Although the government has played down claims of religious and racial profiling, a 2006 Immigration and Customs Information memo obtained by McClatchy Newspapers shows that the government has relied intensely on nationality and ethnicity to determine whether or not an individual is a national security risk.
Khan, who was born in Saudi Arabia, told InFocus that in a recent trip returning from Saudi Arabia, she was detained for four hours without explanation at New York’s JFK airport, along with several other passengers who were foreign-born.
Khan’s experience is only one of thousands which Muslims in America face regularly while traveling, and the surfacing of the memo confirms what many have strongly suspected for some time now.
According to the memo, the federal government has created a proposed list of 35 “special interest” countries which pose a security threat, the majority of which have predominant Muslim or Arab populations.  The list is to be a replacement for the many other lists created by federal agencies to streamline the singling out process, wrote the memo’s author, Ted Stark, supervisory special agent with the Office of Intelligence at ICE.
As terrorism continues to be a hot issue, the government is grappling with ways to handle it, but critics charge this is being done at the expense of constitutional and legal rights.
The memo also proposes an inter-agency definition of a “special interest alien,” defined as an immigrant with ties to terrorists or who by nationality, “ethnicity, or other factors may have ties or sympathies with the listed countries, McClatchy reported.  The agencies involved include ICE, the National Security Agency and U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
The vague definition allows for even immigrants not born in or from the listed countries to be deemed “special interest aliens.”  For example, a British citizen whose parents are of Pakistani or Arab ancestry could be a target, a fact that critics say is singling out Muslims and is too broad to be effective.
The “special interest alien” would go through a “full court press” of interviews, inspections, and data checks, and depending on what was discovered, could be cleared, deported, or become the subject of criminal investigations.
The problem with the government’s methodology is that it wastes resources by focusing on many innocent people, and it runs the risk of alienating people who could be helpful in giving information about the real threats, David Cole, a law professor at Georgetown University, told McClatchy.
“This sounds like a continuation and an institutionalization of what was essentially a failed initiative in the first couple of years after 9/11,” Cole said.  “It’s a proxy for religious and ethnic profiling.”
After the events of Sept. 11, 2001, the government required that male U.S. visa holders from countries with predominantly Muslim populations be fingerprinted and put in a special database.
Khan’s husband was one of those who had to go register.  “It was surreal,” said Khan.  “It was like America had regressed by about 50 years – we were seriously considering leaving this country which seemed to have extremely discriminatory practices.”
Other civil rights groups have also expressed concern.
“Racial profiling is illegal, immoral, and a sign of incompetence,” said Hussam Ayloush, Executive Director of the greater Los Angeles area chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. 
“No group should be singled out for discriminatory practices based on its ethnic, national, or racial background,” he said.

*Name changed to protect identity.