your evaluation? .. about reaching 100% requirements but there needs to be you know a study and alternatives to develop. >> i have got 32nd clip. mr. hamilton and mr. ridge, what do you think of the secretary not only this current secretary but the previous secretary not -- non-commitment to read meet your request and recommendation of 100% inspection of cargo?

>> well, i think again i can't. >> to dan but i truly believe that literally speaking, it is probably physically impossible to do if you really think about the volume of cargo into this country and within each one of those containers they are containers within containers and the like are cohabitants said that, i am familiar with some technology of detection that will enable i think, if it proves to be successful, enable us to get much much closer to reaching that, reaching that goal. again it is managing the risk and are there venues and ports of call around the world through

which cargo might go that we want to make our best efforts to inspect all 100%? i dare say yes. it again it is managing the risk. i am still of the belief that empirically to get to 100% we encourage the research and development in detection technology and we can get very close to it. >> i do not recall that the 9/11 commission recommended 100% screening for the reasons of of the difficulty achieving it, but we certainly supported the idea that secretary ridge has indicated and that is risk management. i think in dealing with the bulk of cargo that comes into this country on a daily basis, as a practical matter, you obviously want to improve the technology to the highest degree that you

can achieve, but even after you do that, you are going to have to make judgments about cargo coming from different ports of the world and that involves a risk management decision. >> the time of the gentleman has expired. the gentlelady from new york, ms. higgins is recognized. >> thank you. getting back to the purpose of the hearing which was the progress made in the past 10 years and the security gap that still exist in the management and operational improvements that still are needed. last december "the washington post" reported that the top-secret world of counterterrorism has become so large, so unwieldy, so secretive that no one knows how much money it cost, how many people it employs, how many programs exist

within it or exactly how many agencies do this work. a new book out by dana priest called top-secret america, the rise of new american security state characterizes this as a terrorism industrial complex. we have 800,000 people who now hold top security clearances. we have 51 federal organizations and military organizations that are involved in tracking the flow of money inside and out of terrorist organizations. we have 2000 private companies and 1200 organizations, intelligence agencies that are involved in counterterrorism. it seems as though this hearing and the information that has been presented by both the panel and ancillary information is very disconcerting. what the american people should have expected in the aftermath of 9/11 is the bureaucratic

response is lean, muscular, transparent and effective. it seems as though what we have is a bureaucratic response that is loaded, immobile, ineffective and not doing the very things the 9/11 commission said was most important. that was to remove the barrier that existed between federal law enforcement agencies toward the goal of sharing good informatios most effective in thwarting preempting terrorist activity. lawrence wright baas look the looming tower, recounts -- there's a passage in there, a physical fbi agent got physically sick he does after he realized what had occurred, he said the intelligence existed to stop that variants of them on 9/11. so, you know the american people have been misled. i think what we did in the aftermath of 9/11 was said we

got attacked. we don't know specifically who it is. here is a bunch of money. go out and do something about it. we created a bureaucracy that is not meeting its moral and operational objective. so, i just ask all of you who have committed yourself to try to improve the situation to comment on the information that has been presented here. >> well, i think you raise a question that probably would not have been raised a few years ago. you are of course right when you indicate the figures that show enormous expansion of homeland security activities. and we have not much focused on the matter of cost effectiveness up until this time, until fairly

recently, the security people win every argument because they come in and say, if you don't do this, your vulnerability is going to be much greater. in the aftermath of 9/11, we tended not to worry too much about cost and therefore you get an 80 billion-dollar budget for the intelligence community. i chaired the intelligence committee back a good many years ago when the budgets i think were somewhere in the range of $10 billion. i am not precise about that but roughly, so we have had an explosion of cost without any doubt about it. and the question of cost effectiveness needs to be brought much more into the debate than it has been thus far. having said that, may i go back to the point of oversight? this is why you need a

congressional intelligence oversight, which is focused in my view should be in an appropriations subcommittee on intelligence and on -- as well as having effective oversight of homeland security. in effect you have a very fractured oversight of homeland security, and in effect you have an inadequate oversight of the intelligence budget and in both areas you have had an explosion of cost. one of the recent oversight is necessary is to keep your eye on exploding cost, so i do not think members of congress can say you are innocent on this. you folks haven't done the job with regard to oversight. that is part of the answer, not the entire answer. but i like to see questions of your kind coming forward because i think we need some pushback on the explosive growth we have had in these areas.

that is a fairly typical response by the american government. the increased things very rapidly on homeland security. >> reclaiming the time that i don't have mr. chaired me i make a final point? this is my concern. this is my concern. we had a hearing in his committee a couple of months ago on hezbollah. hezbollah is committed to violent jihad. they acted a proxy for iran, syria and venezuela. the information that was presented to this committee indicated that hezbollah had a presence in north america including five cities in the united states in four cities in canada. so they have close proximity to the united states. one of those cities with toronto, 90 minutes from my hometown of buffalo new york. we had niagara falls and a huge tourist attraction. we have a project which produces the cheapest and cleanest electricity and nala the united

states. we have the busiest northern border crossing for passenger vehicles and my concern is that we are so preoccupied with the spear of receipt and so emerged in it that we are not agile. we can't adjust to changes on the ground and the terrorist threat today is very different from the one that existed 10 years ago. it is younger. it is more aggressive. it is more vicious and it is technologically savvy so we are preoccupied with this false sense of security that we built up within this bureaucracy. the terrorists are way ahead of us because they are smaller, they are mobile and they are able to move. that is a major concern that every american, regardless of whether western new yorker through this nation should be very concerned about. >> the witnesses may respond in writing. with that i recognize the gentleman from louisiana for

five minutes. >> thank you mr. chairman, thank you ranking member and thank you for the witnesses today. in evaluating where we are today compared to where we were at would like to shift away from preventing the attack and talk a little bit about a response to a terrorist attack, and just grading 9/11 in terms of resources provided, in terms of unified manner and money appropriated, how would you grade the u.s. government's response after the attack of 9/11 to the city of new york and to the other places that were affected? if you can rank it in terms of poor or fair or excellent how would you characterize it? >> at the time of 9/11? >> yes. >> was very poor. >> the resources provided on the ground in new york?

>> there was a great deal of confusion within our government. we weren't prepared at many levels to deal with it both in terms of the emergency response and in terms of the defense of the country. multiple mistakes were made from the ticket taker at logan airport in boston to the presidents of the united states. we in 9/11 said look we were not charged with the responsibility of accountability and we didn't get into it that we said there was a systemic failure, and that failure was literally scores, hundreds, maybe thousands of people in the country. it was a very poor response. it was a major failure of government. we fail to protect our people. >> governor? >> i think there is evidence that suggests that for years and years at least within a small group of men and women within the intelligence community,

there was greater and greater sensitivity to a potential attacker nature which we were still quite unaware of the rise of these jihad is and i think the decisions made probably have -- when president bush became president that decisions that were not made prior to the previous administration has set us up so that nearly we weren't as prepared as americans that we would be for such a catastrophic event. again, i know the 9/11 commission didn't look into that. i know individually that people at fame and everybody associated with this recovery efforts did everything they could, but this was -- i am not sure anyone's imagination was so expansive as

they thought about preparing even for a potential terrorist attack that they could envision commercial airplanes being turned into missiles or that the twin towers would fall, so while we have certainly proved ourselves -- we were certainly not -- we became more aware of our vulnerabilities and we are not more vulnerable because of it. even our best days whether you are republican or democrat in the president bush administration of the president clinton administration you could have seen even those within the intelligence committee thinking about the jihad is an extremist and a terrorist attack at that level. >> i think we need to understand that. there is a blame game that we often play but i don't pick anyone anticipated an attack at that level. >> i represent new orleans louisiana which in the aftermath of katrina the government response was very very poor in terms of getting resources they are quickly, unified command in all of those things in my question at what he is in fact

the position of the house is that we have a pay-for for disaster response, how is that going to affect our response to the next big disaster or terrorist attack and if it means us coming in and cutting our cuts in order to provide funding how would that hamper the response to a future terrorist attack? >> let me take a little extra time because i think it is a very good question here. katrina, as you look back and reflect on katrina, think there were a lot of lessons learned and they are perhaps more painfully aware than most members of congress since your constituents are in the city and the people that are responsible. there we saw i think the failure of the local and the state and the federal government to err on

the side of preparation. you don't need to be a meteorologist to see that a cat 4 or five heading to a city that is 14 feet above or below sea level anyway there is plenty of blame to go around. since that time, i believe that frankly i think right now fema has got one of the strongest and best administrators we have ever had in this country, craig fugate. we worked with him and he was running the operation down in florida. the year before katrina hit for hurricanes hit around florida and he -- i think they are far far better prepared than i have ever been before to do with a major disaster and one final comment. never in the history of the country have we worried about budget around the emergency appropriations for natural disasters and frankly in my view we shouldn't be worried about it now. i realize we have fiscal problems but the real challenge, we are all in this country and

mother nature devastated communities. we may need emergency appropriations and we have to deal with it until the fiscal albums it on. >> one of the ways to look at this is the progress being made. if you look at the response of 9/11, the response of katrina and as you have said very poor. the response to the oil spill, better. the response to irene, better. we are learning. the progress may not be as rapid as we would like that we are getting better at responding to disasters even though there are some gaps. >> thank you to the witnesses. thank you mr. chair. >> the time of the gentleman has expired. you are recognized for five minutes. >> thank you very much mr. chairman. by thank the ranking member and and a i thank r. panelist. nepa the tenth anniversary of 9/11 terrorist attacks on our nation, the possibility of another attack still casts an

ominous shadow over the united states. i believe that we are definitely safer, however safety is a relative term in an ever evolving threat environment against our nation and her people. these changes made in the transportation industry and in the intelligence community have definitely prevented another successful attack to this moment. even with the death of osama bin laden we must continue our vigilant and to build out of a robust defense as well as strengthen our capacity to be resilient. on behalf of the people of the 11th congressional district of new york, i would like to express to those who lost a family member, a loved one or a friend on september 11, 2001 terrorist attack that their loss will never be forgotten and is a member of this committee and a

new yorker, i would like to emphasize the importance of fully implementing the recommendations of the 9/11 commission. we must partner with local, state and private sector partners to keep our nation safe. after witnessing first-hand the inability of first responders to communicate on september 11, 2001 and the excessive loss of life as a result, i fully support efforts that would give first responders specific portion of the spectrum known as the block for a brazilian state-of-the-art communications network. our first responders definitely need to be able to communicate with one another in times of crisis. so my question is what are your thoughts on a set aside for the dedication of the d block spectrum for first responders? the well i favor it and i am pleased to note that the chairman and ranking members here and i think a good many members of the committee's

favorite. i think it is the most expeditious and the surest way to get reliability of the communication now. once you set aside the d block you are not through. there is a lot more work that has to be done. it is essential i believe to make it possible for the first responders to talk with one another and the best way to do that is to set aside a portion of the radio spectrum, the so-called d block, directly allocate that to the first responders. i favor that. i think it is very important. i would hope that the congress would take a lead from the chairmen and ranking member this committee and get about the business of dedicating the d block and let the private sector begin embedding the technology that we need. there may be political differences but i think the first responder community is generally saying work it out.

