Our Work

The criminalization of Muslim communities after 9/11 has relied on a substantial amount of misinformation and a parroting of the government’s narrative by uncritical media outlets. These false narratives serve to legitimize the abusive tactics employed by government agencies before and during investigations and to influence citizens who enter the courtroom as jurors ready to convict following the skewed media coverage after an arrest is made.

CCF works to counter these false narratives both in the media and through events that directly engage the public. As a coalition, CCF is defined by its outreach efforts to various communities and organizations, calling them in to stand for justice in the face of a demonization campaign the government has waged against Muslim communities across the country for years. The expansion of the surveillance state and continued governmental overreach, including through methods like entrapment, now being used to target other communities, only serve to emphasize how essential CCF’s work is to educate the public about these harmful programs.

CCF’s greatest contribution to the discourse on the “War on Terror” is in amplifying and centering the voices of those directly impacted by preemptive prosecution in public speaking events, and through a number of creative means that CCF places value on, such as storytelling, poetry readings, and film screenings. Because the government’s narrative and the mainstream media’s role since 9/11 has only served to isolate impacted family members from their communities, CCF uses its educational events, including town halls, know-your-rights events, and panels and tabling at conferences across the country to build a support base for prisoners and their family members. 

CCF’s media strategy includes a number of articles in mainstream news outlets written and consulted on by CCF team members, and a weekly news digest that provides our supporters and followers with updates on every major story in the press related to our prisoners and the issues we focus on. Our robust social media engagement features timely updates on campaigns we lead for our prisoners, as well as weekly webinars that feature impacted family members, lawyers, organizers and artists. Our other web series, “Faces of the War on Terror,” also features survivors of government-sanctioned Islamophobia.

Nelson Mandela once said, “No one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails.” CCF was founded by former prisoners and their family members who experienced the cruelty of the prison system and the associated dehumanization, isolation, and stigmatization. Based on these lived experiences, CCF has made it its mission to center prisoners and their families as part of our unique and holistic approach to advocacy. This hands-on work with both groups is the heartbeat of our organization.

Legal advice, assistance, and consultation are given to prisoners and their families oftentimes when they have exhausted most of their legal options. We rarely do direct representation in court except for filing compassionate release motions for some of those serving unjustly long sentences. We have won release for several people and would like to file many more of these motions, but can only do about 1-3 each year. Every so often we file in court to challenge ICE detention pending deportation after a non-citizen has served their sentence. Very rarely we file in court on other grounds, such as unfair prison disciplinary cases or to litigate prison condition issues. 

Short of going to court, CCF also advises and advocates on behalf of prisoners to meet a variety of needs, such as supporting transfer requests, and dealing with religious discrimination or other problems in prison. 

CCF also maintains and updates an extensive database of “war on terror” prosecutions and is able to use those statistics to show that the vast majority of these prosecutions are unfair, and that the sentences are way too harsh. 

-If you’d like to help ease the financial burden of a political prisoner, sponsor a prisoner today.- 

 

One of the effects of the hundreds of political prosecutions that have taken place across the country since 9/11 has been to silence communities through fear. CCF recognizes that in order to adequately challenge this chilling effect, our communities must be empowered and organized, and the voices of those impacted by these policies uplifted.

CCF has seen that a strong defense takes place both inside and outside of the courtroom. Our experience has shown that building a grassroots campaign around cases, organizing community members to attend trials, and demonstrating outside of the courthouse in support of fairness and justice for defendants can lead to a victory in the case. Additionally, prisoner advocacy campaigns are the cornerstone of CCF’s grassroots work. When inmates face abuse in prison, such as  solitary confinement, violations of religious freedom, or are denied medical attention, CCF organizes its grassroots supporters to write letters and make phone calls to judges and prison officials. 

Judges can also be asked by large numbers of supporters organized at the grassroots to consider not giving harsh prison sentences to those targeted in these prosecutions, which are often prescribed due to “terror enhancement” charges that have no limits.

CCF staff continue to attend important court dates, hearings, and sentencing, and write letters to judges on behalf of defendants. This public courtroom support for individuals will never change.

To get involved in a CCF grassroots campaign, stay up to date by following us on social media!  

If you’d like to organize a campaign for a prisoner with CCF’s help, please email us at prisoners@civilfreedoms.org

CCF’s team has tracked hundreds of politically-motivated cases since 9/11, and our research has confirmed a pattern of governmental abuse and revealed that the intentional targeting of Muslim communities across the country is systemic and represented across a number of institutions, including law enforcement, the courts, politics, and the media.

Our first report, entitled “Inventing Terrorists: The Lawfare of Preemptive Prosecution,” also includes case histories and highlights information from our comprehensive database.

Our forthcoming database lists the hundreds of political prisoners during the “War on Terror” and gives you the ability to sort them by a number of categories, allowing anyone to see which prisoners were targeted via government informants seeking to entrap them, through plea deals meant to deny them their due process, and other classifications. It is CCF’s hope that other researchers can make use of our work and contribute to the growing number of studies that expose the government’s unjust policies.

Inventing Terrorists: The Lawfare of Preemptive Prosecution
This report is an updated version of a 2014 study by Project SALAM and the Coalition for Civil Freedoms. The study asks how many of the individuals who appear on the Department of Justice (DOJ) 2001-2015 lists of “terrorism and terrorism-related convictions” represented real terrorism threats, and how many were preemptive prosecutions.

The Terror Trap: The Impact of The War on Terror on Muslim Communities Since 9/11
Thirty international scholars provide a critical assessment of the U.S-led “counterterrorism” apparatus and its policies and tactics, which have criminalized and securitized Muslims in the U.S. and around the world. 

Unfortunately, hundreds of Muslim political prisoners denied justice in the courtroom have very few legal avenues to pursue following their convictions. CCF understands that unjust laws must be changed outside of the courtroom in order to prevent the targeting of others in the future as well as to grant justice to those targeted already.

As a result, CCF’s educational initiatives go beyond the public to our elected officials. Just as we work with impacted family members through our seminars on storytelling and narrative therapy, we provide workshops on how they could advocate for their loved ones both locally and in Washington DC. These efforts have proven results, including in one instance where the intervention of a Congressman got a prisoner his diabetes medication.

CCF also works to mobilize support for better laws that can prevent these cases in the first place, including a bill drafted by our legal team, the Entrapment and Governmental Overreach (EGO) Relief Act. We educate our elected officials on these issues and we give recommendations on how to remedy these civil rights abuses and legal loopholes that allow the government to prosecute individuals based solely on supposed "ideology."