Racist Outrage: African Teen Sista A "Terrorist Threat" In Harlem Detained

[Jahness]

Racist Outrage:African Teen Sista A "TerroristThreat" In Harlem Detained

NOTE: There are many other young Muslim students being detained or under surveillance by Homeland Security's extensive spy structure. They are hidden from reporters, families and school officials. All education advocates must at least make a statement of outrage against these actions that violate the human & civil rights of these children.

Here in NYC, we have at least two teenage women of color being held as a
"Terrorist threat" in the public lite. We should find ways to take advantage of this public information and fight for their immediate release and support any pursuit of a lawsuit against the US government.

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
NYTIMES.COM
April 9, 2005

Teachers and Classmates Express Outrage at Arrest of Girl, 16, as a Terrorist Threat

By NINA BERNSTEIN

At Heritage High School in East Harlem, where the student idiom is hip-hop and salsa, the 16-year-old Guinean girl stood out, but not just because she
wore Islamic dress. She was so well liked that when she ran for student body president, she came in second to one of her best friends - the Christian daughter of the president of the parent-teacher
association, Deleen P. Carr.

Now Ms. Carr, a speech pathologist who calls herself "a typical American
citizen," is as outraged as the girl's teachers and classmates, who have
learned that the girl and another 16-year-old are being called would-be suicide bombers and are being held in an immigration detention center in Pennsylvania.

"They have painted this picture of her as this person that is trying to destroy our way of life, and I know in my heart of hearts that this is bogus," said Ms. Carr, who welcomed the Guinean girl to her house daily and knows her family well. "I feel like, how dare they? She's a minor, and even if she's not a citizen, she has rights as a human being."

According to a government document provided to The New York Times by a
federal official earlier this week, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has
asserted that both girls are "an imminent threat to the security of the United States based on evidence that they plan to be suicide bombers." No evidence was cited, and federal officials will not comment on the case.

Its mysteries deepened as teachers and neighbors gave details of the
Guinean girl's life, like the jeans she wore under her Muslim garb, her lively classroom curiosity about topics like Judaism and art and her after-school care for four younger siblings while her parents, illegal immigrants who have lived in the United States since 1990, eked out a living.

"I just can't fathom this," said her art teacher, Kimberly Lane, who has
repeatedly called the youth detention center but like Ms. Carr was not
allowed to speak to the girl, who has no lawyer. Among the unanswered questions they raised was why, if she was really a suspect, no F.B.I. agent had shown up to search her school locker or question her classmates, who sent her letters of support.

"This is a girl who's been in this country since she was 2 years old," Ms.
Lane said. "She's just a regular teenager - like, two weeks ago her biggest
worry was whether she'd done her homework or studied for a science test."

Until now, attention has focused on the other 16-year-old, a Bangladeshi
girl reared in Queens who could not deal with the hurly-burly of her West
Side high school and withdrew into home schooling. Yesterday, on a motion of the government, an immigration judge closed the Bangladeshi girl's bond hearing to the public and adjourned it to next Thursday, said Troy Mattes, a lawyer who is taking over the case but has yet to meet her.

By the Bangladeshi girl's account, reported by her mother, the girls did not meet until March 24, after their separate arrests in early-morning raids on immigration charges against their parents. Both grew up in Islamic families. But while the Bangladeshi girl had grown increasingly pious, and uncomfortable in the urban culture of the High School of Environmental Studies on West 56th Street, the Guinean girl, a 10th grader, embraced every aspect of Heritage High, at 106th Street and Lexington Avenue, her teachers said.

"She is, yes, an orthodox Muslim, but completely integrated into this school," said Jessica Siegel, her English teacher in a class in which topics like teenage pregnancy and world politics were discussed. Ms. Siegel was profiled in the book "Small Victories," by Samuel G. Freedman, as an unsentimental, but fiercely committed teacher who provoked and delighted her students.

"She's a wonderful, wonderful girl," Ms. Siegel said. "She's about the last
person anyone could imagine being a suicide bomber."

The English teacher's most vivid recollection was of a day two months ago
when she heard a kind of roar in the hallway of the school, which is full
of colorful student collages and life-size sculptures in papier-mâché. The teenager had stopped wearing her veil, and she beamed as her fellow students, seeing her face for the first time, cheered.

After the class read "Night," the Holocaust memoir by Elie Wiesel, the girl wrote a paper about genocide in the Sudan, she recalled. But she was so
excited about a field trip to see Christo's "Gates" in Central Park, Ms. Siegel said, that she skipped an appointment at immigration - a teenage impulse the teacher now worries might have set off problems with federal authorities. Her father is now in immigration jail facing deportation.