we need the technology and we need it now, so. >> thank you and my next question is about how we deal with enhanced security while at the same time preserving our very cherished civil liberties. representative hamilton would you expand on the ideas you mentioned in your testimony regarding the civil liberties oversight lord? >> i am impressed with the capacity of government to intrude on the lives of people. i mentioned earlier in the hearing today that i had a briefing on this yesterday and it is just absolutely incredible what the sophisticated devices can do with regard to intruding on your privacy and civil liberties. now even if you take the

position that under present circumstances the civil liberties and privacy are being reasonably protected, i simply don't know enough about that but for the sake of argument i say they are being reasonably protected. the history of abuse of government power is enough to give us pause here and you try to set in force and play some kind of of counterpressure if you would, to the people who want more and more intrusive measures. i think all the members of the commission felt that you needed a robust civil liberties lord to push back and to try to protect our liberties and our core values and their privacy. i am very disappointed that we have not put such a board in place. i don't think the job is easy and i think it will be very very

difficult but you need some counterpressure, some pushback to the security agency which press for more and more power, more and more ability to intrude into the lives of americans. in many cases, at the very least, you need a rigorous oversight of that in order to protect our core values. i think it is terribly important that board be created and i haven't fully understood frankly why it has not been created but it has not and let's get about the business of getting it in functioning order. >> i would like to add very briefly to i certainty one associates with my colleagues remarked. when congress passed the enabling legislation creating

the department of homeland security, in his wisdom and frankly foresight, it anticipated the challenges associated with a department that may be using information that they certainly wanted to use an appropriate a way. the congress mandated and they were the first privacy officer mandated by congress and any of our government agency so i think that mindset, that appreciation of liberty and privacy is very much a part of how the congress thought about the agency, but i think as my colleague has pointed out you need to take that concept to the broader oversight community over the intelligence community generally. >> did you want to share anything? >> yes, setting aside the board recommendation because i think that is started and commented on, we have look at how the privacy officers and the agency's have implemented their

responsibilities and dhs is doing more in this area to do these privacy assessments. our recommendations have been that they need to be embedded in all the decisions that are made when new systems are put in place to collect information and that this concern needs to be addressed up front. we think that will help further solidify the balance between security and civil liberties protections. >> thank you mr. chairman. >> the time of the gentlelady has expired. i thank the gentlelady and i yield to the gentleman from illinois mr. davis for five minutes. we have more than enough time for your questions. >> mr. chairman let me tanker you in the ranking member for holding this hearing. i also want to thank are witnesses for their expertise in this arena and also for the tremendous services that they have all provided to the country and continue to do so. i think all of us can reflect on

september the 11th, 2001. i happen to have been in tel aviv, israel at the moment and of course we were there for a week because we couldn't leave. i have had the opportunity to reflect upon the tremendous impact not only to our country and our way of life but what has happened internationally around the world. i am also reminded and i am pleased that the last few minutes we have had some discussion of budgets, of priorities, of the economy and its impact and i am always reminded of something that frederick douglass said when we talk about what we need and what we want. he would often say that you

can't have the rain without the thunder and the lightning. meaning that priorities are very important and you have to determine what you are willing to give in order to get what it is that you are trying to get. we have now had almost a decade of spending money in the homeland security arena, and my colleagues have mentioned cuts and cut backs and i guess my question as i have listened would be, what have we really learned since 9/11 about what spending works and what does not work? what seems to work best? how do we adequately prepare or

make the best use of the resources that we are willing to spend, and what areas have we been most successful in and which ones perhaps we have been least successful end, and how do we prepare to the best of our ability for the future? if each of you would just respond to that question, i would thank you very much. >> while it is a very very broad question. you can look at the response in terms of the cup being half full and the cup being half empty. we have really made a very great deal of progress i think at all levels. when you get on an airplane today you are safer than you were when you got on it prior to 9/11. i think that the sharing of

information and the intelligence community is much much better than it used to be. in all aspects of preventing attack, we have made some progress. we spent the morning talking about areas where we think more progress needs to be made and that would need in your category i think where we have been less successful. in terms of unity of effort and who is in charge of the communication problem, and many other areas that have come up today. so, i think you have to think of homeland security in terms of a work in progress. a lot of process having been made, but it takes constant effort to make the american people less secure is that we ought to be and could be. that is why oversight is

terribly important. so that is a quick summary. i think we are safer today than we were but we are not as safe as we could be, and that would be my summary of where we are after 10 years. >> thank you very much. >> i think the question highlights an issue that we have been hearing through the course of this hearing and that is the need for a much smaller group in the congress of the united states to take a far more holistic approach toward its oversight over the still relatively new agency, to set in a very thoughtful and judicious way the kinds of priorities that you need because there are plant yield wants that you need to address and the priority should even needs first. you highlight that.

and a couple of areas we have decided we have aired when we thought more was better. that article that one of your colleagues referred to about the explosion of the infrastructure around the counterterrorism was a perfect example where we thought if we employed now thousands and thousands more private-sector contractors we would be safer but in spite of the all of that we had fort hood and a few other instances where it we were lucky that things didn't happen so i think we have learned perhaps a more judicious the identification of priorities and candidly and respectfully with more aggressive oversight on the part of the congress of the united states which united states which again is very difficult to do throughout the entire legislative ranch. i think it is a very appropriate question. i am not in a position to assess a basic outcome.

and balance i think congress has identified some of the most immediate needs. i do think there have been dollars that have not been expended very appropriately. i think congress along the way has lost sight of the admonition that was involved in the legislation and that has taken commercial off-the-shelf, technology and apply it. i think we are still in a search for the perfect technology. i don't think we are going to find it at the border. i don't think we are going to find it at the airport. i think we might want to be a little bit more judicious and encouraging and review the procurement in the testing process about these technologies within the department, but i think if someone who was privileged to have served and worked in congress and worked with my colleagues during those first couple of years, i think

they did a remarkable job. remember there was no architecture and there was no plan. no one was prepared for that attack and the nature of that attack and frankly what this country endured afterwards. we went from unprecedented -- to unprecedented guard. we found solidarity at the outset and we have made some mistakes along the way but as my colleague lee hamilton has said one reason we are safer in our country is because the work the 9/11 commission accomplished. we have made a great deal of rug rats. let's not a reckless about the threat. american can manage this threat. to that and i would love to see a broader role for a smaller roof of congress in the house and senate to help to continue to build on the success and the security and effectiveness of the department. your question was very well

stated and i'm sorry i gave you such a long-winded response to it. >> thank you very much. it's a congressman the other panelist to talk more broadly about this and i read we have spent a lot on addressing the aviation area and airtime security. that, all of biological and nuclear area and the cyber area needs more attention going forward. as these threats evolve, as it relates to resource investments narrowly, think what we have learned is the cantor rush deployment of untested technologies. that has not worked effectively. there are the airports, so-called sbinet, the advanced spectroscopic radiation monitors all have failed because they haven't had adequate testing and also in the secure flight area was on the success side. i think they took the time for congress to enumerated specific areas that needed to be met

including the protection of civil liberties and privacy in that system and i think that was a good effort on that site so going forward there needs to be a risk-based approach to investment decisions. funds are unlimited and also there has to be a careful application of good management practices and testing in the technologies. >> thank you mr. chairman. i want to thank you in the ranking member for your leadership as well as the witnesses and i've personally feel much safer now than i did then. >> thank you sue davis and let me take the witnesses. the ranking member and i were discussing the testimony. the test of knowledge and have about the subject complex issue and how unfortunately there is too often a political debate especially on the issue of homeland security. how many few sound bites there. you take a complex issue, too

many people in politics saying both parties take the most complex issue and reduce it to a 102nd soundbite and while there are specific answers, as the three of you have indicated today none of this is easy all of his is complex and there are many people who are well-intentioned trying to do the right thing and actually i want to thank you for your service especially thank you for your testimony today and now i will yield to the ranking member for any fine or marks he has. >> thank you mr. chairman and i would like to support your comments. we have a lot of people on this committee who consider themselves experts but i have not had any greater depth of knowledge resented her this morning by the three of you. that depth goes beyond your affluence and i think it is a

tribute to what you do every day and i want to personally just as the chairman said thank you for your service and thank you for hopefully getting this committee where we need to be as the committee on homeland security. your leadership in getting us there in this testimony will go a long ways towards accomplishing that and i thank you. >> thank you ranking member. in closing i would say chairman hamilton and secretary ridge, members of the committee may have additional questions and we will ask you to respond to this in writing. the hearing record will be held open for 10 days and without objection the committee stands adjourned.

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

up next on c-span2, the arab-american antidiscrimination committee looks at civil liberties 10 years after 9/11. recognizes the gentleman from which is currently,

>> now a discussion of civil liberties 10 years after the 9/11 attacks. posted by the arab-american antidiscrimination committee we'll hear from officials from the homeland security department and the justice department's division. this is an hour and 45 minutes.

>> alright, thank you were sticking with us through the day as we approach our last panel and probably the most significant panel i think of the day with a lot of information that has been affecting us over the last 10 years and that is our civil rights and civil liberties. we have faced many challenges which needless to say we have had many pieces of legislation through the patriot act. we have seen a change in immigration enforcement and immigration laws. we had earlier this morning about the employment discrimination problems we are facing in the community. and we will continue to address these issues but move forward this will take a closer look at how these issues may have changed and really the work we have done in the past 10 years on the challenges we have faced in the past 10 years. we have dynamic set of speakers with us up here.

we have the associate professor of law at western university school of law and illegal fellow and social policy and understanding. he is the director of law and policy and the policy adviser at dhs for office of civil rights and civil liberties. we were supposed to have mr. buzz scarry from doj but he may be running a few minutes late. the panel may be opening remarks and the civil rights issues we face and how we move forward and then we will engage in a conversation and discussion with the panelists. for the sake of time i say we just get going and dive right into it. so do you want to start off. >> thank you so much for inviting me. it is a pleasure to be at adc.

this is certainly an organization that i support and have benefited from frankly directly as an arab-american. so despite the challenges that we all face, we are lucky to have adc. so i want to use my time today to really make two significant points are two major points. after reflecting on what do you talk about 10 years after 9/11? 10 years ago i was hoping we would have nothing to talk about in 9/11 would fade into history and we could just move on but unfortunately that doesn't seem to have happened from a civil liberties perspective. so the two i guess main takeaways i would like you to have this first that i really now have come to believe very genuinely that an eternal vigilance is freedom. is not a cliché and especially i have learned my work over the last 10 years and every year i think the next year i don't have to work as hard.

we don't have to hope it will get better. in some ways it does but you have to be eternally vigilant. the second is after witnessing the responses to many of our community groups to the attacks on our community and the ebb and flow in the last year or two have been on the up tick. as i'm starting to recognize or seems to be a model to the syndrome that i think is troubling and i think it is has taken over the generation of 30 and 40 something leaders and i think it is a failed strategy and i will go into more detail on that. first let's talk about the cliché eternal vigilance is the price of freedom. i think we have learned over the past 10 years that everything the government tells us and every time they tell us they are not violating our constitutional rights, and we believe them then we eventually have surrendered those rights. unfortunately and i say this having worked for the government

and believing generally that they are are good public servants out there who act in good faith but unfortunately the government has shown to be duplicitous and has set rings that have been completely contradicted by their actions and that it's been both under president bush and president obama. so the onus is on us and it is a reality we have to face. whether it is primarily americans and i will talk more about how that has spread beyond their committee, the violation we are going to have to be skeptical. we will have to be critical of government programs and hold their government accountable. if we don't do that i think that we are setting ourselves up for losing our rights. i know that sounds to some people very obvious but unfortunately to others i don't think that they realized it really is a burden we have to bear unless you are ready to give those rights up. and by taking that offensive view, have been accused and those who agree with me have

been accused of being exaggerating, outlandish, belligerent, a troublemaker and because -- but the reason why i find that model minority syndrome is that if you accept that, if you accept that i having to play the model minority role that you are in fact belligerent or disloyal than you are playing into the prejudicial narrative. in other words, if i have to prove that i'm a good american to prove to you that i deserve my rights then that is a fundamental problem. that is not the narrative that we should be basing our civil rights advocacy on. it should be based on eye innocent because another person happens to have my ethnicity, my race, my religion and my gender that it is a crime doesn't mean that i have to go and incessantly condemned terrorism.

