DETROIT — The Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-MI) filed a lawsuit on Thursday on behalf of several Muslims who are challenging their placement on the government’s Terrorist Screening Database, “without due process.” 

The lawsuit was announced at the Theodore Levin Federal Courthouse in Detroit, where the case was filed. 

“The federal government has unjustly and disproportionately targeted American Muslims by routinely adding their names to the Terrorist Screening Database without affording them their rights to due process,” CAIR-MI staff attorney Lena Masri said in a statement. “The lawsuit will challenge the government’s broad and unchecked power to secretly label individuals as ‘known or suspected terrorists’ without concrete facts, but based on only a vague standard of ‘reasonable suspicion.'”

There are five plaintiffs named in the lawsuit.

The lawsuit demands that the court declare the watch list unconstitutional; acknowledge that the rights of American Muslims on the list were violated and require the federal government to provide notice and a meaningful opportunity for individuals on the list to defend themselves. 

“This lawsuit is an expression of anger grounded in law. Our federal government is imposing an injustice of historic proportions upon the Americans who have filed this action, as well as thousands of others,” reads the lawsuit complaint. “Through extra‐judicial and secret means, the federal government is ensnaring individuals into an invisible web of consequences that are imposed indefinitely and without recourse as a result of the shockingly large federal watch lists that now include hundreds of thousands of individuals.”

The terrorist watch list made international headlines last week after a leaked document revealed that 40 percent of the people on the list had no connection to terrorism. The report also claimed that Dearborn has the second highest number of “known or suspected terrorists” after New York City.

Several civil rights organizations, including The Arab-American Civil Rights League (ACRL), American‑Arab Anti‑Discrimination Committee (ADC) and CAIR-MI, held a press conference in front of Dearborn City Hall on Friday, Aug. 8, to denounce the report and refute its findings about Dearborn.

Barbara McQuade, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, joined the conference and defended the Dearborn community. 

“To the people of Dearborn, I say to you: I stand with you,” McQuade said. “I’m here to serve you, to work with you, to protect you. To the people outside of Dearborn, I’m here to tell you that we should all be so lucky to have neighbors like the great neighbors in Dearborn.” 

She added that nobody from Dearborn has ever been convicted of committing acts of terrorism. She questioned the authenticity of the document.

“Of the alleged document, I am skeptical of the accuracy and very skeptical of those numbers,” McQuade said.

Speaking to The Arab American News, community activist Suehaila Amen slammed Dearborn officials for remaining silent about the report.

“The report is not only against Arab Americans but Dearborn as a whole,” Amen said. “We have 96,000 people in Dearborn. With the disproportionate numbers compared to cities like Houston and Chicago, that means everyone in Dearborn could have ties in some capacity to terrorism, which is absolutely absurd.” 

She urged city officials to speak out against the report.

“The silence of our elected officials is not helping, especially when the media is running wild with the story,” she said. “If you don’t defend your constituents and stand up against these types of claims that are made to incite fear, then you are contributing to this climate of fear.”