At Woodrow Wilson Houses a few blocks from the school, a sticker on the
family's apartment door reads, "Allah is our protector." Yesterday no one
was home, but across the hall, Christine Anderson, a neighbor, shook her head in disbelief when she learned why she had not seen the girl or her father in recent weeks.

"Why would they take the lady's daughter?" she asked. "They're nice
people, and hard-working people. I've been here four years. I know she's not a problem child."

Ms. Lane, the art teacher, said that when Heritage High first learned that
immigration agents had picked up the girl, one of her best friends asked if
someone from the school might have denounced her as an illegal immigrant. "I remember telling her the government doesn't go after 16-year-old girls," Ms. Lane said. "And in the last few days, I'm wrestling with the fact that, yes, it does."
--------------
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Posted in the Spirit of Learning & Sharing.

One Love & Repect Always

[TheQuestioner]

How did I not see this coming? I should have remembered that black muslims would be a target. (more than they already were)

[OKULAJA]

This issue of Colonial Detention of Immigrants (everyone in America are either immigrants, captives, or invaders, aside from the Indigenous People) needs to be organized into a Mass People's Movement.

Immigration Offices and Federal Buildings need to be Marched on. High Officials need to be Mass-Mailed/Emailed/Faxed/Called. The People must be Agitated, Educated, Organized, and Mobilized on this Issue. Its the Power of the People that make Revolution.

Who on this board is in that area? Who can get more info on this case and many others like it? Get in contact with the families and Immigrant Community Support Groups? Who can get in contact with Forces up there and spark this?

[Jahness]

Greetings OKULAJA and TheQuestioner!

You both are right on point. We all know the oppressor will always find a new way to continue with its oppressive tactics.

OKULAJA your suggestions are great in helping to deal with this very serious issue, that will become more prevalent in our communities. We really need to get out there and start have rallies and marches around these issues.

A lot more of our people should be outraged at these things actually happening. Not enough of us cry out for change when yt decides to do us this type of injustices.

I don't know if you all noticed but the oppressor is actually going after our children lately. They are oppressing these children blatantly in schools and not enough parents or schoool officials are calling for major changes to stop this oppressive behavior.

We must never stop in our pursuit to defeat our enemy.

Much appreciation to you both for voicing your views.

[IfasehunReincarnated]

and just a few months ago certain members were rallying around a certain board member that works for immigrations as "harmless" and "just making a living". lets hope he doesnt a promotion to serving warrants on children. that a pay raise that comes with wicked karma.

[DJ RBG]

shhhh...keep it down Warrior King that pig hasnt been around since his avatar was changed, lol lets not talk him up.

[Jahness]

Greetings DJ RBG & IfasehunReincarnated!

Nice to see you both viewing the thread....

hmmmm do I detect a side conversation going on here in my thread.... that's a no, no warriors... LOL

Seriously though, what are your views on the issue at hand. I can't believe both of you visited and did not leave a comment...come on let me know what you think warriors. You know I value both your opinions :o


Stay blessed and return with some comments please...this is a thinking space no free parking allowed LOL

[Jahness]

Harlem Muslim Teen Sista Released from 6-Week "Terror" Inquiry


The New York Times
May 7, 2005

Elation in Harlem as Girl Held in Terror Inquiry Is Released
By NINA BERNSTEIN

It began with two 16-year-old immigrant girls arrested at dawn,
detained far from home, and, in a chilling government assertion,
called would-be suicide bombers who posed "an imminent threat to
the security of the United States."

But now, after holding the girls for six weeks in a Pennsylvania
detention center, the government has quietly released one of the
girls and is allowing the other to leave the country with her
family.

One girl, an immigrant from Guinea, was back in her East Harlem
high school yesterday among the jubilant friends and teachers who
have insisted all along that the accusation was absurd. The other
girl, who grew up in Queens, was still in detention, but was
granted an order from an immigration judge that will allow her and
her parents to return to their native Bangladesh as soon as the
trip can be arranged.

Many questions remain unanswered in a case that has been marked
from the start by secrecy, including closed hearings, sealed F.B.I.
declarations, and orders barring the lawyers from disclosing
government information. James Margolin, an F.B.I. spokesman, did
not return calls seeking comment on the latest developments, and
earlier had said he could not discuss the cases.

But Natasha Pierre, the lawyer for the Guinean girl, Adama Bah,
said the outcome spoke for itself. "She should never have been
detained in the first place," Ms. Pierre said of her client, who
was not yet 2 when she arrived in New York with her parents,
Muslims who have a trinket shop near a subway stop in Bushwick,
Brooklyn. "I'm still under a gag order and I have to be very
careful not to cross the line. All I can say is she's innocent -
she's more than innocent. The girl doesn't know anything."