doesn't mean i have to oyster mind everyone that i have nothing to do with this person, that i don't agree with this person. you just should assume that i don't agree with this person. unless i have shown you otherwise, you should assume that i don't agree that person as much as i don't think another white male who is a christian and a veteran -- and there are a lot of people that i've spoken to outside of the community when i give them that analogy a lightbulb goes off and they say m i don't always think white guys that are veterans are a terrorist. so it is obviously illogical national point but not sinking in. to mainstream america. so i just make that point to say that i don't think the model american syndrome is going to work but let's first before i go there, as a model citizen

strategy. let's go back to sahar here you are taking on this very confrontational adversarial role towards the government. has been 10 years in the strategy does not work. now, why am i taking this position? because the government has lied to us many times. i'm going to call it a -- to mitigate the offensiveness. fit number one, we do not spy on moms. never have, never will. we protect the first amendment and we believe in religious freedom. we have no problem with people practicing their religion. i've heard that so many times within the government and outside the government i will many government officials who i do think believe that. then what happens? not only do you get complaints coming to the abc and the aclu and name your organization, which renée when they filed their report when they issue them they still get -- but then

you get reports from the "associated press," center for investigative reporting of berg we "mother jones" "harper's" magazine all that in the last month and what does it say? he says the new york alyce department has become one of the most nations most aggressive domestic intelligence agencies targeting in ways that would run afoul of civil liberties rules of practice by the federal government so now we are talking about the nypd. what they have done is they have dispatched undercover officers known as ray burst into minority neighborhoods as part of a human mapping program. the monitor daily life in bookstores, bars, cafés night clubs and mosques. they are called mosque crawlers. the monitor sermons and to see what the imams are saying. then there is also the informant. we have done a run down from the taxi commission of every pakistani cabdriver in new york city and produce analytical

reports on every mosque within 100 miles. former cia officer created a seikh it nypd that would infiltrate neighborhoods. ethnic bookstores run of lists where they would go and look to see what people were sifting through in the bookstore and if they were looking at radical literature they would then instigate further inquiry and essentially target them for investigation. and, then when there was screwed me on this program, it is discovered that the police regularly shredded documents that discuss these rakers. so what a coincidence that all the evidence is gone yet the department says we have all these lawyers and we haven't done anything wrong. why did you have to shred the evidence? why would you shred all the information? perhaps there is a legitimate excuse but usually when you are in litigation and someone is destroying evidence it is usually obstruction. so something is going on that is

showing there is a contradiction is my point. these are all from non-muslim, non-arab mainstream news organizations. some of them are liberal and some of them if they are in the middle or left of center but these are not people who necessarily have an agenda. these are not people within our community you are very upset about what is happening to them. these are people who are saying what is happening to this country? and who is bearing the burden? the second lie is we do not spy on a are gather intelligence on american activities. we are not interested in your legal activities and we are not etched in your lawful activities. we only go after criminals and people engage in illegal behavior. i know how many of you are watching the pbs news there yesterday. i don't think that is an al qaeda news agency or some conspiratorial news agency that they aired a segment on the creation of suspicious activity reports by the mall of america and many fusion centers across

the country and they interviewed many individuals who had gotten caught up in the suspicious activity reports where you have got police, local police and starting, writing up a suspicious activity reports of someone takes a picture or someone looks suspicious or if somebody is nervous and that is going into databases which instigates interrogations and questioning which of wars makes those people feel awful because they haven't done anything wrong and then after that, a little bit of activity in the back. [laughter] as long as everyone is safe. [laughter] anyway, so then after that it goes into a database and goes to different police departments and it goes to the federal euro of investigation. there was a 70-year-old pakistani man who to his really bad luck forgot his cell phone in a food court. a lot of 70-year-olds will do that. my father forgets his cell phone all the time and he is about that age range. don't think it is anything to do with him being a terrorist.

that essentially led to a very dramatic scheme of events where the fbi went to his family's house, his son's house and asked for a voluntary interview and asked about where they were giving their charitable donations and whether they were traveling, what their political beliefs were and essentially of course completely made them feel like they had no rights. interestingly juliette cayenne who was the former assistant secretary of intergovernmental affairs was interviewed on the "pbs newshour" and she stated during her 10 years as a high-level official under the obama administration that she has yet to see any evidence that the suspicious activity reports actually led to see oiling a tangible terrorist attack. so, there is a disconnect between the rhetoric and the actions. finally, and then i because of shortage of time i would recommend viewers to go and look up the missouri, florida,

pennsylvania and massachusetts fusion centers because they have all been discovered as essentially spying on political activity. usually anti-tax protesters, first amendment rights, peace activists and speakers before me had reported on that. so the evidence is there that there is something awry and then finally lie number three. we do not use informants in our terrorism statistics. that is politicizing criminal justice, and that is an appropriate. "mother jones" and -- magazine published an investigative report that talked about the use of informants by the fbi many of whom are in mosque and preying on vulnerable members of the committee such as young men with mental health albums ex-felons who have major financial problems and just other haplessness of individuals. they usually try to go and if

they want someone to be there in form and they will go and get i.c.e. to look into their immigration record and if they can find one little thing they will expedite prosecution and then they will tell the guy or the woman hey -- it is usually the guy if we can clear you and make sure you don't get deported if you work for us and a lot of people feel coerced in a gray because it is a difficult choice to make. so you have got $3.3 billion over the last 10 years of fbi resources going into these kinds of activities. that is compared to 2.6 billion organized crime. you have 15,000 informants, 15,000. some of them are paid up to $100,000 in formants, most of their demographics are ex-felons down on their luck, really poor and really desperate. not all of them, but enough of them to cause a major concern.

that is not to say it can't be or shouldn't be used in law enforcement and calling for adequate information but the fbi has a lot of explaining to do. if you look historically in context to be but those numbers in context in 1975 the of the i had 1500 informants, 15,000 today. in 19 80/20 800 informants. 1986, 6000 informants. and now we have 15,000. what are these 15,000 informants going to do? they want to make sure they get paid and how are you going to get paid? you have to show some work product and you know it is usually pretty easy to pick on on the hapless and then in the make and the unsophisticated and if it is your sum that is out there who is being manipulated you are not going to have a lot of sympathy for these of informants and you are going to think if my son is mental health albums or if he is misguided on

something why don't we seek some kind of counseling? why don't we figure out a way to rehabilitate him instead of in punitive but of course that would not help the statistics. so i will and with my model minority critique. so, what i think has happened is i have listed all of these things said to me are just as clear as day. there something going on. it is 10 years later and we are talking about this that. these reports came out not in 2003 where we had legitimate explanation that people were traumatized. it is 10 years later and there's really no excuse. what is the response of the community to this? most of them say we need to explain axles better or maybe we need to show -- go out there 6 million people go to 294 million people -- their three and a million people america.

they are never going to get to all those 294 million. is statistically impossible. that is not to say you should do outreach an interface and interface and all of that but you have to do it in a way that -- but may prove to you that i medicine. you walk in there with a sense of entitlement and you say i don't have to prove anything to you just like you don't have to prove anything to me. i'm a citizen and i have rights and i am going to expect that you accept those principles because if i don't, then i am essentially turning you into -- turning this country into pure sedition chip country and i'm facilitating that to my detriment. and i think it is more offensive for those of us who are children of immigrants are immigrants who are worn and raised her is that our parents and i think we all feel this way. they have master degrees and

they have the hd's and they have worked 15 hour days. they have sacrificed for their children and they have businesses. these people are not -- any stretch of the imagination. they send their children to harvard and yale into the best universities they can get them into and that they can afford and then you dare to come and tell us that we have to prove our innocence and we have to prove our loyalty and we have to be different types of americans? i find that really offensive and i think that that is a message i would rather tell my fellow americans who are not of my demographic and say you know you should never let me treat you that way and i'm never going to let you trade me that way. that is the american patriotic thing to do. the mayor can patriot and we all know this if you have read history is not need groveling, begging, pandering please let me convince you i'm a good person. no, it is a proud, confident,

dignified person who says my freedoms are my in alienable rights and i'm not going to give them up and i don't have to prove anything. so i guess i will end with a note to all of you and myself and i think this tenth anniversary is the time when the west needs to look at the east, that one may look at the east no longer can we build a five. they deserve our praise. they are the ones in egypt and libya, and syria in yemen in tunisia who are fighting for their freedom and they are sacrificing and criticizing their government and not believing the hype and not believing the state-sponsored television and media. ..

and speak to all of you. i recently started working for the department of homeland security at the office of civil rights and civil liberties. like a lot of the distinguished analyst here, i was also thinking on my way here about, where have we come in the last 10 years after 9/11? tonight ain't a lot of the panelists has done an excellent

job laying out the current state of affairs in terms of what his hat made of what is going on in the south we should and will some american communities. they tenneco chad ladin out of challenges. i'm going to talk about the work we do in my department. videx has come to some of the challenge and also maybe talk about the good games that happened after 9/11. i give you another example. i like some of the people that sahar was mentioning and many of us and our families, i came here 21 years ago during the first gulf war as a refugee. my family was civic that discrimination and bad muslim. back then there was no word islamic phobia. the american public didn't have a concept of this issue about what is islam a phobia? my name wasn't always ehsan

zaffar. it was transcendent hussein. when i came here because we were the victim of intimidation and threats, my father decided change by last name. now we have a president whose middle name is hussein. so yes, 9/11 happened. yes, a lot of tragic events happen and there continues to be racial profiling, yes we have a lot of weeks ago. i agree the with sahar bimini advocates to continue to talk to the government, questioned policies, engage with us on a regular basis. but would also come a long way. or so we thought it net positive impact. sahar and the coalition when it says. they be here for oil? may be impartially so.

one day they will go away, but will have advocates like the adc and sahar to continue watching out for issues plaguing our community. also, my office probably wouldn't exist were it not for the tragic events of 9/11. the office for civil rights in other liberties, is to my knowledge, the only civil rights office in a national security agency in the world. you know, we started off with five people in 2009 an hour after 130. we are to my knowledge the fastest-growing per capita department and the department of homeland security. dhs is a large agency. it was 22 agencies are picked together and formed into this one massive agency, which is now the second largest in the country with over 250,000 employees. we're not the fbi.

the fbi belongs to the department of justice or the atf. but we do include, i.c.e. he does citizenship and female which does disaster relief. not a law-enforcement agency. coast guard come in the arm of the armed forces. tsa, which does transportation security. it will report to 108 different congressional committees and such committee committees. a flick about a statistic in dhs spent something like 66 were tears in 2009 alone responding to congressional questions, whereas most agencies talk to maybe two to five congressional committees. so there's a lot of challenges facing us, facing the agency, but our department over the last two years, and because of input

from advocates such as adc and others and individuals like the traveling public have more to fix the issues. it's a fine line protect in the nation and also ensuring the civil rights of the people we are protect, including us, are not violated. there is a controversial program called and seniors, a restoration program. all the countries were delisted because of our office, programs to longer be enforced. we started something called secure flight can watch all of you may notice when you book your will ask you for your gender comment your name, earth day and give you a place to put any redress number. it crosschecks it will ensure that people who travel more change their name. they will use an alias system

that tries to ensure that false positives are less and. i travel around the country left for the work i do and that's one of the things that's done a great job of reducing domestic travel issues. me personally, i used to get pulled over for secondary screening quite a bit of an easter travel. after secure flight astronomically less. they don't know if i'm traveling on behalf of the agency or if i'm traveling on my own. as result in any kind of problems. there have been other things come at our office we review intelligence that comes than come intelligence classified to the general public, but we review for civil rights issues, terminology. that plays a large part we want to make people at our office

conducting surprise as i said immigrations shooting monitoring with doctors and provisions ensure the way people are being held in facilities in line for that, related facilities are being treated with constitutional rights intact. in the case, might end final note is that it's very important to combat these issues, to be an advocate. were it not for adc or sahar, a lot of these issues would not come to our attention. all the accomplishments occurred after 9/11 and see how far our community has come after this tragic affair. and to encourage all of you here, as well as the advocates and the general public to continue talking with your federal government to ensure

that these issues continue going forward in a positive way. thank you. [applause] >> thank you. now i will turn it to roche, who is a strong advocate and we are very proud to be a strong coalition partner with the coalition as well. >> can you hear me in the back? excellent, thanks so much. you're good? thanks to adc for hosting us. it's a privilege to be here. i want to tell you a little bit about the sic coalition that was founded on the night of 9/11 in response to a torrent of hate crimes and determination, which he had received immediately after the attacks. as you know, sic were

