Somali Americans allege discrimination

The US Justice Department calls the program "Countering Violent Extremism." The city of Minneapolis has chosen softer language, "Building Community Resilience." Whatever the initiative's name, many Somali Americans feel they're being unjustly targeted by the authorities.

Minneapolis rolled out its version of the federal pilot program this week, announcing $1 million in federal grants for community outreach programs focused on the Somali community. The idea is to counter terrorist recruitment efforts by engaging and supporting young people.

The Midwestern city has the largest Somali population in the United States. Though statistics vary depending on the source, the Confederation of Somali Community Minnesota estimates that 100,000 Somalis lives in the state, with about half residing in the "Twin Cities" of Minneapolis-St. Paul.

The Somali community has faced intense law enforcement scrutiny for years. From 2007-2013, at least 23 Somali-Americans left Minnesota for Somalia to join the Islamist militant group Al-Shabab, according to the daily Star Tribune. Over the past two years, more than 20 have sought to join "Islamic State," which controls territory in Iraq and Syria.

Yet those who have sought to join Al-Shabab and Islamic State represent a minuscule proportion of the community's overall population in Minnesota.

"We did not come here to cause any trouble," Ahmed Elmi, chairman of the Somali American Community Association, told DW. "To be viewed as such because of the actions of a few is unacceptable. We have conveyed this message to law enforcement and it often falls on deaf hears."

'Religious profiling'

In May, nearly 50 Muslim organizations from across the state signed a joint statement opposing the Minneapolis pilot program out of concern that it would "further stigmatize and marginalize the Somali/Muslim community by treating all of its members as suspects."

"The truth of the matter is there's a continued religious profiling and country of origin profiling, this is happening everyday at the airports and at the border," Elmi said.

The Justice Department launched the Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) program last fall. It's the only the latest iteration in a long series of programs aimed at preventing young American men from joining violent Islamist extremist organizations.

"There's really no evidence that any particular programming that's focused on violent extremism actually works," Faiza Patel, with the Brennan Center for Justice, told DW. "People have been trying this in Europe and the US under different names since at least 2005."

"There are significant risks with these kinds of programs," Patel said. "Most of these programs are framed as social services programs...but what we've seen in the past is these kinds of programs also have a very strong link to intelligence gathering."

Outreach or surveillance?

In 2009, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) sought to deploy "Specialized Community Outreach Teams" targeting Somali-American communities in select cities. Under the guise of community outreach, the teams were supposed to gather intelligence. The field office in Minneapolis refused to cooperate.

"We never followed it because at the time we believed our brand of community outreach would engender the trust we'd built up here," Kyle Loven, the FBI's spokesman in Minneapolis, told the Star Tribune."We took great care to make sure our outreach specialists were not involved in any investigations."

In 2010, the Obama administration pulled the plug on the intelligence gathering operation. But the damage was already done. The Somali community has become wary of government outreach programs.

The US District Attorney in Minneapolis has signed a memorandum vowing that the "Building Community Resilience" program "will not be used as a tool to conduct surveillance on the Somali Minnesotan community or to build intelligence databases about participants of the various programs."

'Alienating law abiding citizens'

According to Mahmud Noor, the new outreach program in Minnesota will offer youth mentorship,

job counseling for high school graduates, and support for recently arrived immigrants from Somalia. While Noor believes the program should be given a chance, he acknowledges that mistrust still runs deep, despite the assurances from the district attorney's office.

"There's a lack of trust with law enforcement," Noor, director of the Confederation of Somali Community Minnesota, told DW. "Part of the program itself is to build that trust."

"This is not tested program," Noor said. "People have concerns...that's valid. They want to make sure the civil liberties of individuals are protected and there's no unintended consequences."

But according to Elmi, the government has little incentive to address systemic discrimination against Somali Americans.

"They couldn't care less about that because there's popular support in this country to profile Muslims," Elmi said. "You're just alienating law abiding citizens. It's not a good national security strategy."