The teenager's release came with conditions that Ms. Pierre said
she was restrained from discussing. But the lawyer indicated that
the conditions included Adama's being available to government
investigators and reporting to immigration authorities. Her father,
Mamadou Bah, a former cabdriver, is in a detention center in
Elizabeth, N.J., facing deportation for immigration violations.

Jessica Siegel, Adama's English teacher, was among many adults in
the girl's life who had described her as a vibrant, popular
teenager who wore jeans under her Islamic garb, ran for student
body president, and hung out with the daughter of the PTA
president, a Christian girl, when she was not baby-sitting for her
younger brothers and sisters.

Her return was a joyful celebration. "She's seeing everybody, and
she's smiling because people are jumping up and down and ecstatic,"
Ms. Siegel said in a cellphone call from school. "She's like a
little bird that just got out of a cage."

Fellow students began laughing and crying at the same time when
they saw her walk in, said a friend, Yolanda Lawrence, 15. Many had
tried to send Adama letters of support, but were told that she was
not allowed to receive or send mail in the maximum security
juvenile detention center, in Berks County, Pa., and was allowed
one five-minute phone call from her mother each week.

The gag order imposed by an immigration judge at the government's
insistence seemed to be weighing on Adama when she emerged briefly
from Heritage High School between classes. She repeated what she
had been telling friends and teachers inside: "I can't talk about
the case."

But by evening, in her lawyer's office in Brooklyn, she felt safe
enough to talk a bit.

"I'm happy to see my friends, and especially my family," she said.
When federal agents released her to her mother, in the family's
apartment in East Harlem, "my mother couldn't stop smiling."

Her detention experience remains vivid, though.

"I cried a lot," she said. " You just feel depressed, you just feel
like nothing when you're in there."

Asked if she understood why she had been detained, the girl
replied, "Honestly, no." She added, speaking of federal agents,
"They asked a lot of questions."

Ms. Pierre said she herself was at a loss to explain how Adama was
swept into the investigation. She and the Bangladeshi girl, seized
separately on March 24, were not even friends.

Troy Mattes, the lawyer for the Bangladeshi girl, has also said
that his client is no would-be suicide bomber, just a regular
teenager devoted to her Islamic faith. Her name is not being
published because she is a minor still in custody who has not been
charged with any crime.

The girl's parents, who have lived in Queens for more than a dozen
years, had their longstanding applications for political asylum
closed administratively in the late 1990's, but had no outstanding
deportation orders against them. In normal circumstances, they
might have fought to legalize their immigration status.

But their daughter's detention changed everything, they said. When
the general consul of Bangladesh pressed for an explanation of her
detention, he said the Department of Homeland Security wrote last
week that the girl, who entered the United States with her mother
at the age of 4, was being held solely because she was in the
country illegally.

In response, the girl's parents formally asked the government to
let the whole family leave the country voluntarily.

Mr. Mattes said when he learned of Adama's impending release early
Thursday, he tried for a similar arrangement for his client. "No
dice," he said. Yesterday, an immigration judge signed an order
allowing the whole family's departure as soon as a flight and
passports could be arranged.

In the immigration case against Adama's father, deportation is all
but inevitable, according to a lawyer who reviewed the records.

He was granted political asylum in the early 1990's, but under the
false claim that he was from Mauritania, and lost asylum in the
late 1990's when he was found driving a cab under a friend's hack
license. Last year he exhausted an appeal to stay on the basis that
deportation to Guinea would be an extraordinary hardship for his
five children, four American-born.

But Adama said she hoped to make her own, separate case for staying
in the United States, the only country she has known.

"I'm really happy that I'm out," she said. "I just don't want them
to take me away again."

[IfasehunReincarnated]

I think the Bush Administration is making both subtle and swift actions to remove our freedoms. He is playing into the unconscious fears of 90% of white people by telling them that even our children are their enemy.

[Jahness]

Greetings IfasehunReincarnated

I would agree with your assessment of things. The bush administration is moving in very subtle ways.

At least they think we are not noticing what is going on and they way they are treating our children.

Everyday younger and yourger children are coming into contact with police brutality, and wrongfull imprisonment, even though they want us to believe it is only detainment.

Yes, I believe it is downright police brutality for our children to be hancuffed and taken to police stations as if they are criminals.

I must appeal to all Afrikan people to protest and speak out against this type of oppression. If we don't stop it now buy next week it is common place procedures.

I am happy this young sister is finally free. I hope they bring legal and criminal charges against all the parties involved who did this to her.
I know our sister has been traumatized for life.

Thanks for you input Ifasehun, it's valued and much appreciated.


May you path be continually blessed.