| No Images? Click here   Dearborn, Mich., a city near the Canadian border, has the most people per capita on the FBI's terrorist watch list, but most of the people on that list are just not terrorists. The impact? Traveling across the border to Canada often turns into an ordeal. Residents are regularly held for hours at a time without explanation. They're business owners; they're family members crossing into Canada to visit relatives. They just happen to be Muslim and Arab Americans, and they are being racially and religiously profiled. HuffPost reporters Christopher Mathias and Rowaida Abdelaziz were on the ground in Dearborn to learn more.What was the seed for the story?HuffPost is doing a bus tour across the country right now called "Listen To America." We're going to 25 cities and partnering with local news outlets to do stories there. We partnered with the Arab American News in Dearborn, and they suggested doing something on the watch list.The terrorist watch list has been around forever. What did you uncover in your reporting that was new?Our story really gets across the Kafkaesque nature of the list. The government often won't admit the list even exists. And when people try to petition to get their names off of it, they get a letter from the Department of Homeland Security saying "we can neither confirm or deny" that you are on the list. It's nonsense. There's no due process for people on the list. It's a blatant violation of civil rights. Yet America has readily accepted the list since 9/11. It's important to remember this isn't a Trump phenomenon. The terror watch list grew into the behemoth it is under the Obama administration.What about the reporting was most challenging?Narrowing it down! There were so many people we could've interviewed for this. And there are so many lawsuits regarding the watchlist. But we knew we needed to keep this relatively short and concise.What was most surprising?One person we interviewed said he found a bug (recording device) in his office at the Council of American-Islamic Relations in Michigan. He told us he had a hunch it was law enforcement who put the bug there. We know the U.S. government is surveilling Muslims in America, but it's still shocking when you hear about it from someone who has experienced it. It's horrifying.What haven't we asked that you want to tell us about?Why does it matter if people get detained at the airport for a few hours? Because it's blatant discrimination. Because it can be truly traumatic. Because it stigmatizes Muslims and Arab Americans. Because it furthers the notion that brown people are somehow inherently dangerous. And because it shows just how entrenched Islamophobia is in our government policies.
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