DHS Gives Somali Muslims Special Airport Security Tours after Harassment, Profiling Complaints – IOTW Report

DHS Gives Somali Muslims Special Airport Security Tours after Harassment, Profiling Complaints

JudicialWatch: The Obama administration gave Somali Muslims behind-the-scenes tours at a major U.S. airport after the group complained to Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson about feeling harassed and profiled, government records obtained by Judicial Watch reveal. The special security tours not offered to any other group occurred at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport after Department of Homeland Security (DHS) roundtable meetings with local Somali leaders to obtain feedback for “modifications to practices that would allow for operations to be more culturally sensitive.”

On at least two occasions—December 18, 2014 and February 18, 2015—federal authorities granted the unprecedented excursions of the facility’s sterile and secure areas, according to Transportation Security Administration (TSA) records obtained by Judicial Watch. The DHS agency that conducted the expeditions, Customs and Border Protection (CBP), provided the Muslim participants with “an in-depth, on-site tour and discussion of CBP’s airport, including both inbound and outbound passenger processing,” the TSA files state. Besides multiple roundtable meetings between CBP and Somali community leaders including imams, the records show that a luncheon and “cultural exchange and educational brief” also took place between December 2014 and February 2015 so that attendees could ask about the agency’s “specific practices” at the airport.

The roundtable events and airport tours were organized by Abdirizak Farah, who is identified in the records as a policy advisor in the DHS Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (CRCL). Farah joined DHS in 2010 with an annual salary of $89,033 and by 2015 his yearly pay increased to $130,453, according to a government database. The TSA’s “Somali liaison officer” in Minneapolis, Andrew Rhoades, told Judicial Watch that the special airport tours were organized for Somali Muslims after they complained to Johnson that they felt “harassed and profiled” by CBP at the Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport. The DHS secretary had “a sympathetic ear to that,” Rhoades said, adding that no other group has been granted such airport access by DHS. “Now, I will say we’ve never done that, or we don’t do that, to let’s say the Hmong community living here in Minneapolis, uh, the Christian community, the Catholic community, the Irish… whatever you want to call it. This has been the only one,” Rhoades said.  MORE

8 Comments on DHS Gives Somali Muslims Special Airport Security Tours after Harassment, Profiling Complaints

  1. WE have to be “more cuuuuuulturally seeeensitive”?! Why the hell should we be more “culturally sensitive” to people from other cultures coming to OUR culture?! I am so sick of this. We aren’t going to have our own “borders, language and culture” before too much longer if we don’t put a stop to this pandering to alien cultures. I’m so angry.

  2. Another nail in the coffin in why I won’t fly any more, especially through Minneapolis. Clasping the snake to your bosom is not a cure for. . . . . well, not a cure for anything I have. But you go right ahead. Hold that snake tight. Just don’t be surprised or expect help when you’re attacked at the airport, and you’re wondering, “how did they know how to bypass security?”
    This is a perfect example of Libtardism, your mind is SO open that your brains fall out.

  3. I am so sick and tired of hearing about how dangerous Trump is. How he doesn’t have a ‘steady’ hand, any sense of judgement or is a madman. This isn’t lack of judgement, this is just pure disdain for this country and her citizens. Obama doesn’t need nuclear codes to destroy this country, just an open door to Islam.

  4. So, this 60-year-old American woman who was just stabbed to death in London, by a Norwegian Somalian
    (whatever that is) she will be missing the next airport tour.

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