The Alhussainis are just two of the 15,000 Iraqis in America whom the FBI plans to interview as part of the Homeland Security Department’s two-week-old Operation Liberty Shield. According to FBI Director Robert Mueller, 6,700 Iraqis–most of them recent immigrants who fled after the first gulf war–have already been interviewed. “We hope to get intelligence information that might be beneficial to the war effort,” says John Iannarelli, special agent with the FBI’s Press Office. “We are also looking for information on people who may want to carry out terrorist acts here in the United States.” The FBI believes Saddam has intelligence officers in Canada who plan to cross the border and terrorize the United States. “We want to be helpful,” says Ahmad Al-Akhras of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. “In the end it’s our country, too, and we want to make everyone safe.”
But compliance can be risky: at least 30 people have been detained and in some cases deported as a result of the interviews. The unannounced FBI visits to the homes and workplaces of U.S. Iraqis (a population estimated at between 300,000 to 500,000) are roiling communities and enraging civil-liberties groups. The ACLU has been inundated with calls since Operation Liberty Shield went into effect, and in Los Angeles it set up a hot line last week especially for Iraqis. “What’s so terrible is that these people left their country because they were fearful of persecution,” says Ramona Ripston, executive director of the ACLU’s southern California chapter. “Now in America, another form of persecution is taking place. This is a very frightened community.”
Many of those under scrutiny have already been fingerprinted and photographed in a mandatory registration program enforced under last year’s Patriot Act. Now they are subject to a new round of interrogation. The interviews, says the FBI, are conducted on a voluntary basis, and even the most agitated Iraqi-Americans credit agents with being unfailingly cordial and polite. Still, “the questions are getting very personal,” said one Iraqi who was grilled. “Like, ‘What are your religious beliefs? Where do you worship? Are you for or against the war in Iraq?’ What does that have to do with helping to topple Saddam?”
Tensions are already high among Arab-Americans and Muslims: there has been a 1,700 percent rise in hate crimes against them since the 9-11 attacks. Now many say the FBI visits are putting them at risk. In New York, an Iraqi woman was asked by her landlord to vacate her apartment after an FBI agent was spotted at her door, and an Iraqi in Michigan experienced threats from a co-worker after being interviewed at his job.
FBI Director Mueller defended the questioning of U.S. Iraqis last week, saying that the interviews have already yielded “a wealth of information,” including the location of bunkers and tunnel systems in Baghdad. But the view in much of the Arab community is that while the United States is trying to woo the citizens of Iraq by promising them liberty, Iraqi-Americans who already condemn Saddam are being seen as suspected criminals. “None of us like Saddam Hussein,” says Alhussaini. “Most Iraqis moved to this country to escape his government, to seek freedom and civil liberties. We made our allegiance with the United States, we love this country. Now we feel our freedoms are at risk again.”
