jennifer bryan
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As a practicing Muslim, this woman avoided contact with men other than those in her
immediate family. In fact, her devotion to Islam was so strong that in her job she specifically
requested not to be assigned to work with any men, as it is forbidden for a woman to be alone
with a man outside one’s immediate family. Thus, the practice of male FBI agents questioning
Muslim women was culturally insensitive, if not altogether misguided.
When the FBI came back to this woman’s house for a third time, once again, she was
shown a book of photographs and could not provide any information. This time, when the
woman asked why the FBI kept coming to her apartment, the officers said that neighbors had
called the FBI and reported that the entire apartment building threw a huge party right after 9/11,
in celebration of the tragedy. This woman was stunned and dumbfounded. She had thought the
neighbors were friendly. She recalled having long talks with elderly women about the “good old
days.” True, after 9.11, she did not have much contact with her neighbors, but she attributed this
to her own practice of not going out as much. This woman did not want to believe her neighbors
would do something malicious; she thought the FBI had fabricated this story. Yet I subsequently
confirmed that her neighbors had in fact called the FBI to investigate her apartment, thereby
illustrating a clear change in neighborly relations after 9/11.
INS Detentions
To this date, neither the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) nor its successor
agency—the Office of Homeland Security—have released the names and backgrounds of those
detained as a result of the 9/11 “sweeps.” However, in its exploratory report released in March
2002, Amnesty International estimated that nearly eight hundred of the total twelve hundred
detainees were held in two New Jersey jails located just outside Jersey City: the Hudson County
Jail and Passaic County Jail (Amnesty International 2002). In other words, the State of New
Jersey has held approximately two-thirds of all persons detained in the United States as a result
of 9.11 related investigations.
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Although the vast majority of those detained in New Jersey and the United States were
arrested because of expired visitor or student visas and accepted the court’s offer to be
voluntarily deported out of the country, many were not released until months afterwards.
Tragically, one man even died of an alleged heart attack while in custody at the Hudson County
Jail (Morrill 2001). The Jersey Journal published a letter from one detainee to the Director of the
INS; it was hand printed in neat capital letters on lined yellow scratch paper:
Convention