The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, today welcomed the announced end of Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Quiet Skies traveler surveillance program, but called for a similar end to the use of secret watchlists..
That DHS announcement said the surveillance program “failed to stop a single terrorist attack while costing US taxpayers $200 million a year.”
This decision mirrors the 2016 dismantling of the discriminatory NSEERS program, another overreaching and ineffective surveillance system that targeted Muslim and Arab travelers without enhancing national security.
SEE: CAIR Welcomes President Obama’s Decision to End Dormant NSEERS Tracking Program
In a statement, CAIR Senior Litigation Attorney Gadeir Abbas said:
“This watchlist program allowed the government to target innocent people for political purposes. While the DHS should be applauded for ending this boondoggle, the federal government is still using secret watchlists that do not make us safer and waste tremendous amounts of money.”
In 2018, CAIR filed a broad constitutional challenge to the federal government’s watchlisting system, including the Quiet Skies program. The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland on behalf of 20 individuals targeted by the watchlisting system. It alleged that the watchlisting system imposed “a kind of second-class citizenship.”
In December of last year, CAIR announced the filing of a petition for certiorari in Kovac v. Wray, asking the US. Supreme Court to review a 5th circuit ruling about the legality of the government’s Orwellian watchlist that upended the “major questions” doctrine.
In November of 2024, CAIR offered oral arguments in a federal district court in Massachusetts on a motion to dismiss in Khairullah v. Garland, a lawsuit on behalf of 15 American Muslims who have been unjustly placed on the federal terror watchlist and No Fly List.
In March of that year, CAIR welcomed the U.S. Supreme Court’s 9-0 ruling allowing CAIR’s lawsuit challenging the federal No Fly List on behalf of Yonas Fikre to move forward over the government’s objection as a “historic milestone for Muslims.”
END
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