prodigiously required to wear. unfortunately, the prevailing stereotype is if you have a turbine on your head or have some kind of facial hair, you must be an extremist. as it turns out, most people this country and perhaps even in the world who wear turbans all day every day are sikhs. we are from south asia and our religion is about five centuries-old. they're about five to 6 million arabs and muslims according to sahar and that's a generous estimate. it's generous to say there's half a million in the united states. so we really constitute a very negligible percentage of this country's population. nevertheless, we are proud of what we stand for and in light of the post 9/11 challenges, such as hate crimes, such as were race discrimination, i can tell you with quite a lot of confidence, but our spirits will never be broken. notwithstanding this very busy sort of optimistic declaration

of mine, i am going to tell you about two ways in which our government at the federal and state level can strip us of civil rights. kerry szabo insidious ways in which they could do this. the horror actually helped us with this a few years ago. many of you may not know this, but in 2019 and state legislators of oklahoma and minnesota, through state law, attempted to prohibit individuals from wayne religious head coverings in their driver's license photos. this was done reportedly for safety reasons. the idea being that forcing everybody to be bareheaded in an identification photograph would facilitate identification by law enforcement. but ignore the fact that muslims, seikh, observant jewish as a matter of religious mandate

were head coverings every day. it is fundamentally constituent about their identity. nevertheless, the state legislature of oklahoma passed this prohibition law by a vote of 88. it was an overwhelming vote in favor of this measure. when one of the lead sponsors of the legislation, wait a reseller was asked why this legislation was needed, he said -- and this is captured on tv. you can probably find it on youtube even now. he is a book, if you go to another country and they've got some customs or more a pitcher expected to abide to come you also abide by them. similarly someone comes to this country and wear something on their head and our prevailing way of doing things is you shouldn't wear anything on your head, dished abide by our rules, too. clearly there was bias motivation behind the legislation. minnesota, within a matter of weeks that happening also attempted to pass a similar law.

why is this significant? apart from being offensive and potentially even existentially challenging to individuals like myself are religiously required to wear turbans every day, who would not stoop so low as to remove our turbans to get a drivers license. for communities, a rule of this nature can have a deleterious impact on our ability to travel in transact. think what life would be like if you didn't have access to valid identification card. enter the implications it would have for the ability to get on an airplane, to get a bank loan, to purchase goods and services, to drive to work, to get a livelihood, and address. can you imagine a situation of the oklahoma legislature was successful? you've been a seikh come you be observant jewish person of out-of-state that you can preserve the dignity of part is seeing religion on your own terms. can you imagine what it's like to be a refugee in your country

in the united states? that's what's at stake. surprisingly, loss of this nature can pass constitutional muster in this country. that's the scary part. the first amendment of the u.s. constitution has in the last 20, 25 years than the watered-down, sort of misinterpreted someone say in ways make it not so potent with respect to its ability to protect religious freedom. according to the current interpretation of the free exercise clause of the first amendment u.s. constitution, we colloquially regard as the freedom of religion, if a state legislature passes a law that on its face is neutral and generally applicable, isn't targeted at a particular religious minority and it happens to have been incidental and deleterious impact of many

religious minorities, it would pass constitutional muster. to be perfectly constitutional under the first amendment. now, i won't bore you with the details. in 1993, and the u.s. congress tried to overturn or mitigate the impact of the misinterpretation of the constitutional provision for legislation known as the religious freedom restoration act. the problem is in 1997, the supreme court held that referred does not apply to the states. so if a state like oklahoma or minnesota or any number of states attempted again to pass a law that was prohibit individuals from buying drivers license photos and files suit, claiming it violated the u.s. constitution, unless your state had a state rfra, a state version, you would be in bad shape. you would lose and there'd be

arguably nothing to do about this very sad situation. as the last time i checked, six months ago, sahar is more of an expert in this area than i am, something like 37 states in this country do not have state versions of the religious freedom restoration act. in other words, something like 37 states in this country, the vast majority followed the u.s. constitution. it is sort of a prevailing interpretation, which means any of the 37 states attempt to pass a law that says you can't have anything on your head in a drivers license photo. you have to choose between religion and ability to travel, transact and participate legally in the social and economic life of our country. it's a very easy way for bigots and state legislatures and a steady and insidious way, very simple way, very seemingly non-threat way for them to completely ruin your life on account of your religion. that is a problem still festering as we speak.

i'd like to tell you a little about another problem, which are actively working on now to address. most of you may not know this, and actually have would say you would be shocked and surprised to hear this. title vii of the civil rights act of 1964, which prohibits workplace discrimination on the basis of race, religion, sex and so forth have been the last two years been misinterpreted by at least one court in ways that empower employers to segregate, to physically segregate visibly religious general public in practical terms, what does this mean quite a few of the son who was they had her for a muslim man who keeps a beard, if you are a seikh who keeps a turban, your employer, your private employer can say to you, look, we have a corporate image policy, which forbids the employees from wearing anything

on their head. however, under title vii of the civil rights acts, we are required to make a reasonable accommodation of your religious right is. we have to make enough for her, a good-faith effort to meet you halfway and accommodate your religion. so here's what we'll do. here's a reasonable accommodation. you can work here. i'll pay the same amount of money. we may pay more money than the guys where you want for. but here's the catch. your trick in the basement where nobody can see you. some courts in this country in the last 10 years have said that it's perfectly legal. it's consistent with title vii of the civil rights act. if you know anything about the civil rights act of 1964, that is among our most seminal civil rights laws. the purpose of title vii, in particular for civil rights that come with integrated. it was response to segregation and jim crow laws.

and that from the part of federal government to ensuring public and private herbert lee says, duvets come the religion and so forth would not be deficient that others with respect to your employability. nevertheless, as we speak, it's perfectly legal for employers to segregate you based on the way you the. now i'll leave it at that. i've got a parade of horrible to tell you about, so perhaps we can do this during the question-and-answer period, but i would like to end on this note. i agree completely with sahar about internal vigilance. if you would like to join us in efforts to combat workplace fabrication, which is one subset of workplace discrimination come if you'd like to join our efforts to combat efforts by state legislatures to use loopholes in constitutional law to save religious minorities, please let us know. we work in concert with a d.c.

come their organizations named dr. this afternoon, so please partner with us if you're so inclined. thank you so much. [applause] >> thank you. we're going to start with a few questions to each panelist. i want to start with dhs. not to pick on you or any name, but -- you mentioned the financiers program and you mentioned the countries to which the effect work, the deregulation of cells continues to stay in place. at any point in the future we can refill the regulation with arab countries, european countries, we don't know. what is the hesitation from dhs and not getting rid of regulations will be skipping minimum assurances that we will not face a similar issue with

again in the future? >> one of the reasons -- there are parade of reasons, but one was there was no longer an effective program for the goals set out for the program. i don't know if my mic is on. people can hear me, but there are many regulations left and place. thousands and thousands unfortunately. and that is a decision the secretary made to leave it in place. effectively, the entire apparatus of the program has been dismantled. there are far better ways to achieve security goals, national security goals tiniest years. and i don't know what the second question you asked, with another program? >> the answer is program as a whole. >> we still have individuals. >> to get to your second point,

there's religious effects. we recently held a meeting with margaret to us on the previous panel also attended the meeting to discuss the residual effects of opera can do in the department is working to address those issues. >> i just want to note and this is credit to edc and many other organizations in this predates her tenure. abc spent nine years pushing for this and they didn't get everything they wanted. i believe had they not done that, i think it would still been there. maybe it wouldn't have been used, but it still on the books, but of these countries wouldn't have been removed. it is to mean not necessarily a victory for those who oppose, but it is further evidence that a few don't push the government, if you don't force them to be that public servants are supposed to be because we pay

them. we now serve them. they serve us. nothing can happen and sometimes it's for bureaucratic, summit political and ideology, that they think it is proof that if you don't -- and it is a long battle. >> as anybody after the conference wants to go upstairs, with that about 20 bankrupt files full of our financiers, but it's definitely one of the primary issues after 9/11. i'm looking forward to the next 10 years. what do you think are issues this community will be facing? >> that's a much harder question than i would've thought two years ago because there was a time when discrimination was finally slowing down in the last two or three years it just boomed unfortunately. i connect it to the elections of

obama. once he started running for president, the anti-muslim slurs started to increase. antibiotic overuse of them because it's politically correct to be anti-muslim, but not to be anti-black. from there it just sort of got out of control and he was no longer necessarily the target, but for the questioning of his birth certificate, but the birth or switch to me was clearly based on bias. but then it went into the moms, kind of the other public forms of bias that we've been seeing. so moving forward, i think it's the phase now where institutions need to be institutionalizing. i think after 9/11, everyone is in shock from mainstream society. muslim arabs had the shock of the terrorist attacks as americans, but also the shock of the backlash. there was a law does react to

this common defense is behavior that is completely accepted to 10 years later, i don't think we have the excuse anymore. so one, don't let your down because of the things i've talked about and everyone else. institutionalized. if you can do it by yourself come you are woefully misguided. institutions are what mobilize and empower communities. we sang it at recent other minority groups. i think the next step also is related to the paper that i'm working on is one in. i think it's time for us to start talking about when and engender in our community. it got put on the back room because of the existential problems we were dealing with when they're attacked by so many guys we had to unite, which in some ways it's good for the community. but there were a lot of gender issues that were made and have pushed under the rug.

i think that's an internal discussion that needs to have been. it's not some kind of an imperialistic or external imposition. and i guess third is it is time -- i mean, i think we continue to have to pressure the government. it's become clear to me but it doesn't matter if it's republican to democrat. that's been a really harsh realization frankly over the last two or three years. i like obama's personality. he's very bright, but am very disappointed in his administration. state seekers docked in and the watchlist of nature, nature data integrity issues. anonymously these informants, the spying, with the n.y.p.d. issue, it's unfortunate that mohsen wasn't here. one question for the civil rights decision is they just not an investigation of prosecuting the puerto rican police

department. i want to know if it's legal that they are working with the cia to spend on transcendent law scholars to come and listen to decisions. imagine thinking everything i'm saying is recorded by the government. that's not religious freedom. her congregation may not even come anymore. they'll come for 10 minutes to pray and they look at the heck out of there because that mosque is just invitation to be prosecuted. nobody wants that kind of trouble. so i think that is kind of my suggestion for the future. >> sud southend, two-part question. first question is, in terms of school going. i know that's an issue we've definitely work done before in the past been an issue we've definitely been addressing in the future.

i know raj is that the civil talk about the work he's been doing with doj. in the second part of the question, and the issue we've been dealing with, particularly seikh in the military and the work he's done around that issue. >> okay, yeah, with respect to school going, many of you know this, but in recent and alaska live years, it has become an issue, which has finally been put on the national radar. unfortunately this happened because of a stated suicide by young students who were accused of being a gay, and even in some cases where they haven't defined their sexual orientation.

