit of trillions of dollars.
• Now that drug cartels and other over-the-border illegal activity leaders know who is going to be asked for documentation or searched, it will be easier for them to send products with whites or blacks, especially since law enforcement will be focused on immigrants.
• The law creates an uncomfortable atmosphere between law enforcement officers and immigrants, especially in a reason that boast a large number of immigrants. The threat that any law enforcement officer has the right to demand documents from a person makes the uncomfortable and resentful.
• Immigrants are an essential part of the economy, especially since they tend to do jobs that Americans would not do.
• The law destroys the concept of a melting pot, as well as freedom and new opportunity in the United States.

Senate Votes on HB 1446 (SCORECARD)

House Votes on HB 1446

Today I went on the OK legislature and compiled a scorecad of the House of Represenatives' votes on HB 1446. Here it is:

HB 1446: Changing immigration laws in Oklahoma

Recently this year a Republican representative by the name of Goerge Faught proposed HB 1446. Currently, the bill is on hold, but has been passed to the discussion stages by both the Oklahoma House of Representatives and the Senate. It is based off of strict new laws in Arizona and other border states.

I found the wording of the bill on the Oklahoma legislature website and read through it. Here are basic points I obtained from the bill that apply directly to immigration:

• It is unlawful for anyone to transport an alien in furtherance of their presence in the United States, whether knowingly or unknowingly.
• It is unlawful for anyone to conceal an alien in the state of Oklahoma, whether knowingly or unknowingly.
• It is unlawful for anyone to tamper with their documents.
• It is unlawful for anyone to smuggle human beings for profit or commercial purposes.
• It is unlawful for aliens to try to get a job.
• It is unlawful for employers to hire aliens

The bill also talked about a lot of things not directly related to immigration. It gave punishments and fines for breaking the laws as well, and it clarified some of the wordings in the measures that could be misunderstood.

The bill also talked about the right of law enforcement agents to demand documents from people, a major issue in the bill proposed by Arizona.

More Statistics

This is a press release I found on the Princeton University website talking about how the removal of Affirmative Action would devastate minority admission based on studies.

Ending affirmative action would devastate most minority college enrollment

Study finds virtually no gain for white students

Princeton University researchers have found that ignoring race in elite college admissions would result in sharp declines in the numbers of African Americans and Hispanics accepted with little gain for white students.

In a study published in the June issue of Social Science Quarterly, authors Thomas Espenshade and Chang Chung examined the controversial notion that eliminating affirmative action would lead to the admission of more white students to college and found it to be false. The assertion that qualified white students are being displaced by less qualified minority students was a prime plaintiff argument in the 2003 U.S. Supreme Court cases against the University of Michigan (Gratz v. Bollinger and Grutter v. Bollinger).

"We're trying to put these admission preferences in context so people understand that lots of students, including those with SAT scores above 1500, are getting a boost," said Espenshade, the professor of sociology who co-authored "The Opportunity Cost of Admission Preferences at Elite Universities" with Chung, a senior technical staff member in the Office of Population Research. "The most important conclusion is the negative impact on African American and Hispanic students if affirmative action practices were eliminated."

According to the study, without affirmative action the acceptance rate for African-American candidates likely would fall nearly two-thirds, from 33.7 percent to 12.2 percent, while the acceptance rate for Hispanic applicants likely would be cut in half, from 26.8 percent to 12.9 percent. While these declines are dramatic, the authors note that the long-term impact could be worse.

"If admitting such small numbers of qualified African-American and Hispanic students reduced applications and the yield from minority candidates in subsequent years, the effect of eliminating affirmative action at elite universities on the racial and ethnic composition of enrolled students would be magnified beyond the results presented here," the report says.

The authors also cite other studies and the actual experience of the University of California system where affirmative action has been eliminated: "The impacts are striking. Compared to the fall of 1996, the number of underrepresented minority students admitted to the University of California-Berkeley Boalt Hall Law School for the fall of 1997 dropped 66 percent from 162 to 55.... African-American applicants were particularly affected as their admission numbers declined by 81 percent from 75 to 14, but acceptances of Hispanics also fell by 50 percent. None of the 14 admitted African-American students chose to enroll. Of the 55 minority students admitted, only seven enrolled in the fall of 1997, a falloff that had the effect of reducing the underrepresented minority share in the first year class to 5 percent in 1997 compared with 26 percent in 1994."

Removing consideration of race would have little effect on white students, the report concludes, as their acceptance rate would rise by merely 0.5 percentage points. Espenshade noted that when one group loses ground, another has to gain -- in this case it would be Asian applicants. Asian students would fill nearly four out of every five places in the admitted class not taken by African-American and Hispanic students, with an acceptance rate rising from nearly 18 percent to more than 23 percent. Typically, many more Asian students apply to elite schools than other underrepresented minorities. The study also found that although athletes and legacy applicants are predominantly white, their numbers are so small that their admissions do little to displace minority applicants.

The authors based their work on models previously developed in a 2004 study where they looked at more than 124,000 elite university applicants' SAT scores, race, sex, citizenship, athletic ability and legacy in combination with their admission decision. This more recent study honed in on more than 45,000 applicants. Both studies are part of the multidimensional National Study of College Experience, which is funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Espenshade, who is available for interviews and reachable by e-mail at tje@princeton.edu, is professor of sociology and faculty associate at the Office of Population Research at Princeton University. His research and teaching interests include higher education in the United States, the racial dimension of college admissions and campus life, intergroup relations on college campuses, social demography, and contemporary immigration to the United States. Espenshade joined the faculty in 1988 after receiving his doctorate in economics from Princeton in 1972.

Statistics

This information is from the most current census data and is used for Affirmative Action planning in Oklahoma. This information if from the Oklahoma City MSA (Canadian, Cleveland, Logan, McClain, Oklahoma, and Pottawatomie counties)