'Politicising security': Palestinian Americans sue US government over secret watchlist, no-fly list
Two Palestinian Americans have filed a lawsuit against the US government accusing the Biden administration of placing one of them on a "no-fly" list and the other on a watchlist for their activism and advocacy against Israel's ongoing war on Gaza.
Mustafa Zeidan and Osama Abu Irshaid filed the lawsuit on Monday, aided by the Council on American-Islamic Relations' national office and its Los Angeles chapter.
Abu Irshaid, who had previously been on a government watchlist and was taken off in 2017, said that he only found out he was back on such a list when returning home from an international trip in June.
He was unable to print out his boarding pass at the self-service kiosk at the airport, and when he went to the service desk, a boarding pass was issued with the lettering, "SSSS" (Secondary Security Screening Selection).
He was then detained by US federal agents, who proceeded to question him about his advocacy around Palestine.
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Abu Irshaid, the director of the Palestinian advocacy group American Muslims for Palestine, said when speaking with the agents, he asked why he had been placed on a watchlist when he had been taken off a similar list nearly a decade ago.
He recalled one agent telling him that "not many people like you get congressional letters targeting them. Not many people like you make the front page of newspapers".
"This just confirmed my suspicion that I'm being targeted merely just because of my activism for Palestine," Abu Irshaid told Middle East Eye.
"Security is being politicised. This is not about security. This is not about a potential threat to the safety of people, or the safety of aviation. It is more of utilising the government against its own citizens, against political dissent."
To add to Abu Irshaid's travel concerns, he told MEE he has also learned that his wife and daughter have now been placed on a watchlist as well.
MEE reached out to the Department of Justice for comment on this lawsuit but didn't receive a response by the time of publication.
Targeting pro-Palestine speech
Mustafa Zeidan, the other plaintiff in the lawsuit, has been barred from travel altogether after learning he had been placed on a "no-fly" list.
He learned of his fate after he tried travelling from Los Angeles to Jordan in March, a trip that he makes regularly to visit his ailing mother. This time, after arriving at the airport, he was told by federal agents that "he was forbidden from boarding his flight because of his status on the Government's secret list", according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit states that Zeidan has no idea why he has been placed on the list after having made the trip to Jordan many times without any issues.
The only part of his life that has changed since his last trip is that he organises a weekly protest calling for an end to US complicity in the war on Gaza, a war that rights groups, human rights experts and several countries have labelled a genocide.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations has litigated the government's use of no-fly lists against Muslim Americans several times before, most recently in November 2023.
Another case regarding the government's use of no-fly lists against Muslim and Arab Americans made it to the Supreme Court in 2020. There, the nation's top judicial body ruled that those individuals placed on the FBI's no-fly list for refusing to spy on their own communities would be allowed to sue individual FBI agents.
Abu Irshaid lambasted what he said was a political nature to his placement on the watchlist, as the Biden administration continues to stand behind Israel's war on Gaza, which has raged on for 10 months now. Israeli forces have killed more than 40,000 Palestinians since the war broke out in October.
The Biden administration has on some occasions condemned pro-Palestinian protests taking place on the streets of major US cities and on the lawns of leading American universities. Biden has referred to phrases used by protesters such as "intifada" as hate speech.
"Maybe the administration is following in the footsteps of the two nations it describes as autocratic - Russia and China. How do we differ from them, if we can politicise security and if we target political dissent that is protected by the First Amendment?" Abu Irshaid said.
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