TSA

By Amardeep Singh, a Co-Founder and Director of Programs at the Sikh Coalition

Much has been made of the fact that African Americans and Latinos endure disturbingly high rates of stop and frisk policing in New York City, and rightfully so. While blacks and Latinos comprise just over half of the city’s population, they endure 85 percent of police stops. Even more troubling, as young people in these communities bear the brunt of police stops, it is in fact stops of whites that more often yield illegal contraband.

So advocates are appropriately making noise and filing lawsuits alleging profiling by the New York City Police Department. Meticulously collected, publically released, government data provides them a rational basis for doing so.

But what happens when you have no such data? That's the situation of Sikhs at U.S. airports.

For years, Sikh Americans and advocacy groups have complained of unfair, extra scrutiny by Transportation Security Administration (TSA) screeners. The complaints run the gamut from concerns about mandatory pat downs of Sikh turbans, to removal of turbans without discernible cause, and 100 percent rates of secondary screening at some airports.

These accounts from Sikhs alleging profiling are admittedly anecdotal. They are routinely proffered by Sikh advocacy groups with limited resources and even more limited access to security checkpoints. “Smoking gun” evidence of intentional profiling occasionally emerges -- like the TSA “Mexecutioners” scandal in Honolulu -- but otherwise advocates and the TSA are perpetually engaged in a “yes you are, no we are not” ping pong match of profiling accusations and denials.

Yet if the TSA is to be believed, there is a way to settle once and for all whether it is profiling. The Sikh Coalition recently released an internal TSA memorandum, which discusses eight “strategic options” the agency could implement to “address racial profiling concerns” and “improve internal business controls as they relate to secondary screening procedures.”