certainly at the federal level anyway. the seikh coalition between 2007 and 2010 has conducted two major surveys of students. one was conducted in new york city. one was conducted in the bay area of san francisco, about nine counties comprising san francisco. what we found both cases was upwards of 60% to 70% of sikh children are bullied and harassed on account of their perceived religion. in many cases, they are slurred as obama bin laden. they and a quarter of the cases in those cities, sikh students were physically assaulted. in new jersey, we had a case of a student whose turbine was set on fire by one of his fellow students. another sikh student had his hair forcibly cut. as you know, seeks higher bp and

uncut hair and that was a great situation for him. another student had his orbital bone fractured by one who is attempting to remove his turban. what's interesting about the results of salt though in other respects, because we did not just conduct a survey of sikh students, we got a sense of what their most pressing issues were. and although there were differences with respect to economic issues, access to health care or language access in this kind of thing, between new york city and the bay area, the school statistics were uniform in the sense that they were quite bad. it's really a crisis in the sikh community and we know from our friends in the muslim american community that muslim children are also brutalized and school on account of they are religion. students who are at your american are harassed and bullied because of their ethnicity. and i should tell you that there

is legislation in congress pending at the moment, which might help address some of these problems. you should take note of it called the safe schools improvement act. you should take a look at that legislation. and if you like it, you have to contact your legislature and ask him or her to cosponsor. i'm sure adc or any of us can give you more information. with respect to restate two seats in the u.s. military time you may not believe this, but until the last year or two, seeks were effectively prohibited from joining the u.s. armed forces because of the armies and particularly the army's appearance regulation. this is ironic historically speaking because sikhs have an orientation for martial prowess. they can pry something like 20% of the british indian army despite 2% of india's

population. the united kingdom, canada, india. until recently, he was so proud turbid morning seek. the fact would be sort of substandard soldiers and six absurd demonstrably so. we had to struggle quite so as an organization to gain it mission on behalf of sikhs into the army. notwithstanding the fact that these gentlemen has been admitted and notwithstanding the fact they've been allowed to wear their turbans and are being allowed to keep their beards intact, the army and the rest of the armed forces have so far refused to change policy and paper. so when this happened is we are relegated to being exceptions to the general rule. what we are looking for is a situation arising under friday, presumptively for people unwilling to serve a movie can do so without having to hire

lawyers, without having to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars without having to consult with organizations like the sikh coalition to achieve the same right as any other person in this country enjoys freely. >> thank you. >> i want to welcome the counsel to the assistant civil rights division. nasa and along with his colleagues at doj civil rights division has kept a strong and open-minded communication and diabetic between the community and edc. of course if you can imagine at times we tend to disagree more than we agree. they tend to be a lot more issues that may be taking a point between the two entities. but we have cut the lines of communication open. and monson is a strong advocate for civil rights, for civil liberties and we are proud to have one of her own community members within the government

serving. so as we've been talking about issues that impacted us over the past 10 years and issues moving forward over the next 10 years. but they generally appear within doj, particularly your division, work is being done to address the civil rights concerns of the community over the past decade. >> sure, thank you. first, let me apologize for being late. i recently started as a special assistant u.s. attorney in alexandria and between the weather in the distance, unfortunately wasn't able to be here on time, so forgive me. but i want to today take the opportunity to talk to you about the work when the civil rights division have been doing to protect those affected by what we call post-9/11 backlash. and what we mean by that are groups of individuals who have

been targeted as a direct result of perceived association with those responsible for the attacks on 9/11 for their terrorist act committee. before 9/11, the civil rights complaints that the department received and that the department has taken action on was really not on the charts at all. i mean, no significant presence for muslim americans, arab americans, sikh americans and south asian in terms of civil rights complaints. across the board, whether it was educational discrimination, whether it was housing discrimination what have you. and that could be attributable to a variety of reasons, but you know, i would guess would be

really lack of awareness within the community. it certainly can't be the case that what civil rights violations before. but what 9/11 did was create a state of consciousness but then a large segment of these communities that i think folks access to an area of dealing with problems that they've been facing before, that they may not have realized or may not have realized that the course to addressing. second of all, in the days after 9/11, we saw a dramatic number of hate crimes reports. in the three months after 9/11, there was something on the order after 300% of hate crimes that we receive now. so we are talking about 300 to 500 reports, just within the first few months following 9/11.

the assistant attorney general at the time, ralph boyd, instituted an initiative to combat post-9/11 backlash. in the beginning, it was addressing hate crimes for really the first day. there were reports of individuals who are targeted. our first prosecution was that a man who went to a mosque in washington state and started shooting. the good news is nobody was injured and were all thankful for that. unfortunately, many people could be seriously injured or killed. it wasn't the first backlash event. i'm sure this has been mentioned, but the case of volunteer sincerity in arizona, who was the first unfortunate loss of life after 9/11 it was then living backlash.

that was a state prosecution. since then, we've had over 800 investigation of alleged hate crimes against arab-americans, muslim americans come the sikh americans and south asian americans under the can at the backlash. as of last week, i believe we're up to 53 prosecutions of individuals under post-9/11 backlash, the most recent of which this year we had a man of february who pled guilty to having burnt or attempted to burn a mosque. he only succeeded in burning down the playground outside a mosque. the good news is he decided to do that three a.m. when there's no children playing. it's a serious defense 10 days after 9/11 people continue to want to come in the words of the attorney general, you know, avenge an attack on innocents

with another attack on innocents. and it's an unfortunate case that we're having to deal with hate crimes up until this day, but we are -- as we are committed to enforcing i hate crimes laws generally, absolutely committed to enforcing hate crimes in the post-nine 9/11 backlash universe. nsa mentioned, we had an indictment as recently as last week for a man who wanted to turn down the mosque in eugene, oregon after he heard about the attempted bombing in portland last year. so this is likely an ongoing phenomenon as unfortunate as it is. despite the many efforts that folks in the president on down has made speaking out against any association and any attempts of vigilante justice, we

unfortunately continue to see a steady stream of hate crimes against these communities. but that is not all of the story of the civil rights division. we have across the board seen an increase in civil rights violations, whether it's violations of the religious land use and its suppliers personal act which protects against discrimination for communities, to wish to build houses of europe, we have had an ongoing project since the passage of the act and its enforcement are those who don't know was passed unanimously by congress, almost an unheard of dedication this day of each. in 2000, congress unanimously passed the act which banned discrimination against minority communities and minority religions and religious institutions in general. in the last 10 years, we've had

about over two dozen cases involving mosques in particular. in the last year, 16 of our matters that we've opened have been evolving mosques of those 26 cases that we've opened since 9/11. so it's sort of the opposite of the hate crime situation, where we saw a significant number of hate crimes in the immediate months after 9/11, but that decline yet steady stream we seen an increase in the number of reports of possible cases of discrimination against houses of worship. and in the last week actually we filed complaints and decrease the moments with two municipalities. one in virginia --

[inaudible] and the city of wilburn, georgia outside of the land. and these are cases that we care very much about, just as we care about cases that determination against other religious communities. though we do recognize the post-9/11 backlash community is, as my assistant attorney general makes to say, facing ad window of intolerance. we, as rob so eloquently mentioned, we have seen an increase in bullying across the board in our educational opportunities section has been committing resources to address the problem of olein. in april, we settled the case in minnesota, involving a school district that tolerated a climate of rolling against somali american based on their national origin.

and we succeeded in the settlement against the owatonna school district there and hope that will serve as an example to many other school districts have their applications to prevent illegal olein and harassment on the basis of race, national origin, sexual orientation, gender or stability. in the area of housing discrimination, we've seen them in recent reports of housing discrimination cases. and it's an area that i think the community may not fully be aware of their rights to pursue recourse against discrimination. and we've heard many stories from people who tell us, you know, they go to rent an apartment and you know, when i went to was fine, but when i brought my wife to have been to the arena headscarf, certainly there have been no vacancies

anymore. those are instances that are clear violations of the fair housing act. it's something we can do a tremendous amount about, but only if individuals file complaints with the local housing authorities for possible discrimination. so these are just examples of areas that the civil rights division has been committed to. combating discrimination against post-9/11 backlash. i want to end with one final thought, which, you know, we in the civil rights division has been making an effort to engage the arab-american, muslim americans come to seek american affiliates asian with the federal government since the days after 9/11. the attorney general, eric holder, has made it a priority in d.c. and united states attorneys from around the country increase their existing engagement programs and begin engagement were some that never done so before and were really

excited about the work they're doing around the country because we believe we have the departments and as the government are here to serve the people of the united states. and that includes all people in the united states. it's not just in the area of civil rights. you know, the communities that are represented in this room and that this cable care about all aspects of law enforcement. we believe it's important to have their voices at the table. so what not, i will pass it back to you. >> thank you. [applause] we are very appreciative of the good efforts put forth by doj. but prior to a command, sahar you have a question she wanted to ask pertaining to the

n.y.p.d. question that's been in the media lately. >> part of my presentation discussed a concern over to report that came out. i think it was by "the new york times" about the nyc relationship and more specifically about the allegations in what seems to be credible evidence that there's been crawlers, rakers, without any suspicion. so my question is, do you know if the civil rights division has either received a request, and is it untrue if it has, to initiate an investigation into the n.y.p.d. is part this is to ensure they are not violating the constitution in a similar way that for example, if they were accused of pro-profiling, the more specifically at the religious freedom issue. so has the civil rights division

announced to be investigated and if so, what is their response and i guess what is the position of this kind of shocking discovery? >> well, we are aware of requesters immediate. we are certainly aware of the associated press report and our viewing those matters right now. i can't really comment beyond that. >> i apologize about the night. they are out of batteries. if someone can grant me a battery from the back. i think i will use this handheld . raj, just a follow-up question for you.

within the sikh community we begin talking about the building aspect and the military. what is the take on the national security issues? by the impact team or is it more immigration related to what seems to be the big issue orders employment discrimination kind of the hot an issue? what is the hot an issue in your community clinics >> so many actually. i don't know where to begin. i don't know what to tell you. honestly we don't get a lot of antiques relating to immigration in the context of national security, we do get quite a lot of reports of racial and religious profiling. people who visited sikh shrines in pakistan are often questioned in a very brusque way by officials at a has-been to pass

through pakistan. with respect to profiling, more generally, the majority of reports that we received come from airports, particularly at tsa chat points, sikhs are subject 100 times, even after her whole body image machines without incident. the explanation that has been proffered by tsa for this is that sikh turbans are inherently bulky. they are inherently low-key and therefore incapable of being penetrated by the crack aat machines that have been deployed nationwide at a cost of billions of dollars. but honestly with respect to immigration issues more generally, we don't receive -- we are not receiving reports. if i had to rank some of the issues we are facing in order of severity, i would tell you that

hands down and wouldn't even be employment discrimination. it would be hate crimes as such. it's an attitude problem. it's entrenched she, which unfortunately as has been mentioned already, which is sort of kind of insight in our political discourse. it's very fashionable these days for politicians to take potshots at muslims. think of peter king and the hearings he held this spring which were ongoing and unfolding. that's modern-day mccarthyism. bigotry of that sort, coupled with a hole in his ignorance is that manifested self host of a hate crimes, discrimination and so forth. it's the bigotry, the attitude that their fundamental challenge in their biggest nemesis. >> this seems to be working. we heard earlier today that the

obama administration has taken off. we've seen more deportations to many. prior to that. we have receiving a number of cases of individuals who maybe have been detained for extended periods of time. we see a backlog in the immigration court. a number of complaints are made to your office. and typically, what is done to resolve these issues? what is said to resolve these cases because often times we will get comments from the community that they need to report to dhs, the day committed this point to dhs and didn't hear back. after that they got a form letter. what's been done to address his issues and with being done on the policy side of things to change the way immigration matters have been handled as fire as retaining detention and so forth?

