The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the self-described “Muslim civil rights organization” with a history of undermining law enforcement, has put the migrant crisis front and center of its newest efforts.

Last week the Dallas-Fort Worth chapter of CAIR reissued a community advisory aimed at undermining law enforcement efforts to conduct raids on illegal migrants who face a court removal order. The Trump administration has said it is focusing its efforts on carrying out removal orders on migrants involved in criminal activity.

Among the rights CAIR-DFW (and the national chapter) advises these undocumented immigrants to exercise in their “Know Your Rights” pamphlet are:

1. The right to not open the door;
2. The right to not answer questions;
3. The right to refuse to sign papers;
4. The legal right to have a lawyer present;

Of course, none of what CAIR says is untrue. Migrants do have such rights in our country, even though they have broken our laws by entering the country illegally. However, the scale of the problem is unprecedented. As stated by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in the Associated Press, in May alone, 137,887 migrants were taken into custody at the Mexican border, the highest number since 2007.

CBP’s executive director of operations Randy Howe stated on June 5, “We are bursting at the seams. This can’t continue.”

According to BuzzFeed, former ICE director  and commissioner of CBP Mark Morgan, argued that 2,000 immigrants were ordered deported for failing to appear in court. The commissioner further contended that they had been given an adequate level of due process and a chance to make their case in court.

But CAIR’s “Know Your Rights” pamphlet is a reminder of the organization’s long history of urging its supporters to resist cooperating with law enforcement. In 2011 CAIR caught flack after it shared a poster instructing supporters to “Build a Wall of Resistance-Don’t talk to the FBI”.

While CAIR later argued that displaying the anti-FBI poster had been a mistake, it was part of a larger pattern. As a Minneapolis Somali activist testified before Congress, CAIR had deliberately urged community members not to talk to the FBI about missing children whom parents feared had been recruited by the terror group Al-Shabaab.

In 2014, CAIR in Los Angeles held a press conference asking for the public’s help to identify a confidential FBI informant in a terrorism case and threatening to publicly release the informant’s identity. “I can’t say we won’t,” CAIR Los Angeles’ senior attorney was quoted as saying.

In 2016 North Texas CAIR leader Alia Salem “warned” local Muslims of expected FBI interviews as federal agents sought leads in an Al Qaeda investigation

CAIR’s efforts to undermine the ongoing ICE raids is part of the organization making immigration and naturalization issues front and center for its efforts.  

In the same vein, the Newsweek Media Group, the Immigrant Defense Project, the Arab American Association of New York, and the Black Alliance for Just Immigration collaborated to publish this short video called “What to Do if ICE Comes to your Home.” The video mixes Spanish and English and features six actors advising illegals or their advocates on how to refuse to cooperate with ICE in order to be able to stay in the country.  

The Arab American Association of New York (AAANY) boasts the divisive Linda Sarsour as its former executive director. Sarsour has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and is a regular speaker at Muslim Brotherhood sponsored events. For example, in April 2017 she gave the keynote address at ICNA-MAS Conference in Baltimore, Maryland. Both ICNA and MAS were named in a May 1991 Muslim Brotherhood document, called “An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America,” as an ally of the Muslim Brotherhood. That document was entered into evidence during the Holy Land Foundation Trial as “Elbarasse Search-3”.

According to Clarion Project, AAANY also lists Qatar Foundation International (QFI) as a “supporter.” QFI’s ties to the Qatari Islamist government and the Muslim Brotherhood are well-documented in a report written by Middle East Forum in February 2019. QFI is also a supporter of Sheikh Yousef al-Qaradawi, the terrorism-advocating spiritual leader of the Brotherhood. 

Just a week before the reissue of its community alert for illegal migrants, CAIR-DFW sent out a triumphant press release “CAIR-DFW Welcomes the Government’s decision to drop the citizenship question from the 2020 census.”

CAIR DFW’s Acting Executive Director Ekram Haque described the idea of adding a citizenship question to the 2020 census as “nefarious to begin with.” It’s not clear how asking about citizenship on the census falls under CAIR’s self-declared mission of Muslim civil rights advocacy.

Increasingly law enforcement, especially the Border Patrol and ICE, faces a challenging job in a dangerous climate. CAIR’s efforts to obstruct and undermine lawful deportation orders is yet another example of the group’s reckless disregard for the right of lawful citizens to be safe and secure.

Anne-Christine Hoff is the Dallas associate of the Counter Islamist Grid. You can follow her on Twitter.