HAhmed.com

Going to the RIS conference in Toronto? Inshallah Ill be going to most of the conference, camp and concert :-D. Last year I heard that some Muslims had problems returning to the US from the conference. Inshallah I hope that doesnt happen to us… Here is an excerpt from an interesting article I came across today:

Muslim group asks U.S. judge to ban border searches ahead of Toronto conference
By Carolyn Thompson

 A group of Muslim-Americans asked a federal judge Thursday to allow them to travel to a religious conference in Toronto later this month without being fingerprinted, photographed and held for hours at the border, like they were on the way home from last year’s gathering.

In a case that weighs the government’s anti-terrorism efforts against the rights of its citizens, the New York Civil Liberties Union argued on the group’s behalf for a court order prohibiting border agents from stopping and searching Muslim-Americans based solely on their attendance at the annual Reviving the Islamic Spirit conference in Toronto on Dec. 23-29.

Homeland Security officials acknowledged subjecting those who attended last year’s conference to lengthy security checks upon their return to the United States, but said they had reason to believe that people associated with terrorism planned to attend the conference or others like it.

NYCLU lawyer Christopher Dunn accused the government of trampling the plaintiffs’ right to practise religion in the name of homeland security.

"We fully respect the government’s concerns about terrorism. That does not mean, however, that the constitution disappears at the border," Dunn said.

A lawyer for the government said that while the stops may have taken too long, border agents did what was necessary to protect the country in light of credible intelligence.

"The concern was not that they went to a religious conference. The concern was that individuals, money, documents or weapons were going to get smuggled across the border," said Anthony Coppolino, who argued against the group’s request.

The five plaintiffs, all New York residents, are among at least three dozen Muslim-American men and women who were corralled for as long as 6 1/2 hours at two western New York border crossings while trying to re-enter the United States by car. They said they were made to surrender credit cards, cellphones and other belongings and were frisked, questioned, fingerprinted and photographed without explanation…

Coppolino said policy changes would subject fewer people to fingerprinting in the future and help to prevent the lengthy backups encountered last year. He said a staffing shortage at the border, the overnight crossing of a large number of people at once and added checks due to the conference-related intelligence had combined to create the delays.

He would not say whether authorities had terrorist concerns about this year’s gathering.

Skretny indicated he would rule on the group’s request before the conference’s start.