New Homeland Security Challenges

After 9/11, the federal government announced a major program to conduct “voluntary” interviews with 5,000 holders of temporary visas from Arab countries thought to have significant ties to Al Qaeda. The Justice Department wanted local law enforcement personnel to conduct these interviews, with federal agents playing a supporting role. In Dearborn, Michigan, where the population of individuals of Arab descent has grown to nearly 30 percent since the 1960s, city and police officials resisted this plan. They insisted that the feds conduct the interviews (in plain clothes), supported by the local police and monitored by them to make sure that the feds acted professionally. The locals also got the feds to abandon the idea of unannounced calls and agree to schedule visits via letters, stressing that the interviews were voluntary and that there was no reason to suspect the individuals being interviewed of terrorist activities. (Source: Thacher, David: “The Local Role in Homeland Security,” 39 Law and Society Review 635-76 [September 2005]).
1. Do such “campaigns” impede the goals of community policing?
2. Do the goals of community policing and “zero-tolerance policing” work against one another?
3. Are these worthy goals for law enforcement or are they merely public relations gimmicks that make the public think that something new and unique is being done?
4. Does such questioning as in the Dearborn case constitute racial profiling?
5. What does United States v. Martinez-Fuertesuggest about the propriety of racial profiling in law enforcement?
Does the case justify activities like those in Dearborn?