>> that seems that a number of questions, but just to address the policy side really briefly, president obama as well as secretary napolitano, recently if you've been reading the news, dhs is now reviewing over 300,000 cases currently in court to assess their viability for deportation or whether there's extenuating circumstances that would allow the individuals to remain. so that's a large number of cases that were working through very quickly. in terms of complaints, dhs like i mentioned is the second largest agency in the country -- better latency. each agency hasn't found ig office, internal affairs office. specifically relating to civil rights, the work my optus has we have a compliance department, a complaints department that

handles a lot of issues. i mentioned last week a number of my colleagues routinely visit the detention facilities for dave received complaints and conduct investigations. we the policy section of the department that continually refuse immigration issues. if any of you in the audience here were summoned from abc for another advocate has issues, contact me personally and i'm happy to address those issues. >> i have a question because there's something that's actually been on my mind. have you guys -- i know there was an issue that actually predated margaret that there is a really big frustration for the lack of transparency for what they called the globe are that for which people would get, which in other words i would file a complaint if they have been this identified or let's do something else. i believe my eyes have been violated in detention and a

sender report for a complaint. but what happened was that after i was finished, see our ceo would send this very cookie-cutter boilerplate, kind of unresponsive letter that says thank you very much. we appreciate you sending to come play. we've dealt with it, good luck, goodbye. people were frustrated and many presume nothing was done, not enough was done or rates are not being vindicated, which then caused them to question the role of your office. i heard that she was going to address that. has that changed officially? for example, but this dhs now give to individuals when they have finished investigating the complaint and have resulted? today tell them the key facts? today tell them the remedy? >> absolutely. i am not familiar with the exact language of the letter and how that's changed, but i have seen different letters go out to

people and you are told the disposition of the matter if it was investigated, but it's about to be investigated and you're more than welcome to contact me or any of the other folks at our office to find out what's going on. >> a quick follow-up question to what you mentioned about the review of the 300,000 plus cases. what is the discussion? how did they determine which cases move forward? either set guidelines? how did they determine which case to move forward and has that policy been put in writing or their guidelines have been been given to immigration judges? >> is a general prosecutorial discretion issue. there's 300,000 cases that there is not an aspect or if then this scenario, the hundreds of mitigating dues. you're more than welcome to the ice website has a prosecutorial memo from that or morton tells

us an example examples of issues that can -- may encourage, judge or someone investigating the length of stay at the individual in the united states, whether they have kids, whether they are attending college, you know, whether they serve in the military. so there's a number of facts that can apply that question. >> they think will open it up to some questions from the audience. >> you, sir. >> i want to touch a little bit. i'm an arab american and i'm very proud of it. he served in the united states military in my younger days. where do we put the land of ethics at the media? i was just at the national press

club yesterday, that the before when rudy giuliani came up with this talk about 9/11 and his experience in the united states is under attack about 43, 40 semite and the year. where does he get this figure? and why is it always just the arabs or the middle easterners for southeast asians for their service to the media. how come we don't talk about mcveigh in the lake in the united states? how they do active? why are they concentrating nice. why do they not say to the media, be responsible, not just focusing on the middle easterners or arabs of any other ethnic groups. or not that bad of people. were american citizens. i apply for jobs, not hearing

anything that says to me, how do you spell your name? i told her how. she says oh my god, you speak english. i have references on my application made under my name and i work for the united states government. she didn't even read it. where do we draw the line? 's >> i think you bring up a very good point. i think this is a great point that every stuffing,, which i think defensive for stereotype come is the act defined by the identity of the perpetrator, the race of the perpetrator, religion or is it defined by the act? of course we think it's the act. i think it's two things. one is you have trend stereotypes that need to be addressed and we can have a whole conversation on how to do that. multiple strategies to public

education, et cetera. but they are there and we have to acknowledge them and we is not just the community. americans. just like americans, we have problems vis-à-vis blacks. before they acknowledged it, nothing was going to be fixed. the second issue you have is i think the government is to blame, the writer curt of the government. why? somebody just have a shooting spree. or maybe it was a week ago in colorado in a store at an ihop. i think they're actually military personnel there. okay, national guard. i don't know what the race of the shooter was. and i think it was an arab or muslim to kill you have heard. that is a terrorist act because if it was a person from fort hood, he shot a bunch of military people.

we could go into whether it's terrorists or just criminal or not terrorists. but let's face terrorist because it had a political agenda. .. because he did it at noon when there was only one irs person there. he was a military veteran and he died and his family lost a father. had he done in one hour later or one hour earlier he would have had a lot of virus employees dead ago you saw the building.

the government is not going out there with the same zeal as when these things happen. sending the message to the public is not something we need to worry about. in their visitor muslim does that they are on guard showing taxpayers billions of dollars that the fbi and state law enforcement is being used properly. don't worry we are keeping you safe. i think the media is more of a symptom is the media panders to the public and it exacerbates the problem but the root of the problem is the types and they do think the government has a role to play. i think it has a responsibility. it is either going to be consistent or not and it is not going to be consistent if it has a lot of explaining to do.

[inaudible] >> the nypd and the cia saying i can certainly assure that if you have not received that demand you will because it is imperative that there be an investigation. again, thanks for talking about the turbine and the way the state got involved in the 37 states that don't have it. is similar i think to the sharia cumbre station, why that conversation should continue today. is very interesting, i have never made those connections, but i wanted to ask about something i don't usually think about which is the list, not just the no-fly list but the other lists.

they put you in a room and all that. is there any progress on that at all? i'm confused. anybody? >> i will talk about it but just with the caveat that unfortunately the department of homeland security doesn't create those lists or just a customer. those lists, those lists are managed by the of ei. that being said, there are ways to ensure that those lists are accurate, that you are not unduly harassed or pulled over into screening. we have a program that we started a year and a half ago called trip which i mentioned briefly.

you go on line and you submit information if you are having issues with domestic travel, and we have a limited -- at whatever we can can do in our agency we try to do. unfortunately if data comes in internationally, that puts certain names back on that list. we don't have any control over that is an agency. i don't know if you want to contribute to that. >> i think that is a great point because you should read the department of justice inspector general glenn fine, former inspector general's report. he did maybe two on this issue and he critiqued it from a perspective of these lists are too inaccurate then it doesn't make us any safer because it wastes a lot of time. he didn't address it from the civil rights and civil liberties perspective but it is still problematic. i think the problem is not

just -- you can't put the burden completely on the fbi because they're a bunch of agencies that feed information to these watch lists and these processes are very at least based on his report, sloppy, not monitored. they are not doing what they are supposed to be doing and this is probably the fbi's fall but also the agency's bald and making sure what other data they put in has been filtered and it is something based on some kind of reasonable suspicion, some kind of individualized suspicion something that is indicative of criminal activity based on profiling or some other noncriminal related criteria. so i think the burden is on all these agencies and also on the fbi, and i think to some extent dhs doesn't put. they are technically more of an implementer, although i don't think that let's them off the hook. frankly we get a lot of the brunt. i think you have an interest in the watchlist being accurate because you get lame because you have to implement it.

>> yeah absolutely and the reason for starting dhs which is dhs.gov/trip was because we deal with the american public more than almost any other agency in the country. every time you travel you are dealing with the tsa and because just the way government works, we are 99% of the time and implementer of that list. we still have to do something about it so the reason, the idea was to have this redress process and to the best we could as an agency on kind of the front end of the operation to ensure that our customers which are the american public, were having -- they were safe while they were traveling but also not having a hard time traveling. i encourage you to approach me afterwards to talk about this if you have any issues about traveling. >> the trip issue which has been around for a while, at least the

community, the problem with trip and i don't know but has been fixed. it didn't have enough people are killed they were de luna's with complaints understandably. they didn't have enough staff. there is no transparency and some people it took two years just to get recognition that their complaint was even received. people have complained to your office about the watchlist but the trip program itself and so i think what the communities want to know is what assurances other than verbal assurances by the evidence you can show that trip is actually a functional redress program is supposed to just on paper. >> i encourage you to read a report which will be on our web site dhs dog love --.gov and it mentions the metrics behind trip. it in three weeks it will be updated and yes, the initial process we were de luna sure with a lot of complaints obviously and people were having issues and it didn't start out a full-fledged department. overtime it has gotten better.

i was just in houston a few weeks back and people were telling me their complaints were getting resolved in a month or two. that is from the point of conception to the end and then we also have a redress process. so it doesn't just keep happening over and over again. we will get a redress issue the first time you have a problem with trip and we can do something about it on errand of the agency and we will give you number. the next time you fly you put the number and what you and you are booking the flight so you have a record and you are not lost in the devolution deluge of millions of people traveling. anyway. >> there is a follow-up question to something you said. the fact that you mentioned the customers to the list and the f. ti collects this list. you wonder are these lists shared with local law enforcement? are these lists staying within

federal agencies or could i be a customer of these lists? i mean, what assurances do we have again that these lists are within the federal government and also who contributes to these lists is often a question within the community. >> just for my perspective, i don't think the fbi would feel comfortable with me talking on their behalf and they would probably be the agency that would know more about who the list is shared with. the reason i use the customer analogy, we are not buying the list. it is just that we are not role. we are beginning to product and not creating the products. >> i don't really have anything to add since this really is a question for the of ti and i just pleading ignorance. i have no information as to the creation of the list. >> thing -- i think we have time for one or two more quick

questions. [inaudible] [inaudible] what should we do? >> you know, i am glad you brought that back because there was something i wanted to respond to the gentleman who asked that question, which was you know i hope that he filed a complaint with the equal employment opportunity commission, because you know an indication of any treatment, improper treatment on the basis of race, religion, national origin is a violation of federal

law, of title vii and you know that is a law which reinforces when it comes to public entities and it is a law which the eeoc enforces and i'm sure you effort about that earlier today. so you know it is a question of demanding that your rights are respected once you are aware of a violation and the first step towards that is filing a complaint with the eeoc. secondly, you know, i would like to take a moment just to talk a little bit about the bright side of this, which you know we do face a headwind of intolerance in many cases but we also face you know, a universe of -- where diversity is valued in government. it is valued in the private

sector. it is valued in academia and it is something which i think is an asset to our country and it is something that is a real blessing for us here in america and it is not true in many other parts of the world that have similar demographics to the united states. i think it is something we have to be proud of and yes there is absolutely work that needs to be done and, as reverend king said, you know an injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, but let's not lose sight of you know, the blessings of living in the united states and a diverse society in which we lived where we can say a man by the name of barack hussein obama is the president of the united states. [applause] >> there is another quick question.

>> after 9/11 the employment of individual muslims has increased post-9/11 by government and agencies. i didn't do the search on that, so what is your position? >> subnine and i are here but i don't have any statistics on hand to be able to answer that question. i do not know if anybody else does here. i would like to answer that question sort of rhetorically. sikhs are not permitted to serve in in the u.s. armed forces. sikhs are not presumptively permitted to serve in the u.s. coast guard which i believe is a subsidiary of the homeland security. we had to see the homeland security is an organization to win the right of a seikh to serve as a federal security officer while wearing a turbine so from the seed respective i

can tell you there is either underrepresentation because there aren't as many applicants as there should be or there are still barriers in place that prohibit us from serving in those capacities. >> i think based on what i have read publicly available information and there has been advocacy groups, seems the primary concern is with the fbi and to some extent the local and state law enforcement that is working with federal agencies on either immigration or counterterrorism. the problem is that it's very hard to get those statistics because it is not transparent and there is usually classified information or classified information and it is unfortunate we have to rely on investigative reports to find out about rogue rams that i think the public has a right to know about because they are problematic. i think peter king had a hearing about the nypd cia program and that would be a better time spent of our taxpayer money

spent than to have a hearing about muslims and anyone with an orthodox religious view or a political dissent whether or not they qualify as a homegrown terrorist. it is hard to find an answer because there isn't enough transparency and accountability but i think it is safe to say unfortunately it is still at least at a volume that still causes concern. i just want to make one comment to the woman. you know you are free to do what you want with your children but i would need very distraught if after 10 years of being a civil rights advocate for the community that you felt the only way that you could protect your children would be to change their name. it is a shame, and i mean if that is how it is and it is obviously a really big album, i think hopefully the alternative is you know your rights. they are the best they are in the community groups such as adc and many other advocacy groups

including non-muslim groups will step in and defend your rights but this is not a country where you have to change your name to a name that has nothing to do with your identity. religiously our rate racially. that is not america. that is not america. >> thank you. [applause] >> there are no more questions and i will give you a quick one minute closing for each of the panelists if you wish. >> i just want to reiterate that you know we are here to serve the needs of the community and my lines are always open. my colleague eric train who was her special counsel for religious discrimination -- this is practically a full-time job for us, and so we are at your service and a if there issues you would like to bring to our

attention, our doors are wide open. >> i just wanted to make it very clear, i am proud of -- and we are lucky to be in this nation. i want to be clear in the fact that maybe i was unclear about mentioning last year there were attempts on the united states. i just want to make sure the four panelists mentioned we are so much under attack but what we hear is all the evidence so i just wanted to clarify that was my point. when are we going to stop this? there are americans to come from different parts of the world and landed on the shores. [inaudible] >> what you are saying about

