from al Jazeera
Travelling is a normal part of life for Michigan lawyer Amir Makled. As recently as December, he went overseas and returned home to the United States without any issues.
“I’ve been out of the country at least 20 times. I’ve been all over Europe. I go to Lebanon every year,” he said.
But returning this month to the Detroit Metro Airport was a very different experience.
He and his family had just come home from a spring-break holiday in the Dominican Republic when they reached a customs checkpoint.
“The agent looked over at me and then looked to another agent and asked him if the TTRT agents are here. I didn’t know what this meant.”
He googled the acronym. It stands for Tactical Terrorist Response Teams.
“As an Arab American and as a Muslim American, whenever I’m travelling, even if I’m driving in from Canada, I feel some sort of anxiety about it, that I’m going to be randomly selected to be stopped or profiled,” he explained.
“When he said those words, I thought: ‘OK, I’m going to be profiled here.'”
Sure enough, Makled and his family were asked to go to another room...
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