Author
Caroline Marks
Staff Attorney, National Security & Civil Rights
Caroline Marks
Staff Attorney, National Security & Civil Rights
Caroline Marks is a Staff Attorney in the National Security and Civil Rights program at Asian Law Caucus. Caroline’s work focuses on, among other things, state legislative and administrative advocacy challenging surveillance and counterterrorism programs and narratives that harm Arab, Middle Eastern, Muslim and South Asian communities and other communities of color.
Before coming to ALC, Caroline worked on litigation and advocacy with the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at NYU Law, to hold the United States responsible for its extraordinary rendition program—whereby the U.S. kidnapped and transferred individuals to black sites and proxy governments for their subsequent torture and secret detention. Specifically, Caroline participated significantly in litigation before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in the case Mohamed et al. v. United States.
Caroline graduated from NYU School of Law and holds a BA in International Relations from Brown University. During her time at Brown, Caroline spent a semester Amman, Jordan learning the Levantine dialect and expanding her knowledge of modern standard Arabic.
Zoha Raza
Communications Associate
Zoha Raza
Communications Associate
Zoha Raza serves as the communications associate at Advancing Justice – Asian Law Caucus. Prior to this position, she led and managed communications work statewide for CAIR, coordinated youth leadership programs, and aided different social justice efforts around the Bay Area and beyond.
She has been published by a number of different news outlets including San Francisco Chronicle and San Jose Spotlight. She also volunteered as a NextGen Councilmember for ABC7, where she shared insight from local communities to contribute to story development.
Zoha graduated from the University of California, Davis with a degree in Communications. Outside of work, Zoha enjoys writing, playing basketball, and trying new food spots.
Every year, the U.S. government places thousands of people—parents, siblings, community members—on the No Fly List. Since 2003, the FBI's Terrorist Screening Center has maintained this opaque list. If your name is added to the list, which can happen without sufficient supporting evidence, you can be prohibited from boarding commercial flights traveling to, from, within, or over the United States. As a result of this unwarranted suspicion from the U.S. government, most people on the list, including our clients, are subject to humiliation, stigmatization, family separation, and denied job opportunities.
Still, in the face of these injustices, community members like Fahmi Ahmed Moharam, Yonas Fikre, Rahinah Ibrahim, and Ahmed Chebli have challenged the No Fly List, including how people get added to it and their options for due process to challenge their placement. For example, because of the legal case Latif v. Holder, in 2015 DHS revised its procedures to allow U.S. individuals who are on the No Fly List to receive confirmation of that status and some information about the reasons for inclusion.
Community advocacy and legal investigations have also exposed how the No Fly List targets Muslim communities. Leaked documents have confirmed that more than 98% of the names on the No Fly List are of Muslim origin. Racial and ethnic communities with a high representation of Muslim populations—primarily Black, Arab, Middle Eastern, and South Asian communities—find themselves disproportionately represented on this list.
Moharam v. TSA in D.C. Circuit
Mr. Moharam’s case will soon be heard by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. In 2017, he was added to the No Fly List, and since then, has been trying to appeal that placement. In all that time, Mr. Moharam, a U.S. citizen born in Yemen, has been barred from visiting his home country, where his wife, children, and ailing mother live.
Mr. Moharam’s argument is simple: we all have a constitutional right to know why the government has set restrictions on our freedoms. His case seeks to ensure that the U.S. government gives people denied their freedom to travel a fair opportunity to challenge that deprivation.
If he’s successful, the government could no longer operate the No Fly List under such an impossible veil of secrecy and impunity. It would also further demonstrate, just as many other community members have in their own cases and advocacy, that the No Fly List targets people based on unfounded suspicion relating to their religion, where they were born, or what they look like.
ALC staff speaking to community members about their civil rights at SABA Center during the month of Ramadan.
No Fly List = No Due Process
There are a lot of unanswerable questions about the No Fly List. Through advocacy and legal representation, groups like the Asian Law Caucus have uncovered some information on the process.
To start, if you ask the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for help, the agency will point people to its Traveler Redress Inquiry Program (TRIP) and say that U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents can use the TRIP to appeal their placement on watchlists like the No Fly List. DHS TRIP will send you a letter confirming your status on the No Fly List. If you request additional information, their second letter may only provide the general criteria that led to your placement on the list.
Although DHS can include an unclassified summary of the reasons for your inclusion, they are not required to do that. And even if the agency does share the summary, it may not include all the available information, including its reasons nor any evidence for its decision.
If you want to appeal your placement on the list, community members’ only current option is to submit a written response to DHS TRIP accompanied by any relevant materials. Unfortunately, no one has the opportunity to testify or cross-examine witnesses. Worse, if you are not a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident, the only way to discover if you remain on the No Fly List after undergoing the TRIP process is to attempt to board a flight.
As many have documented, the FBI has avoided accountability by removing someone from the No Fly List, only to add them back at a later date. If someone is removed from the list, they have no confidence that they will never be added again without notice or sufficient supporting information.
This has been the experience of Yonas Fikre, a U.S. citizen from Sudan who was placed on the No Fly List. In 2013, he filed a lawsuit arguing that his placement on the list violated his constitutional and civil rights. Then, in 2016, the U.S. government told Mr. Fikre that he was no longer on the list and argued that he could no longer pursue his case because he was off the list. Mr. Fikre has maintained he has every right to continue the case, and in March, the Supreme Court unanimously agreed.
Countless organizations and groups have worked to advocate against the No Fly List and have raised alarms about how the watchlist targets specific groups of people and deprives them of their basic freedoms. Black, Arab, Middle Eastern, South Asian, and Muslim communities remain deeply vulnerable to the harsh and arbitrary effects of the No Fly List. The U.S. government must adopt a transparent, evidence-based approach. In the face of the jarring consequences of placement on the No Fly List, community members deserve both meaningful information about why they are placed on the list and a real opportunity to challenge those decisions.
ALC and other community groups organize brochures and workshops to help people understand what to do if approached by the FBI or other agencies.
Navigating Your Rights: Resources for Community Members
Just as community members like Mr. Moharam and Mr. Fikre are leading cases to help people assert their rights, many of our clients are also reaching out to their networks, friends, and families with trusted information. Through consultations and workshops, Asian Law Caucus attorneys and advocates have helped them learn what to do if they are denied their freedom to travel or are subject to unwarranted suspicion and targeting while traveling.
In these conversations, we share a variety of resources, including:
- The ACLU’s guide on what to do if you think you're on the No Fly List, including information on your rights if you are blocked from boarding a plane in the U.S. or in another country.
- Our team’s guidance on what to do if you are visited by the FBI. We are aware that the FBI has alarmingly offered to remove people from the No Fly List if they become informants or, conversely, placed people on the No Fly List if they decline requests to be informants.
- We know that Muslim, Black, Arab, Middle Eastern, and South Asian communities, even those who are not prohibited from flying, are subject to additional screening, invasive security measures, and extensive questioning for hours at airports. If this has happened to you and you are looking for legal help, please call us at 415-896-1701 or send us a message.