As’Salaamu Alaikum,
This past month, your legal team at CAIR-SFBA was active within the community in assisting individuals by providing direct legal services leading to timely representation and advocacy on a whole host of issues ranging from employment discrimination, travel complaints to filing asylum applications. Additionally, the team continued conducting its Know Your Rights Workshops for community members around issues such as law enforcement interactions involving the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents, for example, as well as harassment by Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) agents at the nation’s borders. CAIR-SFBA legal staff was present at masajid all over the Bay Area in August from the Islamic Center of Mill Valley in Marin County to the San Ramon Valley Islamic Center (SRVIC) in San Ramon and Evergreen Islamic Center (EIC) in San Jose.
The month of August also marked the release of CAIR-California’s Annual Legal Report, which focused on the state of civil rights for California’s Muslim community in the past year and analyzed the troublesome uptick in anti-Muslim incidents from the previous year. Anti-Muslim bias incidents in California continued to be of significant concern with the targeting of American Muslim children, families, and institutions. Despite the problem of underreported hate crimes and incidents, CAIR-CA recorded 113 such incidents. Given the proliferation of anti-immigrant policies, including the Muslim Ban, immigration matters reported to CAIR-CA continued steadily increasing from 1,014 in 2017 to 1,203 in 2018, a nineteen percent uptick in intakes received.
This year, CAIR-CA additionally saw an increase in employment-related matters with CAIR-CA attorneys advising on 170 matters as compared to 140 in 2017, a twenty-one percent increase.
As a general reminder, if you find yourself or a loved one a target of discrimination and harassment while traveling, at your workplace, at healthcare facilities and on school premises, please reach out to us through our incident report form. More generally, we recommend contacting our legal department at 408. 986.9874 for personalized legal consultations or reading through our Know Your Rights materials found on our website.
Sincerely,
Ammad Rafiqi, Esq.
Civil Rights & Legal Services Coordinator