A domestic terrorist attack by a citizen triggered laws targeting immigrants

Evidence

As much as it is an object, the racialized Muslim body is also located in an imagined geography that designates spaces of suspicion across the U.S. landscape in places of work and worship and in particular neighborhoods (Bayoumi 2008). The domestic War on Terror, following patterns of surveillance and infiltration used historically by the U.S. government against communities of color, is targeting immigrant communities with renewed vigor. These racial geographies are related to the Muslim body through a set of profiles that determine identity and map spatial boundaries. For example, small-scale entrepreneurs, independently employed people, and workers in service industries are disproportionately targeted for immigration policing based on visa status and petty criminal violations (cf. Maira 2009; Nguyen 2005; Sheikh 2004, 2007). Further, Special Registration used nationality, age, and gender as specific determinants of suspicion. Based on a racial logic that predates 2001, the Muslim body has become a site of twenty-first-century disciplining of sovereign power. It is in this sense that Ruth Gilmore (2007, 247) argues for a definition of racism as ”state-sanctioned and/or extralegal production and exploitation of group vulnerability to premature death.” — Junaid Rana, Terrifying Muslims, 844 (#expands, via linked claim)

The family stayed in the New York area until 1996, still without having adjusted their immigration status. The asylum claim had been unsuccessful, but Rasha’s father had hired a lawyer and was appealing the decision and looking for other legal ways to remain in the country. Meanwhile, her mother had given birth to two more little brothers. Since they were born in Brooklyn, the two infant boys were, unlike the rest of the family, citizens of the United States. But the pace of progress in the immigration proceedings was like washing your hair from a leaking faucet. Nothing was moving except for Congress, which in 1996 legislated even more draconian anti-immigrant legislation in the wake of Timothy McVeigh’s bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. Rasha’s father gave up and moved them all back to Syria that year. — Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being…, 73 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: A legal-technical limit on federal power steered the Red Scare against foreigners — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 1361; A white domestic terrorist attack triggered deportation of innocent immigrant men — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 257; White domestic terror produced immigration crackdowns targeting Muslims and Latinos — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 257 (+15 more)

Broader Connections

• Domestic War on Terror policing targets immigrants through racialized geography and profiles #expands (0.96) — Junaid Rana, Terrifying Muslims, 844
• Anti-terror and immigration policies become conflated in framing Muslims as foreign enemies #expands (0.95) — Chris Allen, Islamophobia, 580
• The 1996 anti-immigrant legislation followed the Oklahoma City bombing #expands (0.95) — Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being…, 73
• White domestic terrorism still shapes immigration policy because Arabs are visually raced as terrorists #expands (0.95)
• Immigration law’s permanent exception powers were repurposed for the war on terror #complicates (0.90)
• The government reclassified minor immigration violations as terrorism cases to inflate success #complicates (0.85) — Sahar F. Aziz, Sticks and Stones, the Words That Hurt, 104
• Muslims are framed as terrorists in cases only about immigration violations #complicates (0.85) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 562
• Ordinary immigration violations are routinely relabeled as terrorism charges #complicates (0.85) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 455
• Declaring Muslims foreigners strips them of presumed citizenship and licenses violence #complicates (0.80) — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 477
• Canada’s 2002 immigration law detains people merely for possible terror links #complicates (0.80)
• The security state presumes migrants are terrorists until proven otherwise #complicates (0.80)
• Terrorist designations function as tools to criminalize Muslim civic participation. #complicates (0.80) — Arsalan Iftikhar, Fear of a Muslim Planet_ Global…, 665
• Terror attacks spark vigilante violence against perceived Muslims endorsed by state policy #complicates (0.75) — Khaled A. Beydoun, American Islamophobia_ Understanding…, 134
• Improved border security shifts terrorism toward domestic lone-wolf attacks #complicates (0.70) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2266