Category Archives: USA

Immigrations and Customs Enforcement official relieved of duties

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A top Immigrations and Customs Enforcement official who sent an Islamophobic email to a Helena immigration attorney has been relieved of his supervisory duties, according to lawyers involved in the case.

Earlier this month, Bruce Norum, the supervisory detention and deportation officer for the Helena Department of Homeland Security ICE field office, forwarded a racially charged email to Shahid Haque-Hausrath, a Helena immigration attorney of Pakistani descent.

Haque-Hausrath, a natural-born U.S. citizen who was raised in a Muslim household, took offense to the email and filed official complaints with DHS and the U.S. Department of Justice. Haque-Hausrath’s complaint maintained that it is unacceptable for a top-ranking ICE official with authority over immigrants of all races, nationalities and religious backgrounds to send such a racially charged email to anyone, especially from a work computer and during work hours.

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Department of Homeland Security officer disciplined over anti-Muslim hate comments on Facebook

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A veteran officer with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in Chicago is being disciplined after posting hundreds of racist and derogatory comments on Facebook.

His name is Roy Egan. Not only were Officer Egan’s racial and religious rants open for anyone to see, for years he openly identified himself by name on Facebook and listed his employer as U.S. Homeland Security-TSA, the Transportation Security Administration.

For the past nine years, Egan has worked as a TSA baggage screener at O’Hare Airport. The 46-year-old has noted on his Facebook page, “I look for bad stuff going on airplanes.”

But it wasn’t Egan’s personal data that caught the eye of the I-Team. It was his public postings calling “Islam a cult that glorifies death…and a filthy religion.” It is a theme Egan repeated in postings just about every day: that Muslims should be exterminated.

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Add Muslim college students to the list of locals the NYPD spied on

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Associated Press’s series on NYPD spying continues today with the news that Muslim students at colleges in New York were investigated covertly by the secret NYPD and CIA program that also monitored community centers, government allies, and entire neighborhoods in the years after September 11. The new report places NYPD undercover officers at schools including Brooklyn College, Baruch, Hunter, City College, Queens College, La Guardia, and St. John’s, where they sought out student radicalization. But according to experts, their methods “may have broken a 19-year-old pact with the colleges and violated U.S. privacy laws, jeopardizing millions of dollars in federal research money and student aid.”

“The government, through the police department, is working privately to destroy the private lives of Muslim citizens,” said Moustafa Bayoumi, an English professor at Brooklyn College.

New York Magazine, 11 October 2011

See also “CAIR seeks DOJ probe of NYPD violation of Muslim students’ privacy”, CAIR press release, 11 October 2011

Immigration officer forwards racist email to Muslim-American lawyer

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Shahid Haque-Hausrath

HELENA — Shahid Haque-Hausrath sat down at his computer on the morning of Sept. 28 and, as he does at the start of most work days, began reading his email. In his inbox that morning was an email from the state’s top U.S. Department of Homeland Security Immigration and Customs Enforcement official, Bruce Norum.

Haque-Hausrath is an immigration attorney who often deals with ICE on immigration and deportation cases, so he wasn’t necessarily surprised to see an email from Norum, the supervisory detention and deportation officer for Montana.

Haque-Hausrath said he was somewhat perplexed by the email’s subject line: “FW: This AA Pilot tells it like it is …” In the body of the email Norum simply wrote “Good read” ahead of a forwarded message.

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California: man pleads guilty to attacks on clinic and mosque

Posted on by Bob Pitt

MADERA, Calif. — A Madera County man is facing time in federal prison after pleading guilty to firebombing a Planned Parenthood clinic and to vandalizing a mosque. Prosecutors say Donny Mower pleaded guilty Friday to arson, damaging religious property and to a law that makes it a federal crime to damage the property of a reproductive health services facility.

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Conservative shock jock reels off Islamophobia’s greatest hits

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Conservative shock jock Bryan Fischer whipped out his best anti-Muslim rhetoric at the Values Voter Summit on Saturday.

Some highlights:

“Christians and Muslims do not believe in the same God.”

“I believe it’s important that we have a president who understands that Islam is not a religion of peace, but a religion of war and violence and death.”

“Every single Mosque in America is a potential recruiting or training cell for Islamic terror.”

