Five American Muslims filed a lawsuit against FBI Director Christopher Wray and other members of the government because they believe they were put on a terrorist watch list without due process.
The complaint, filed Wednesday to the district court for the Northern District of Texas, says that the plaintiffs are victims of racial profiling and have suffered negative consequences due to their inclusion on the list.
The Terrorist Screening Database, a federal list of terror suspects, is a secret list compiled by the FBI, and it’s impossible for people to verify whether or not they have been included on it. But lawyers from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), who filed the lawsuit on behalf of the plaintiffs, say people who are on the list know they were included because they are frequently harassed by law enforcement officials and consistently have their rights violated. Often they are singled out at airports by having the letters SSSS stamped on their boarding passes.