that, our office said dhs conducts 16 roundtables in 16 cities eight times a year and we don't just meet with salvation's. we also meet with arab-americans. we talked to lgbt groups and we talked a women's rights groups. we talk to african-americans. we talk to white people. we talked to anybody that is left and we do it eight to nine times a year in 16 cities. there is no department in the federal government that holds this kind of face-to-face engagement with the community and guess what? we are national security agent on top of that. to my knowledge no department has 16 roundtables on a regular basis with the same guy showing up and talking to the communities and large roundtables. we have 100 people show up to most of these including people like madison from the doj. we also attend their

roundtables. we have fbi, i.c.e., fema, officials local heads of local cities that show up and talk to community advocates and leaders and like madison was discussing it is important to engage with your federal government including people like madison and myself. we can only do what we do if you file a complaint and if you give us a call and talk to us. we are here to serve you. the more you can do to make our jobs easier in this vast bureaucracy the better. thank you very much. it was an honor being here. >> thanks much do abc for organizing this. is an honor to be here. i don't have much to add. i would encourage any of you who are impacted community members and even if you are not to remain optimistic. i think fundamentally and i don't mean to be too philosophically but fundamentally you have a choice which is my area. either you can be an optimist and look at things with a sense

of hope or you can live your life in despair and dropdead and rollover and reverse order of course. i don't think that is really an option. is sort of a false choice. never let your spirits be broken and don't feel like you were an american. hold your heads up and everything else will follow. thank you. [applause] >> i will just end my amp by emphasizing the gentleman in the ' not have happy out his comments with i am proud to be an american because that proves my point. we can criticize the government. we can hold them accountable without having to caveat anything anymore any more than anyone has to. the way i look at it, if you want to talk legalizes my passport is a prima facie case that i am a loyal patriotic american. you have the burden of proving whether i am not. i am just going to sit here and

assume that i am an activist, so i would end by saying if the tea partiers can do it, we can do it, whether -- you can be just as critical and just as tenacious and just as questioning and be a muslim and be an air of envious outpatient be very very american at the same time. [applause] >> thank you. thank you for the panel. i just want to close close up by recapping what we learned today. there are a lot of issues we definitely discuss. 10 years after 9/11 we could've spent three, four or five days to talk about all the issues in the community but i think one of the underlying themes throughout the afternoon was the importance of coalition building and the importance of working with other minority groups and working within york community moving

forward within the next 10 years. i know we definitely still have our issues. we still have concerns over the mosques and we still have the concerns with the fly list issue. we will have these concerns but we will keep pushing forward in trying to alleviate these concerns. moving forward from the adc perspective coming, and gauge what is good. engagement is always good but we need to start seeing some results and i think we will need to start seeing them quicker than what we have seen. results are going to be needed and the community is much more mature now and we need to see progress on issues and we need to not -- policy issues with public outrage. we need to hit these meetings hard and work with the agencies and resolving these issues. the next 10 years is going to

tolerate the fly list issues. i think it is really been getting much more organized and moving forward in a very big fashion. the arab-american community to touch on her comments we have to define what being american is. i mean i grew up in detroit. it is just as american as a hamburger or hotdog to somebody else so we are here. we are not going anywhere. we are going to stay here and play a role in define what being an american is. we are going to keep pushing our issues and that is what we'll continue to do in the next 10 years and i think you'll start seeing a lot more discussion on issues like the jobs matter, the economy and health care. we are not going anywhere and i think tea partiers want to start politicizing us in using us as political favors and putting us up there is the bad guy, think they have another thing coming their way if they do that in 2012.

again i just want to thank you you guys and keep motivated and log onto the web site. please take this book home. there are great articles and there. distributed and shared information and share what you know and stay active and keep pushing and fight the good fight. hopefully in 10 years we will be talking about something else. again i want to thank you for coming. we have food in the back, and let's just enjoy the evening and feel free to ask us any questions you may have. thank you. >> we do have an event coming up. we have an event coming up in november, cultural show and orchestra held in d.c.. we also have a lecture series coming to this office and. it will be held in our office once a month discussing topics of importance to the community such as civil rights. things that are upcoming in the media so we are trying to

discuss our policy issues and bring forth a cultural issues and keep pushing forward in the right direction. i want to thank you again and hope you enjoyed it and there will be food in the back. and enjoy. take care. [applause] [inaudible conversations]

>> coming up on c-span2 a hearing on the assistance for needy families program and how it is used by the state. then president obama's nominee for a top state department position testifies physician testifies before the senate foreign relations committee. later, discussion on u.s. attitudes towards religion, diversity and immigration with a focus on islam and muslim americans. on tomorrow's "washington journal" they will get your reaction to president obama's job speech and talked to white house principle deputy press

secretary josh earnest. we will also join congressman tim bishop a democrat from new york and republican congressman jenkins of kansas. "washington journal" at each each morning at seven at at the eastern on c-span. up next a hearing on temporary assistance for needy families, a program created as part of the 1996 both their reform law. this house ways & means subcommittee hearing is an hour and 20 minutes. i would would like to thank our panel and the guests in the audience for their patience. we look forward to having this

discussion with all of you and have a chance hopefully to share afterwards and appreciate you coming in. today we will be reviewing ideas for authorizing the temporary assistance for needy families program set to replace afdc program in 1996. tanf has been successful by and cutting 57% lesser. more important by bruhany work among single parents for the most common buffer recipients it has helped fema bemoaning the families of i-10% even with the deep recession. despite such project -- progress canada should be strengthened to help low-income families abort themselves in the years ahead are going going forcefully demonstration has called for only eight straight one-year extension of current law which expires at the end of 2011. given that position it seems unlikely significant changes in tanf will happen this year and impact expect the house to consider straight short-term extension of tanf later this month. today's hearing will let us start to focus on key problems the straight extension would leave and help us chart a path for fixing those issues in the

coming years. as with any program we learned and developed this time in years go on link being cabernet things and identify process that can be addressed and improved and that is what this focuses. key concerns about the fact that not enough adults on welfare are working and preparing for work today. for example according to recently released data from the department of health and human services in fy2009 only two in 10 families on welfare including an adult who met a welfare to work requirement. the reasons are complicated including because a rising number welfare payments do not include an adult benefit called child only payments but as a testimony of nonpartisan government accountability office discusses many states are using an obscure county technique known as excess moe credits to weaken work requirements and avoid engaging adults and work training as they should. instead of the state helping more adults prepare and begin work based they scour the bucs uncover spending credit to the tanf program and thereby reduce the number of people they have in work activities.

disc compounds underline concerns to few current recipients are engaging in constructive activities to prepare for work. that does a disservice to wall poor families who want to need help to become self-reliant. other concerns involve outright abusive taxpayer trust is just one adults on welfare spend taxpayer funds on liquor gambling tattoos or business strip clubs. >> recent exposé to reveal too many welfare recipients have access taxpayer funds in cash machines in casinos liquor store strip clubs and cruise ships. some states have taken action to plug the so-called strip club loophole. senator cash in baucus are proposing we do the same on the federal level. we should consider that as well. a number of states have enacted or are considering measure to try to make sure parents are not using drugs which stand in their way of getting off benefits. our colleague mr. reid raced a shudder last hearing and it is one attracting attention. in a world where employers require drug testing to ensure

workers are clean and sober new taxpayers are welfare recipients are held to a lower standard collecting benefits designed to help them work. finally in addition to work and personal responsibility and other key driver involves family formation especially whether children are raised in married two-parent households in which they are most likely to thrive and avoid property. in 2000 the poverty rate for married families with children was a .3% while the property rate for households headed by unmarried mothers was 45.3% almost 5.5 times as high. the current welfare rules create marriage penalties by expecting a greater share of married parents to be working former hours. states have responded by in effect opting out of requirements altogether. is time to us whether the underlying rule should be reformed in favor of treating all families the same. this is one of several questions we should ask about how we can remove penalties and encourage stronger families in the next round of reform. we have an excellent panel of witnesses today to discuss these issues are more and we look

forward to all of their testimonies. without objection each member will have the opportunity to submit a written statement and have been included in the record at this point and now i would like to refer to my friend and colleague the ranking member mr. doggett to make his opening statement. >> thank you mr. chairman. as we take up this question of how to reauthorize the temporary assistance for needy families program, i think we can focus on two goals. helping able-bodied recipients find the work that they need while protecting the safety net for struggling families who are unable to do work because of disability, family crisis or the fact there is not a job available. i believe much more needs to be done on both counts. we are caught up in the millions and billions quite appropriately, but this is about looking into the face of one child who was left homeless on the streets because there is no protection or as one of the four children in this country who wakes up not knowing if there will be food at the end of the

day from their family. we should be concerned about strip clubs or any abuse of this system and see that those who abuse these programs do not receive assistance, whether they are a pharmaceutical manufacturer individual where of their recipient but i think our concerns must be much broader. week should be concerned about protection that is stripped from the many needy families across this country. even though the number of eligible for families has increased substantially with these hard economic times, the participation in tanf has not increased via similar amounts of. in 2009, only one of every five children in poverty across america received any direct temporary assistance from needy families assistance. it is the lowest level for children are receiving cash assistance since 1965 and in texas matters are worse.

we only have about one out of every 24 children receiving assistance and when assistance is received, a family of three could expect to get about $244 a month or less than 20% of the generally accepted poverty line. tanf has become i believe more -- and protecting fewer and fewer families as more and more have fallen deeper into poverty. we all want to see more family said vance from tanf into full employment in the middle class, but so many are struggling to stay in the situation that they have now and have lost their chance to participate in the middle class. the goal is not achieved when caseloads declined to attend lack of access to poor families rather than a decline in the number of poor families. with fewer poor children and their families receiving temporary assistance for needy

families, now is not the time to do even less when significant. i'm pleased to hear the chairman indicate that we might move forward with an extension, even if temporary, and i'm hopeful that extension will include the supplemental grant a-gram that astarte expired this summer. that is what texas and 16 other states rely upon. they would see up to a 10% reduction in tanf funding without that. over 15 years ago as part of the 1996 reform of the welfare laws a reform that i personally supported, tanf supplemental grant funds were set aside to help the states that were negatively affected by the federal formula. ever since texas and a number of other states have depended on these monies in order to provide assistance that their families need even at the relatively low levels that texas funds, without action on this issue states will lose about $3 billion over the

next 10 years, 500 million about in my state of texas. the loss of these grants would place at risk a range of vital services including efforts to ensure that children are cared for in their own homes, childcare assistance for working families and job training. with funding for tanf having expired -- will expire at the end of this month it seems unlikely that congress will design comprehensive legislation to reauthorize it. i do hope we can come together on a bipartisan temporary extension. unless mr. chairman i direct all of my concerns at republicans, which i have many, i must concede that the is largely been missing in action on this issue which impacts the lives of so many of our most vulnerable neighbors and i would urge the administration to provide more leadership on improving the tanf program as we approach the current authorization exploration at the end of the

month. thank you. >> thank you very much. i look forward to working with you on this as we move forward. it will be an interesting discussion over the intervening months and hopefully we will come up with a solution to that. before we move onto her testimony i would like to remind witnesses that we are limit sing the opening statements, the oral statement to five minutes and without objection all of the testimony will be made part of the permanent record. on our panel this afternoon we will be hearing from a number of folks first dari alexander the secretary of defense of the department of public welfare. he gets a persistence award today for coming despite flooding in his home state and a lengthy commute and driving rain and as such he may have to leave a little early to attend to other matters but we really appreciate you taking the time to come down here and share from your experience the things who you have done in pennsylvania. we have back with us kay brown from education workforce income security with u.s. government

accountability office who has been with us before to share very critical information and we will address a range of issues under jurisdiction of the committee. doug besharov professor of school public policy at the university of maryland who has worked for many years in this who i've gotten to know and work on the subcommittee as well. scott wetzler vice-chairman and department of behavioral sciences at montefiore medical center and ladon pavetti vice president for the center of budget and policy priorities. thank you all again for being here. secretary alexander please proceed with your testimony. >> are in washington. things don't always work well here. >> chairman davis and subcommittee members thank you for the opportunity to speak

today. my name is gary alexander and i am currently secretary of public welfare for the commonwealth of pennsylvania. this committee is well familiar with the fundamental changes in the social contract between the taxpayers and recipients of income and services under the personal responsibility and work opportunity reconciliation act of 1996. for the first time the objective of the program explicitly emphasized self-reliance but equally importantly expectations were imposed in exchange for temporary assistance. with the central element in place, the legislation that once brought into alignment interests of all parties, recipient taxpayers and government lobbies recipients were motivated to move its jobs and opportunities in tanf work obligations. taxpayers could see that those that they were temporarily

supporting were making real efforts to turn their own income and government agencies were no longer brought out and the consequences of rising caseloads but instead had every reason to encourage family self-sufficiency so that block grant funds could be saved or reprogrammed. this alignment of incentives and not just the work program changes alone was responsible for the 60% reduction in the national caseloads experience after 1996. in tanf was reauthorized in 2006 certain adjustments and updates were made but the essential social bargain set forward in the original legislation remained intact. i would encourage congress to keep that alignment intact as we move forward. there is no reason that other benefit programs should not encourage self-reliance incorporating a version of a work requirement, although not all benefit programs are under the jurisdiction of this

committee. it is important for the congress as a whole to consider the nature of the social welfare system as recipients experience it and to consider the adaptation of the tanf, early tanf success to other related programs. large assistance programs such as food stamps medicaid housing assistance and unemployment insurance should incorporate a universal work for preparation and obligation to work for all able-bodied recipients. to be specific to pennsylvania, pennsylvania possesses a vast social welfare network that has become a way of life for many. generally lifetime benefits are limited to 60 months on the tanf program but there are many exceptions as you know to receive extended tanf. pennsylvania has approximately 18% of its caseload after 60 months. with billions of dollars spent over the past decade pennsylvania only puts 5% of its clients in a 30 hour a week --

