Racial Profiling Gains Support as Search Tactic

As law enforcement agencies across the nation search for suspects in the Sept. 11 attacks and try to head off further terrorism, they are operating in a climate that affords them wider latitude to engage in racial profiling. Even some longtime critics of the practice now acknowledge that it is inevitable or even appropriate under the circumstances.

So far, 125 people of Arab extraction have been detained by law enforcement authorities since the attacks, and hundreds, perhaps thousands, have been questioned.

Federal authorities say they are trying to be respectful of people’s rights, and police departments deny that they are singling out suspects based on their appearance.

But others say they feel targeted. The Council on American Islamic Relations, while forcefully condemning the attacks and urging greater airport security, said that Arab Americans have been unfairly harassed by federal agents because of their ethnic background.

“We support whatever the Justice Department needs to catch the perpetrators and have encouraged our members to talk to the FBI, but giving widespread powers to the officers on the street without guidance could be dangerous,” said Khalid Iqbal of the council.

Recent polls suggest that the public is willing to allow law enforcement some leeway when it comes to using race in making stops. A few days after the attacks, 68% of those questioned by the Los Angeles Times Poll said they would approve of law enforcement “randomly stopping people who may fit the profile of suspected terrorists.” A CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll also found that a majority of Americans supported requiring people of Arab descent, including U.S. citizens, to “undergo special, more intensive security checks before boarding airplanes in the U.S.”

That newfound acceptance of once widely criticized police tactics extends to some who historically have expressed reservations about such targeting.

“The difficulty we must now address is a situation in which all the hijackers are from abroad, all are from the Middle East and all are Arabic speaking,” said Floyd Abrams, a noted 1st Amendment lawyer in New York. Abrams served on the 1997 Gore commission on airport security, which cautioned about racial profiling.

“In those circumstances it seems entirely appropriate to look harder at such people,” Abrams said. “Remember, Justice [Robert] Jackson said, ‘the Constitution is not a suicide pact.’ ”

Arab Americans Face Increased Scrutiny

Racial profiling has generally been defined as law enforcement officers selecting someone for investigation or stronger action on the basis of race, national origin or ethnicity. Although Arab and Middle Eastern people may be difficult to quickly identify as such, people with features suggesting that lineage are complaining about feeling singled out.

A spokesman for the U.S. Department of Justice’s Community Relations Service said it has received complaints, but could not provide specific numbers.

Even some liberal scholars, such as Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe, believe Arab Americans are going to be subject to increased scrutiny.

Tribe said he doubted that there was “any imaginable way of having people with the responsibility of making on-the-spot decisions about whom to detain or whom to question disregard facts about ethnicity” while performing their jobs. “We may aspire to not take into account these factors, but it’s like standing in the corner of a room trying not to think about a green elephant in the room because you’ve been told not to think about it.”

Civil Liberties Curtailed During Times of War

There is ample historical precedent for civil liberties being shredded during times of crisis--including the criminalization of speech urging resistance to the draft during World War I and the internment of thousands of Japanese Americans during World War II.

“In times of war, the laws are silent,” wrote Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, quoting a famous Latin maxim in “All the Laws But One,” his 1998 book about civil liberties in wartime.

Racial profiling has been the subject of intense public debate in the U.S. in recent years. Frequently, the issue has arisen in the context of police agencies being criticized for making allegedly unwarranted stops of African American motorists.

More than a dozen states have passed laws on the subject in recent years. Since 1999, 10 states have enacted measures requiring the collection of data on the racial makeup of people stopped by law enforcement officers. Three states passed laws whose stated intent was to eliminate racial profiling.

Last year, President Clinton told federal law enforcement officials to begin collecting data on the race, ethnicity and gender of the people they detain for questioning. George W. Bush and Al Gore decried racial profiling in last year’s presidential campaign, as have law enforcement officials in recent days--among them Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft, FBI Director Robert Mueller and Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca.

However, what is racial profiling to one person is basic prudence to another, particularly now.

In a nationwide hunt for suspects in a case where all the known suspects are of Middle Eastern origin, law enforcement officers understandably may focus on certain ethnic characteristics, said Los Angeles Police Chief Bernard C. Parks.

“They would not be human if they did not alert to these circumstances,” he said. “But they have to check that and see if there’s other cause. . . . Actions have to drive what officers do, not appearances.”

Parks said he has sensed a pronounced shift in the public’s tolerance of police using racial cues to make stops, but he said officers must resist succumbing to that temptation. “Police officers still have to have some cause to do anything,” Parks said.

