The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, today announced that it has submitted a formal statement for the record in connection with today’s U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs hearing titled “Examining the Weaponization of the Quiet Skies Program.”
Click Here: Read CAIR’s Comments
Watch: Senate Hearing Examining the Weaponization of the Quiet Skies Program
In its written statement, CAIR applauded the committee for holding the hearing and for recognizing that the Transportation Security Administration’s “Quiet Skies” program, shut down earlier this year, was a costly and discriminatory failure that operated without statutory authority. CAIR emphasized that the program was an outgrowth of the broader federal terrorism watchlist system, which continues to impose unconstitutional harms on American Muslims and other minority communities.
CAIR’s submission urged Congress to exert greater oversight and authority over the watchlist enterprise, which was created administratively after 9/11 and has never been authorized by statute. The statement calls on lawmakers to press the executive branch to dismantle unconstitutional programs like the Terrorism Screening Dataset and No Fly List, and to reject efforts to codify the watchlist into law.
CAIR also congratulated Abed Ayoub, National Executive Director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), for his powerful testimony before the committee, which highlighted the lived experiences of those directly impacted by discriminatory surveillance and watchlist programs.
In a statement, CAIR Government Affairs Department Director Robert S. McCaw, who authored CAIR’s comments, said:
“The end of Quiet Skies was long overdue, but it should be seen as the beginning, not the end, of meaningful reform. Quiet Skies was just one branch of a sprawling watchlist system that has operated in secret, without congressional authorization, and with devastating consequences for countless innocent Americans.
“CAIR also welcomed Chairman Rand Paul’s continued acknowledgment during the hearing of the serious constitutional impacts that surveillance programs like Quiet Skies, and the broader federal watchlist system it grew out of, have had on the rights of Arab and Muslim Americans, as well as other targeted communities.
“Congress must now step in to demand transparency, restore due process, and dismantle the broader unconstitutional watchlist architecture so that no community is treated as a permanent suspect class in its own country.”
CAIR has long documented the discriminatory impact of federal watchlist programs. In its 2023 report Twenty Years Too Many, CAIR revealed that more than 98 percent of the names in the FBI’s 2019 Terrorism Screening Dataset were Muslim. CAIR also successfully litigated Fikre v. FBI before the U.S. Supreme Court, which unanimously held in 2023 that the government cannot evade judicial scrutiny of its No Fly List practices.
Read CAIR’s Report: Twenty Years Too Many
CAIR’s statement for the record urges Congress to:
- Affirm that the federal watchlist was never authorized by Congress and should not be codified into law.
- Press the executive branch to dismantle unconstitutional watchlist programs.
- Guarantee meaningful due process for those placed on government lists.
- Prohibit reliance on religion, nationality, ethnicity, or protected speech in security determinations.
- Defund discriminatory initiatives such as TSA’s Silent Partner and DHS’s CP3 program.
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CONTACT: CAIR National Deputy Director Edward Ahmed Mitchell, 404-285-9530, e-Mitchell@cair.com; CAIR Government Affairs Director Robert McCaw, 202-742-6448, rmccaw@cair.com; CAIR National Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper, 202-744-7726, ihooper@cair.com; CAIR National Communications Manager Ismail Allison, 202-770-6280, iallison@cair.com