writing
"Little Guantánamo" Gets Bigger, published on The Nation and The Appeal
[Aug 2024]
"Little Guantánamo" prison units are expanding — growing nearly 80% in the last 15 years, with a third unit under construction in Maryland. Over the past two years, we obtained documents and data through FOIA and found that it's not just their population that has expanded. Their purpose has gone from housing almost exclusively people accused of having connections to "terrorism" (as complicated as it is to use that word as an accusation) to anyone needing "greater levels of communications monitoring." This is startling and, as one of our sources told us, it sets them up to be used as political prisons. For this report, we spoke to several formerly incarcerated people who told us that these units are often used to punish dissent.
The FBI Says This Man Is A Terrorist — But He Says They Set Him Up
[June 2023]
Adel Daoud was sentenced to 16 years in prison over a faked 2012 bomb plot, despite questions of entrapment and mental competence. Now an appeals court wants to hit him harder.
Exit Interview
[Aug 2021]
“You cannot truthfully cover a community that you instinctually find ‘spooky.’”
Many industries call the Southwest Side home. McKinley Park — where a controversial asphalt plant built four years ago has sparked complaints about noxious odors — is pushing back.
[May 2021]
Cumulative impact means that one community is disproportionately dealing with several overlapping environmental and socioeconomic factors at once, said Yukyan Lam, who worked on the 2018 defense council analysis as a postdoctoral fellow. “From an environmental justice point of view, there are certain communities that bear the brunt of environmental pollution. They live in areas where they get more than their fair share of hazardous exposures,” said Lam.
User’s guide to the 2020 census: What’s done, what’s next and what it means to you
[May 2021]
A new phase of census data releases started last month as the U.S. Census Bureau completed its process of counting the population of the country. The bureau released state-by-state population data in April, after more than a year of some unique data collection challenges, and more will be released this summer.
Symbolic City Council resolution addressing tensions in India voted down, after months of negotiation and pushback
[March 2021]
A proposed resolution expressing the City Council’s solidarity with Chicago’s South Asian community “regardless of religion and caste” failed Wednesday amid intense lobbying from local Indian organizations and the country’s consul general. The resolution, which passed in several other U.S. cities, failed despite having been scaled back to remove specific language that sought to compare Modi to former President Donald Trump. The resolution also no longer made mention of mob lynchings of Muslims and other minorities, or quotes by a high-ranking official comparing undocumented people in India to termites, among other things.
Despite federal and state guidance to reduce jail populations, few inmates convicted of nonviolent crimes have been released early
[Feb 2021]
In March and April, former Attorney General William Barr recommended that federal inmates who were convicted of nonviolent crimes, are immunocompromised and don’t pose a risk to society should be prioritized for home confinement. But less than 14% of the more than 150,000 federal inmates, the majority of whom were convicted of nonviolent crimes have been released to home confinement since last spring.
2 dead at Marion federal prison during COVID-19 surge despite restrictive conditions, say inmates and family members
[Aug 2020]
A second coronavirus-related death following a weekend surge of positive COVID-19 cases at the Marion federal prison has inmates with medical conditions worried about their health in a prison that is not allowing them to distance, family members and inmates told the Tribune. For this story, I communicated with inmates living inside the prison, as well as a mother who learned about the death of her son, who was one of the inmates.
Chicago’s Arab American store owners face reckoning in wake of George Floyd killing
[June 2020]
After Mahmoud Abumayyaleh, the owner of the Minneapolis store outside of which George Floyd was killed by police, spoke out against police brutality on Facebook and in news media, Arab American business owners have been encouraged to reflect on their relationships with their communities. That’s especially the case when their businesses are in majority-black neighborhoods.
Before data showed Chicago blacks dying at higher rates, communities of color knew recovery from COVID-19 would be slow
[Apr 2020]
A team of reporters and data/graphics journalists investigated an aspect of COVID-19 that communities of color already knew -- they'd be hit harder. We used Census data and data from the medical examiner to focus in on areas of Chicago that were hardest-hit, and we spoke to a national Black Muslim coalition that had started to educate its constituency about the real dangers of the virus.
A suburban filmmaker sued to find out why the FBI was watching her Muslim community: ‘It’s weird to read how they wrote about us’
[Jan 2020]
Even before 9/11, the federal government decided to expand its surveillance of certain neighborhoods, particularly those with high Muslim populations. Even today, the reasons for these actions haven’t been fully explained. I wrote about Assia Boundaoui, a Chicagoan and filmmaker from an Arab-American neighborhood who is demanding more information on the surveillance of her community.
‘Guantanamo North’ prison units in the Midwest are under fire for their harsh conditions. After 10 years, one man is still fighting his case.
[Dec 2019]
I investigated communication management units, sometimes the last step in a law enforcement strategy, escalated after 9/11, to target and prosecute individuals or organizations, often Muslim, whose beliefs, ideology or religious affiliations raise security concerns for the government.
With female and LGBTQ prayer leaders, Chicago mosque works to broaden norms in Muslim spaces
[Aug 2019]
I covered the expansion of Chicago-based Masjid al-Rabia, one of the few public, women- and queer-centered mosques in the world.
As more Muslims run for office, community urged ‘to take center stage’ in an era of immigration raids and racist tweets
[July 2019]
2018 saw a sharp increase in Muslims winning seats in public office -- one of these Muslims was Skokie's Bushra Amiwala, one of the youngest Muslims elected to public office in the country. I covered the encouragement Muslim leadership is sending to public-minded people to run for office.
Laquan McDonald timeline: The shooting, the video and the fallout
[Jan 2019]
I updated this timeline, from the 2014 fatal shooting of LaQuan McDonald by a Chicago police officer to the sentencing of said officer, Jason Van Dyke, as the fallout from this particular incident drew out over years.
Legal fight over Trump's 'Muslim ban' and the Supreme Court ruling
[June 2018]
I tried to demystify the back-and-forth of President Trump's "Muslim ban" with a timeline of all the different versions and shutdowns.
Eyeing sustainability, Chicago hires first resilience officer
[May 2016]
I wrote an explanatory piece on the idea of resilience in city planning, and used some data and analysis from an urban planner who created a formula for determining resilience in a city.
Syrian refugee arrivals temporarily suspended
[Nov 2015]
Upon Governor Rauner's announcement that Syrian refugee arrivals would be suspended after the Paris terror attacks in 2015, I took a look at how many Syrian refugees have actually been accepted by the U.S. and Illinois in particular.
Awaiting a charter appeal, AIMS community finishes school year, uncertain of the future
[May 2013]
This is the last in a series of stories I did on the American Indian Model Schools in Oakland, CA, which consisted of three schools that had their charters revoked after allegations of improper business contracts with the founder.
Redefining Muslim roles on film
[Oct 2010]