CAIR-MI officials announcing the lawsuit

DETROIT — The Michigan chapter of Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-MI) filed a lawsuit against President Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter and the U.S. ambassador to Yemen Matthew Tueller  on Thursday for failing to make efforts to evacuate U.S. citizens stranded in war-torn Yemen.

CAIR national, The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) and Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Asian Law Caucus (ALC) also sued federal officials for the same reason.

CAIR-MI is suing the State Department in federal court on behalf of 37 Yemeni American Michiganders. The organization also sent a letter to Obama and Kerry informing them of the lawsuit and urging them to come to the rescue of Yemeni Americans stuck in the conflict zone.

“The reason the U.S. government is not fulfilling its obligations is not because it lacks the capacity to evacuate its citizens in Yemen,” the letter reads. “The United States has numerous naval assets off the coast of Yemen… If the United States wants to evacuate its citizens from Yemen, it can orchestrate conditions that would make an evacuation feasible.”

On March 26, an alliance of Arab nations led by Saudi Arabia began dropping bombs targeting Houthi forces, which have taken over most of the country. According to the CAIR-MI legal complaint, at least one Yemeni American died in the shelling. The lawsuit estimated the number of Americans in Yemen at 55,000. 

The state department announced that the government has no plans to evacuate citizens in Yemen. The Saudi-led offensive has imposed a no-fly zone, making it difficult for Yemenis to leave the country.

The CAIR-MI lawsuit accuses the State Department of violating the Assignment of Emergency Preparedness Responsibilities executive order, which requires “planning for the protection, evacuation and repatriation of United States citizens in threatened areas overseas.”

CAIR-MI staff attorney Lena Masri said the federal government has 60 days to respond to the complaint, but CAIR is seeking an emergency court order to compel the Department of State to follow through with its duties and evacuate Americans stranded in Yemen.

Masri added that the U.S. government has consistently evacuated American citizens from “dangerous and unpredictable” conflict zones in the past. 

The legal complaint cites more than 10 cases where the Department of State evacuated U.S. citizens from dangerous war zones, including Lebanon in 2006, when the State Department and Department of Defense moved 15,000 Americans out of Lebanon to Cyprus via helicopters and commercial ships. 

The lawsuit states that the plaintiffs could not find a single case where the U.S. government failed to move its citizens out of war zones since the executive order was signed in 1988. 

“The United States has the strongest military in the world,” Masri said. “It is incredible that countries like Somalia, India, Pakistan and Russia have evacuated their citizens from Yemen, and the country with the strongest military does not even have a plan to protect its citizens.”

Masri described the U.S. lack of action as a “precedent.”

The lawsuit alleges that the failure  to act in helping Yemeni Americans is a part of a “range of discriminatory policies and practices that specifically target U.S. citizens of Yemeni national origin.”

The legal complaint cites the withholding and delaying the passport applications of American citizens in Yemen as an example of the alleged discriminatory policies. 

Masri said CAIR is working closely with the Yemeni American community to resolve the issue. The CAIR-MI attorney, along with the organization’s executive director Dawud Walid, will travel to Washington next week, where they will meet with Michigan’s congressional delegation to lobby for an emergency evacuation of U.S. citizens from Yemen.