Supreme Court rulings during the last 25 years have given authorities wide berth in making decisions on when they can stop or arrest someone they consider a suspect.

A key decision came in the 1976 case of U.S. vs. Martinez-Fuerte, in which the high court considered the constitutionality of the government’s use of permanent checkpoints away from borders.

The high court sustained the conviction of a Mexican man, who had been living legally in the U.S., for smuggling immigrants into the country. The justices rejected 7-2 the defendant’s contention that people of Mexican lineage were stopped more often than others at the checkpoints.

The court said the Border Patrol was entitled to broad discretion in where to locate the checkpoints and how to run them.

Since then, several federal appeals courts have rejected challenges to drug convictions raised by members of minority groups who contended that they were unfairly targeted. In 1992, the U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals rebuffed such a challenge from a Los Angeles defendant who was arrested at the Kansas City Airport by a police officer who described the defendant as “a roughly dressed young black male.”

Although the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last year that Border Patrol agents may not consider an individual’s “Hispanic appearance,” the weight of court precedent continues to uphold the use of race as a factor in making stops. As a result, liberals such as University of Toledo law professor David A. Harris think the possibility of law enforcement abuses--however well-intentioned--is substantial.

“I would hope that as we go forward with greater security measures that we will look to the lessons we learned in the racial profiling and crime context and not make the same mistakes,” Harris said.

Harris noted that media exposes and congressional hearings helped put pressure on the U.S. Customs Service to change its policies regarding whom to target at the nation’s airports while searching for drugs. Customs data that emerged in the late 1990s revealed that the agency was excessively targeting black women as drug couriers.

The agency changed its policies after Raymond Kelly became chief of Customs in 1998, changing the criteria on whom to search with a greater emphasis on certain behaviors rather than ethnic background. The outcome was fewer searches but a significantly higher percentage of successful ones, according to agency statistics.

Last week, Kelly, who was just named to a new federal commission looking at ways to improve airport security, said it makes sense to give greater scrutiny at airport checkpoints to people from Mideast countries, but only if there are other reasons for suspicion.

He said a person carrying a passport from a Middle Eastern nation could be questioned or searched more closely based on ethnicity if, for example, the individual’s itinerary was suspicious.

“Race can be a factor to be looked at,” Kelly said. “It should not be the only factor.”

Officials Warn Against Harassment

A few law enforcement officials said that categorically it would be wrong to single out people of Middle Eastern descent for special scrutiny.

“Our public does not need to be harassed unduly because we’re in a stressful period now,” Baca said. “It’s not OK to target any group, whether it’s Arab American, Asian American, Latin American, Irish American or otherwise because of what you think they look like. . . . It’s a dangerous game to play.”

U.S. Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), one of Congress’ most outspoken critics of racial profiling, agreed. Conyers said he would press ahead with legislation to outlaw the practice. Conyers and Sen. Russell D. Feingold (D-Wis.), who is the prime sponsor of a similar bill in the Senate, said the legislation is important to head off racist sentiments that could arise as a result of the terrorist attacks.

Already, Arab Americans in Southern California, Washington, D.C. and other places say they have been interrogated about matters that go well beyond any knowledge they might have about the hijackings or anyone involved in them--including questions about their political beliefs.

Visit, Questions from the FBI

Hani Teebi, 38, a Garden Grove food wholesaler, said FBI agents visited his home one evening last week. He said he was watching television when two agents knocked on his door. They asked to talk to him as well as his wife, Manal Khreshi, 37, who has a doctorate in physics and is a homemaker and active member of the Islamic Center of Orange County.

Teebi said he told them to make an appointment to meet away from the house.

According to Teebi, one of the agents responded, “You should not be offended; we didn’t bring in a SWAT team.” “What did I do to bring in a SWAT team?” Teebi said he asked the agents in bewilderment.

Teebi said the agents asked if he knew anything about the attack or if he knew anybody who was happy about it. He replied, “I don’t know anybody who feels good about this; they murdered innocent people.” The FBI agents asked his wife the same questions, added Teebi, a Kuwait native of Palestinian descent, who immigrated to the United States 20 years ago.

“My wife doesn’t go out. I haven’t let my [four] kids go out for three, four days. I can understand that they [FBI] have some concerns, but at the same time we are being harassed by our own government. In a way, I don’t blame them, but it’s not my fault.”

Asked why he thinks the FBI questioned him, Teebi said it may be because his wife lectures and writes on women and Islam and attends Muslim conferences.

Then, he suggested another possible reason: “We don’t have blue eyes.”

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Times staff writers Beth Shuster, Maura Dolan, Kim Murphy and Stephanie Simon contributed to this story.