Local Muslims feel targeted in FBI cold calls
When agent Michael Adams first called Miya, he sounded almost parental. He introduced himself as with the FBI at Sea-Tac Airport, where Miya worked, and said he was “just calling to see if I could chat.” In a Jan. 5 voicemail he left on Miya’s phone he said he was interested in talking about security at the airport, promising “no one’s in trouble.”
Miya was born in Buffalo, New York, before moving to Seattle when she was 2 years old. Her family’s Somali and devoutly Muslim. When she walks into the Starbucks in Columbia City on a wet weekday, she’s wearing a fur shawl and a hijab and a woman at another table recognizes her and says hello.
Miya, who didn’t want her full name used for fear of being targeted, went to Cleveland High School before getting a full ride to the University of Washington where she majored in operations management. Straight out of college, she got a job with Delta Air Lines. She loved the work and the benefits of discounted plane tickets, which she used to fly to Egypt, India, Germany — all over. “Islam says the earth is vast,” she remarks.
She recently left for a job with Amazon in Minnesota, not because of dissatisfaction, but because she was ready for a new adventure.
She was surprised by the call from Adams. Not only does she have no criminal record, but she has never had any interaction with law enforcement at all. Still, she didn’t think much of the call right away — why be scared if she’s got nothing to hide, right?
But when she called back, Adams told her there would be two other people at their meeting. That was enough to open a gate of doubt, starting with whether Adams was in fact an FBI agent, ending with why she was being called in the first place.
http://crosscut.com/2017/02/engaging-or-targeting-fbi-cold-calls-seattle-muslims/
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