“The greatest long-term threat to our security and liberty is not radical Islam, but Islam itself.”

“This is not Islamophobia, this is Islamo-realism.”

“The more devout a Muslim becomes, the more of a threat he becomes to our national security.”

TPM, 8 October 2011

‘No ragheads’ response to plan for Islamic centre in Illinois town

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Timoth Sylvia, pastor of HOPE United Church of Christ in Naperville, first noticed the signs saying “Vote No to Mosque on 248” early this week.

The signs relate to the possible annexation into Naperville of a 14-acre property on 248th Avenue just south of 95th Street. The land is currently owned by the United Church of Christ’s national organization. However, the Islamic Center of Naperville is working to purchase the land and get it annexed into the city. The site includes a four-bedroom house which United Church of Christ used for offices before moving to its new location at 1701 Quincy Ave. in Naperville this summer. The rest of the property is farmland.

The annexation was discussed on Wednesday night at the Naperville Planning and Zoning Commission meeting. The meeting may have been the spark for those who put the signs up in the area.

Sylvia said he got word Monday that signs had been put up on the property. He said one sign put in the front yard of the property said “No Ragheads on 248”. “It was just disheartening,” he said. There were also signs saying a basic “Vote No to Mosque on 248” on utility poles up and down 248th Avenue, he said, and also along stretches of Route 59 in Naperville.

Naperville Sun, 6 October 2011

See also Chicago Tribune, 7 October 2011

Posted in USA

Hertz suspends praying Muslim shuttle drivers

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Zainab AweisIn the three years she’s worked as a shuttle driver for Hertz at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, Zainab Aweis, had always taken time out of her shift each day to pray.

An observant Muslim, she prays five times a day – with one, sometimes two of those prayer times falling during her shift. “That was the one benefit of the job,” the 20-year-old said.

On Friday, she and 33 other drivers – all of them Somali Muslims – were suspended indefinitely from their jobs after they took religious breaks to pray while at work without first clocking out. A spokesman for Teamsters Local 117, which represents the workers, said it is trying to get the workers back on the job.

While the drivers were allowed two 10-minute breaks during their work shifts during which they could pray, Teamsters officials said managers had agreed in negotiations that workers would not have to clock out and in, though the contact itself does not address the matter.

And the workers and their union said Hertz had previously not required that workers clock out for prayer. The union said it has filed an unfair-labor-practices complaint with the National Labor Relations Board against Hertz for failing to notify the union in advance of what it called a policy change.

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White House intervened to block notorious Islamophobes addressing security conference

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The CIA and Department of Homeland Security abruptly canceled a conference in August on homegrown U.S. radical extremism in what officials close to the issue say was an effort to block two conservative anti-terrorism experts from presenting their views.

The conference was slated for Aug. 10 through 12 at agency headquarters in McLean and was to have been hosted by the CIA Threat Management Unit. It was organized by the intelligence subcommittee of the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments.

“The conference topic is a critical one for domestic law enforcement, and the sponsors – in partnership with the Department of Homeland Security – have decided to delay the conference so it can include insights from among other sources, the new National Strategy for Counterterrorism in an updated agenda,” wrote CIA police officer Lt. Joshua Fielder in an email announcing the postponement in early August.

According to people close to the conference, the event was ordered “postponed” after Muslim advocacy groups contacted the Department of Homeland Security and the White House about the scheduled speakers, who included Stephen Coughlin and Steve Emerson, both specialists on the Islamist terror threat.

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FBI Director says anti-Muslim counterterrorism training sessions were ‘isolated incidents’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Robert MuellerFBI Director Robert Mueller told the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence on Thursday that the counterterrorism training sessions conducted by his bureau that claimed American-Muslims were likely to be terrorist sympathizers were isolated.

Mueller called the FBI training materials in question “inappropriate offensive content” but asserted they weren’t commonplace, calling the incidents “an aberration.”

“I think that’s a very valid concern. And as I have pointed out, I think this is a very unusual occasion,” Mueller said.

“We have undertaken a review from top to bottom of our counterterrorism training. I think these are isolated incidents,” Mueller said. “We have 34,000 employees and we do a great deal of training. We understand the sensitivity and the importance of assuring that that training that we give to our persons are appropriate.”

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