In the weeks after 9/11, many Arab and Muslim
immigrants were awakened in the middle of the night by the sound of FBI agents
knocking on their doors. Nationwide, the government imprisoned 762 immigrants,
who became known as the “September 11 detainees.” Sixty-four percent were from
New York City; one third were Pakistani. None was charged with
terrorism-related crimes, although most were deported for violating immigration
law. In November 2001, Attorney General John Ashcroft called for the
interrogation (“voluntary interviews” in Department of Justice parlance) of up
to 5,000 immigrants from countries known to harbor terrorists; five months
later, the department announced plans to question 3,000 more Arabs and Muslims.
In New York City, no neighborhood was harder hit than
Brooklyn’s Little Pakistan. Before 9/11, Mohammad Razvi owned a 99-cent store
on Coney Island Avenue, Little Pakistan’s main street. After 9/11, the area
became a ghost town. While some residents had disappeared into immigration
jails, many more left the city on their own, fleeing to Canada or back to
Pakistan. And after the federal government announced its “Special Registration”
program in 2002—which required male visa holders from Pakistan (and 24 other
countries) to be photographed, fingerprinted, and questioned—there was a second
exodus.
Razvi eventually sold his store and opened a
nonprofit called COPO across the street, giving the neighborhood free legal
help. Today his office doubles as a sort of unofficial museum. A red plastic
inmate bracelet sits on a side table, once worn by a college student wrongly
detained in a New Jersey jail. He keeps a white binder stuffed with post-9/11
surveys of area residents. A 13-year-old girl wrote, “This lady called me a
terrorist and made killing signs.” And on Razvi’s desk, he has the business
cards that were left in doorways all over the neighborhood, each with same job
title: FBI Special Agent.
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