“I think there’s a lot of uncertainty right now. The US government is kidnapping and abducting people from our community,” Linda Sarsour, a nationally prominent author and a Palestinian American organizer from Brooklyn, told NPQ. As Sarsour pointed out, multiple videos can be seen on social media of people being detained on the streets.
These apprehensions are highly disturbing—and are especially threatening to people from Arab and Muslim American communities. Nonprofits and movement activists who support these communities are responding.
Mobilizing Legal Defense
One specific challenge, notes Sarsour, is to mobilize sufficient legal support to adequately defend community members. Often, the best defense is to avoid repression in the first place. This work involves educating members on their rights, so people can proactively advocate for themselves.
“We are empowering people to ask questions that are within their rights.”
“We want [members of our communities] to know that law enforcement is not allowed access to their apartment or home without a warrant signed by a judge bearing their name. We are empowering people to ask questions that are within their rights,” Sarsour explained.
Another community advocacy strategy is to record interactions with law enforcement within the confines of the law, using cell phone cameras to record how state officials, such as US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, are treating community members.
State of Alert on Campuses
The detention of Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian graduate student who served as a negotiator between pro-Palestinian protesters and Columbia University’s administration—arrested by immigration officials without a warrant and despite holding a permanent residency green card—is but one of many examples of how university campuses have become the sites of some of the most intense federal repression.
The case of Turkish Tufts University student Rumeysa Ozturk, who was detained in March in Somerville, MA, on her way to meet friends to celebrate the iftar dinner to break the Ramadan fast, is another example. The image of six immigration agents arresting the 30-year-old woman near her apartment near the Somerville campus of the university, where she was pursuing her doctorate, has shocked the world.
Earlier this year, President Donald Trump sent letters to universities through the US Department of Education to “collect the names and nationalities of students” who participated in the Palestine solidarity protests that swept the United States last year, a clear attempt to stifle speech and protest rights.
“Unfortunately, the American government manipulated the American people to believe that it’s okay to give up some of your rights for a sense of full security,” said Sarsour.
Young people in the community continue to organize and participate in protests, but fear of deportation has undoubtedly curbed freedom of expression.
The image of six immigration agents arresting the 30-year-old woman near her apartment…has shocked the world.
“For Arab Americans, it’s about defending human rights, certainly, but [Palestinian solidarity] is also a central issue for the community and its priorities,” Maya Berry, executive director of the Arab American Institute, said to NPQ. “So, for some of these young people, it’s about who they and their family are. It’s about talking about their loved ones who survive the bombings or who don’t survive the kind of bombing that we’ve witnessed.”
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“As for international and foreign students visiting on student visas or those who have become legal permanent residents, after it became clear how personal information was being disseminated and students were being attacked, [students have] looked for ways to protect themselves,” Berry noted.
A Historical Perspective
Federal repression exploits widespread Islamophobia in the United States, which, of course, predates the current administration. The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) reports that in 2024, nationwide, it received a total of 8,658 complaints of Islamophobia, the highest number recorded since 1996, when the organization issued its first civil rights report, and a 7.3 percent increase in complaints from the year before.
The current wave of Islamophobia has been driven by backlash to the Palestinian solidarity movement.
According to FBI statistics, hate crimes against Muslims skyrocketed in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, rising from 28 incidents to 481 between 2000 and 2001. Although incidents declined subsequently, the number of cases has since remained consistently above 100 per year—more than four times the pre-9/11 level. Last year in the United States, CAIR reported 647 attacks on Muslims because of their faith.
Discrimination against Muslim Americans is common. A 2017 Pew Research Center survey found that 48 percent of Muslims surveyed in the United States said they had experienced at least one instance of discrimination in the previous year.
The current wave of Islamophobia has been driven by backlash to the Palestinian solidarity movement. An 82-page report by CAIR titled Unconstitutional Crackdowns: 2025 Civil Rights Report, noted plainly that in 2024, “Muslims—along with Palestinians, Arabs, Jews, African Americans, Asian Americans and others—were targeted due to their anti-genocide and anti-apartheid viewpoints.”
Employment discrimination against Muslim Americans is also on the rise. According to CAIR, 2024 represented the first year that employment discrimination was the most commonly reported discrimination type, with 1,329 incidents of employment discrimination reported to CAIR offices across the country. The other leading categories were immigration and asylum cases, education discrimination, and hate crimes. This is a very disturbing trend. In 2023, the number of reported employment discrimination incidents was 1,201; in 2022, it was 563—less than half the 2024 level.
The report also indicates that law enforcement encounters increased from 295 in 2023 to 506 in 2024—a 71.5 percent increase. “This spike,” the report’s authors noted, “coincided with the student anti-genocide encampments,” with 30 percent of all encounters for the year occurring in May, the peak period for campus solidarity encampments.
Too Little, Too Late
At the end of President Joe Biden’s term, his administration released a report titled The U.S. National Strategy to Counter Islamophobia and Anti-Arab Hate. Touted by the Biden team as the first national strategy to combat Islamophobia, the report outlined more than 100 action steps organized into four main priority areas—raising awareness of hatred directed against Muslims and Arabs, improving safety, addressing systemic discrimination, and building solidarity across communities to counter hate.
When the report was released, CAIR responded in a press release that “if President Biden truly cared about the safety of Muslims or reducing the threat of Islamophobia, he would make major changes to federal programs that perpetuate anti-Muslim discrimination, like the federal watchlist, and immediately stop enabling the biggest driver of Islamophobia: the US-enabled Israeli genocide in Gaza.”
The group added, “Although we and many American Muslims would normally welcome a national strategy to combat Islamophobia, the White House’s long-delayed strategy is too little, too late.”
Today, although the level of federal repression has increased, some among those seeking to end the assault on Gaza see continuity between the Biden and Trump administrations.
As Berry puts it, “The idea of students setting up camp again has received an unprecedented police response on different campuses and in different ways…instead of fostering dialogue, instead of creating an environment where students can protest [for] what they think is right.”
