Arrested families were transported blindfolded by windowless vans

Evidence

Outside, the official vehicles had closed off the entire street. The agents shepherded the family into a van, and they sat on benches in the back, riding in silence except for Rasha’s sobbing mother, until they arrived at Federal Plaza in Manhattan. The ride was bumpy and disorienting, affording them no view of the road. When the van stopped and the back doors eventually swung open, they were all pulled from the vehicle into the building, where they were led to a room and then searched and fingerprinted before being dumped in a holding cell. They sat in the cell for what felt like half their lives. — Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being…, 88

Categorization

• SHARE: The detail that the arrest convoy ‘closed off the entire street’ — a full-scale paramilitary operation for detaining one family, including minor citizens — is the kind of specific fact worth sending to someone tracking post-9/11 civil liberties abuses.