“Welcome Back to America – How Many Gods Do You Believe In?”

​The Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) has little respect for the Fourth Amendment. From international airports to border stations, Americans returning from abroad often fall prey to the routine CBP practice of scanning their laptops, mobile phones, and other digital devices without a warrant.
 
As if that were not enough, CBP also scans people’s faith, violating their First Amendment rights as well.
 
Consider the case of Hassan Shibly, a U.S. citizen and student at the University of Buffalo Law School. When he returned to the United States in 2010 with his wife, a lawful permanent resident, and their seven-month-old son, from a religious pilgrimage and family visit in the Middle East, Shibly was taken aside by CBP agents. A CBP officer asked him: “Do you visit any Islamist extremist websites?” And: “Are you part of any Islamic tribes?” And then the kicker: “How many gods or prophets do you believe in?”
 
Other returning Muslim-Americans are interrogated about the mosques they attend, their religious beliefs, and their opinions about the U.S. invasion of Iraq and support for Israel. One New Jerseyan, Lawrence Ho, attended a conference in Canada and returned to the United States by car. He was asked: “When did you convert?” Ho does not know how the agent knew he had converted to Islam.
 
A group of Muslim-Americans, fed up by this treatment, are now being represented by the American Civil Liberties Union in a suit before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals against CBP for civil rights violations. The plaintiffs are correct that subjecting Americans to deep questions about their faith – as a condition to reentry to their home – violates their First Amendment rights, as well as the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA).
 
Ashley Gorski, senior staff attorney with ACLU’s National Security Project, said that “this religious questioning is demeaning, intrusive, and unconstitutional. We’re fighting for our clients’ rights to be treated equally and to practice their faith without undue government scrutiny.”
 
To be fair, CBP has its work cut out for it when it comes to screening the border for potential terrorists. And we should not avert our eyes to the fact that there are sick and dangerous ideologies at work around the world. But we are also fairly confident that actual terrorists would not be stumped by the kind of naïve and unlawful interrogations CBP has imposed on these returning Americans.
 
Heavy-handed questions about adherence to one of the great world religions doesn’t seem to be a useful security strategy or a demonstration that our government is familiar with its own Constitution.