30 hour per week job yet it tells the work partition paid -- rate of 50%. half of those leaving tanf for a job return to tanf within one year. pennsylvania and most states meet their work for dissipation work with everything but a real 30 hour week job. the welfare state in pennsylvania is growing by 13% year over year. we end you in congress know that her current welfare system does not work for america. as in all federal programs, the rules of tennis are complicated, cumbersome onerous and convoluted. for tanf, the current measures and outcomes while important to the federal establishment, fail to accurately measure work and they allow states to inflate numbers and not be held responsible for performance. only a program that values and

encourages work first across all federal programs will increase accountability and empower individuals and families toward self-sufficiency and independence. how do we solve this dilemma? one, create a performance driven system across the board where contractors are paid for job placement and retention only. simplify the rules and create simple performance measures for states like worker work attainment and retention in healthy lifestyles. retain the current block grant that do not penalize states for saving money and ensure that states measure real job placement and retool the work participation rate to reflect real employment and to not allow states to pass participation rates by shifting caseloads into state on programs. thank you. >> thank you very much. ms. brown you may proceed with your statement. >> chairman davis, ranking member doggett and members of the subcommittee, thank you for inviting me here today to discuss our work on the tanf

program, a key program intended to assist women and children living in poverty. i will cover two issues. first, changes in the welfare caseload incenting and second, state actions to meet work or dissipation requirements. first, regarding caseload and spending changes, following welfare reform and number of families receiving tanf cash assistance drop by almost 50% of states focused on moving parents quickly into jobs. this was followed by a slight uptick since the beginning of the recession. i 2008 about half of these cases still receiving cash assistance for what we call child only cases. in these households only the child receives benefits because he or she is living with a parent or caregiver who is not eligible to receive cash assistance. the parent may receive supplemental security income, may be an immigrant or may have

been sanctioned for noncompliance of program requirements. or the child may be living with a the nonparent caregiver, often a relative. go these adults in the child only cases are generally not subject to work requirements. has a number of families receiving cash assistance declines, so did they tanf related state spending for cash assistance from about 73% of all tanf expenditures in fiscal year 1997 to 30% in 2009. instead, state shifted spending to meet other purposes consistent with the broad -- program goals such as childcare and child welfare. however, states primarily reported hhs on families receiving cash assistance the traditional welfare caseload and not on these other forms of assistance. as a result we don't have the complete picture of the families that may be benefiting from tanf sons funds and the services they receive.

my second is about how states have met their participation requirements. because of the programs focus on job preparation and employment, state performance is measured in large part by their success in ensuring at least 50% of their work eligible cash assistance families are working or engaged in other specified work that to the these. yet our work shows approximately one third of tanf families participated in these work activities for the required number of hours each year from 2001 to 2009. states have been able to engage in less than 50% of participants in work without incurring penalties are taking advantage of global program flexibilities. for example, states can receive a credit that reduces require participation rates by the same percentage as her caseload declines. in 2938 of the 45 states have met their required work for

dissipation rate did so in part because of caseload declines. many states also take advantage of it provision that factored in state spending, states are required to spend a certain amount of their funds every year to receive their federal tanf block grants. in recent years when states have spent above the required amount, they were permitted to correspondingly increase their caseload reduction credits. in 2009, 32 states claimed this excess spending in 17 states would not have otherwise met their participation rates. finally states made policy changes that helps ensure they met their participation rates. some states a changes to ensure that is families complying with work retirements continue to receive cash assistance. states also opted to provide cash assistance to some families completely outside of their tanf program particularly those families that have the most

difficult debating difficulty meeting the tanf work requirements. these families were not counted in the states where participation was calculated. in conclusion, although an essential feature is the flexibility it provides to the state to design and implement their own programs, the lack of information on how non-cash assistance funds are used and to benefits combined with a limited usefulness of the work for dissipation rate as the key performance measure hinder our ability to fully understand how the program has been implemented and whether it is reaching its goals. this concludes my prepared statement that i would be happy to answer any questions. >> thank you are area much professor besharov. >> chairman davis and member doggett and members of the subcommittee is a pleasure to be here to testify on this very important topic. i teach at the university of

maryland and they teach courses on program evaluation and poverty alleviation. more important a thinker for today's session i also lead a project called learning from abroad where we look at the grams in other countries especially other oecd countries and essentially my message to you today is going to be that we can no longer say the europeans are not very serious about labor force participation and we are so good at it. in my testimonies and overhead that shows that the percentage of europeans working are now the same as the u.s.. u.s. labor force participation has gone down. it was going down before the recession. i think this is a long-term problem and not to be addressed by the committee. secondly the europeans have gotten much better than forcing at enforcing participation requirements in their program but they there aren't employment programs and social assistance and i think those are lessons for us as well.

when i first met chairman davis he said, i knew a professor would have some charge so in my testimony are some charts. i noticed that the testimony we gave to you does not have page numbers. figure 1 picks up on a think part of what is the main interest of the committee, and that is we have seen since 2009 a major increase in unemployment one of the largest increases and most sustained periods of unemployment in our history as least as we have been counting and yet tanf has hardly gone up. tanf participation and caseloads are 14% cumulatively in those ears. as the prior to speech -- speakers mentioned there are a lot of things states can do. there is rough agreement that the tanf members have not risen that much. if you look at figure 1 you can begin to see some of the

reasons. number one, the congress has been extremely generous about unemployment and if it's from a time when about 30 or 35% of the unemployed receive benefits. we have been running at 70% of the unemployed. they won't go on tanf. if you look at this chart also you will see the food stamp benefits have really increased, and a surprising part of this is disability payments. if you look at figure 2 in my testimony, you will see the relationship between unemployment and ssdi applications. i could not find a chart and i could not create a chart that quickly that have the approved application but i can tell you that they reflect these numbers which is to say that a substantial number of the people who are unemployed, especially in their 50s returning to the disability program is going on

disability which is another reason why the tanf caseloads are not rising and another reason why i think secretary alexander said many of us are coming to the conclusion that as we move we hope beyond this recession, that something be done to consolidate the pro-work provision of all of these programs because in a post-welfare reform and i hope they post recession environment, if we don't fix disability and if we don't fix unemployment, we will continue to fall behind even the europeans on labor force participation. is it doable and is it doable in the time of her recession? figure 4 is i think a demonstration of that. this is how the dutch, when they saw that their disability

caseload was increasing, many times faster than their population in 1980 they had three times as many people as the percentage of the population on disability. they reform their system and now the percentage of americans on disability in and the percentage of the dutch on disability are the same. these reforms are possible and there are many recommendations made from the democratic side and the republican side. academics all over this country and all over western europe about what to do. in my testimony i summarize the major changes that have been made, height and eligibility rules, mandate which includes for example physical examination i have a list there. i hope the committee will consider this kind of consolidation of programs. this is the time to worry about labor force participation, not after the recession and

unemployment passes. >> thank you professor. dr. wetzler. >> chairman davis a member doggett members of the committee thank you for having me. i want to talk about the substance abuse centers relates to welfare reform. as you know the law stipulates that people are allowed to be exempted from the work participation requirements for four consecutive weeks up to six weeks per year to engage in intensive substance abuse treatment and as a result i actually run a program in bronx new york which is really have some of the highest rates of substance abuse and party and the nation. where we do evaluate welfare recipients in terms of their substance abuse disorders to determine whether they are employable or not and referred them to various substance treatment appropriate to their level of care as needed. what we found over the years of

running this program is more than 20,000 people is that the vast majority of people with substance abuse are in fact able to participate in a work program, and don't even require the exemption at all. 70% of the people at the initial evaluation are eligible for work and another 20% after brief period of intensive treatment are able to work. the main message i would like to leave you with as i have sent in my recent testimony is just because somebody has a substance abuse disorder doesn't mean they can't work. having said that i think it is important to emphasize the importance of treatment for these folks and what we do is we referred them for treatment and work at the same time simultaneously. we take if not a rigid work first approach certainly a work early approach. because the treatment referral is a mandated appointment that

is in essence putting on pressure on people to do something which they might not otherwise do voluntarily, one of the things i would like you to know also is that treatment under that sort of circumstance, course of treatment is as effective as people who enter treatment voluntary and helps to increase people's motivation and attendance in treatment. in new york, we have in addition a case management program where we try to help people attend treatment and this i guess is part of the flexibility discussed before in how and how the funds could be spent and in new york it is called customized assistance. these folks have lots of different things admit it difficult for them to work and difficult to attend treatment. they have housing issues and psychiatric problems, medical problems, legal issues and obviously they have a lack of job skills and a conference of case management program developed a customized assistance program to help them attend treatment and we have

been very successful at getting people to attend as a result of that. the other point that i want to make with you is actually as the caseloads have dropped so much in new york, i would say only one out of eight people with substance abuse disorders is on cash assistance and in fact i think this issue is a much bigger problem than reference before for the people on medicaid only appalacian. there is a famous case in new york of one man who was on medicaid who was the inpatient substance egg views detoxification and next was an detoxification for 270 days. this is a man he never followed up with outpatient treatment and was treated. there weren't any leverages brought to bear on him. one thing i would suggest is that in thinking about the

responsibility attached to the benefits we think about medicaid and the temporary assistance. thank you very much. >> thank you. dr. wexler. >> chairman davis, thank you and subcommittees thank you for inviting me and giving me the opportunity to testify today. in my capacity as a researcher i is observed first-hand how -- what started as an income maintenance program is a very tiny work program attached to it is now a program that is almost entirely focused on work. cash assistance, the probe and provides minimal accounting of a quarter of all state and federal dollars. while the shift to a work program has been remarkable it has not served families well and with a weak economy we now face an entirely new set of challenges. as we prepare for tanf reauthorization we need to remember that tanf was created

with a balanced approach in mind to both provide to be redesigned to create an expectation of work but also to provide a safety net when work was not available. those aspects are of importance and we need to focus on those. nerd to make improvements and both of these areas i make three key recommendations. one is that we need to redefine tanf work requirements to better reflect the characters is to the caseload and secondly to redefine how performance is measured and third we need to provide adequate funding to states so they can do the jobs they have been asked to do. now what i relate to do is tell you how we arrived at those recommendations. the tanf caseload today is very different than i was 15 years ago and it really does demand a different approach to work requirements. when we have evidence that many who receive tanf today face significant barriers to employment it doesn't mean there shouldn't be expectations and they shouldn't be encouraged to work but it does a