In City Heights and El Cajon, surveillance technologies like automated license plate readers (ALPRs), Smart Streetlights, and social media surveillance are increasing tensions in Muslim communities, especially amongst asylum seekers. These technologies continue to be introduced under the promise of security and safety, but the culture of surveillance they create are sowing distrust and paranoia, and discouraging people from building meaningful relationships.
“I believe that [surveillance] does make community weaker,” said Abdi, a Somali community leader who asked All Rise to use an alias for fear of retribution. “[Law enforcement] created distrust among community members because of the way they come about, throwing informants in the community so they sometimes don’t trust one another.”
According to a 2021 PBS news article, post-9/11 surveillance techniques traumatized a generation of Muslims. After spending millions of dollars to secretly embed in and surveil Muslim communities, law enforcement agencies across the U.S. dismantled trust and relationships between community members. In 2001, Muslims in San Diego were even harassed by the FBI and wrongly arrested for connections to 9/11 according to an NPR report.
A California Senate Office of Research (SOR) report found, “lawyers reporting to us the sudden fate of clients arrested, detained and held incommunicado or deported for the slightest immigration law infraction. In no case was a charge of terrorist activity made known.”
In San Diego today, these fears continue. I spoke to three people from the largest Muslim immigrant communities in San Diego (Afghan, Arab, and Somali), all in various stages of the asylum process and based in City Heights and El Cajon. All interviewees requested aliases for fear of retribution from law enforcement.
Abdullah, an Afghan community leader, reported the most direct forms of confrontation with intelligence-gathering organizations. To his knowledge, the FBI has visited and attempted to interrogate at least three members of his community. Additionally, he says that FBI agents have visited community homes, asked about their relationships or ties to the Taliban, and requested community members to come with them. If they don’t know about their rights or have an attorney, community members will often comply out of fear of harm to their citizenship status or other repercussions. According to Abdullah, law enforcement officers also approached community members to become informants. The officers then offered false promises to expedite immigration cases if they provide information on their community, an accommodation that is outside of their jurisdiction. This has increased the atmosphere of fear amongst Afghan communities in the US - their neighbors, friends, or fellow mosque goers can be informants, threatening their privacy and sense of community trust at every turn.
Interviewees spoke of general feelings of distrust within both Arab and Somali communities due to widespread beliefs that they are being watched. In addition to threatening communal ties, this also affects civic engagement.
“They know that they can’t say whatever out there. People have trust issues. If you ask them some questions sometimes, they just ask why you’re asking that question. They feel like you’re up to something so you can’t get too deep with them on personal stuff,” said Abdi.
Mohamed, an Arab community leader, believes surveillance has a chilling effect on community members who would otherwise discuss political opinions.
“They just halt when it comes to political opinions,” he said. “They don’t want to be part of any political talk. Also, people are worried from voting in general. They don’t want to get into any political issue that could get in the way of getting their green cards or anything.”
“Majority are afraid that if you say something about the police, they will hear us, they will come for us, maybe it will create a problem for us,” said Abdullah.
Rather than explore normal curiosities, learn about political systems, or engage with the cities they are now living in, these communities are faced with the continuous threat of deportation through this perception of perpetually being watched. Having a conversation while Muslim and seeking asylum should not lead to criminal allegations or deportation. But in a surveillance state like ours, these communities live with this fear everyday.
According to the City of San Diego website, “The San Diego Police Department uses a variety of technologies to...address public threats and safeguard the lives of community members.” Abdullah, Abdi, and Mohamed say what makes spaces safe are those that are “peaceful and relaxed,” “not filled with worry,” and places where they can “exercise their rights without fear.” At no point did they associate their perceptions of safety with cameras recording their neighbors, police watching their games, or third parties transcribing their phone calls. In fact, these actions have directly led to decreased feelings of safety, distrust, and fear amongst these communities.
Abdullah recalled discussing with friends and other community members, the Smart Streetlights project, in which funding for neighborhood development was allocated to streetlights equipped with ALPRs and facial recognition technology. When they learned of the costs, regardless of opinions on surveillance, people would respond, “Why are they not spending the $300 million on parks, [regular] lights, schools?”
In their Surveillance Impact Report, SDPD claimed that Smart Streetlights were overpopulated in neighborhoods like Barrio Logan, Sherman Heights, and Southeast due to crime statistics. Yet according to their own data, only 12% of the streetlights were installed in the areas with the highest reports of violent crimes like downtown and Hillcrest.
San Diego’s culture of surveillance isn’t about maintaining safety. It’s about increasing control and monitoring over communities who are already over-policed. During the initial rollout of Smart Streetlights, they were disproportionately set up in Muslim community gathering places. Rather than more surveillance, what is needed is services and infrastructure that create livable and vibrant communities like public spaces, more lighting, and better education.
In San Diego, surveillance culture’s lasting effect is not in the safety of its streets but in the separation of its targeted communities – and, given that this has been occurring for years, history shows us that this separation is occurring by design.
In 2007, the University of Maryland Law Journal published an article detailing the fear that has been spread in Muslim communities due to this surveillance:
“Indeed, one staff attorney said that some Muslim-Americans are so concerned about government surveillance that they resist the use of everyday forms of technology, including telephones.”
For decades, researchers, organizers, and advocates have railed against these extreme surveillance programs and the targeting of vulnerable communities because they do not actually achieve the safety they profess to achieve. Instead, the results of these policies continue to be the intentional decline in trust amongst Muslim communities and the chilling effect of silence and political despair as forms of perceived protection.
Instead of asking if surveillance policies are achieving their stated aims, perhaps we should be questioning who gets to determine what safety means, and for whom.