Dear Friends,
January 11th, 2025 will mark 23 years since the Guantanamo Bay prison was repurposed to house Muslim men and boys captured in the “War on Terror.” The prison has long served as an emblematic example of institutionalized Islamophobia and also represents the U.S. government’s ongoing vilification and incarceration of different marginalized communities.
Recent reports that the US government has been violating the rights of refugees and asylum seekers detained at the base’s Migrant Operations Center have revived the brutal history of Guantanamo, harkening back to its initial use in the 90s to house Cuban and Haitian refugees and asylum seekers. Though the US government has ensured that the prison is kept out of sight and out of mind, dismantling and abolishing the prison is ever more urgent given the capacity and interest of the powerful to recycle the prison as a detention site for the most criminalized and demonized groups.
To explore these connections, Guantanamo’s legacy, and how the entrenched image — that the prison houses the “worst of the worst” – justifies its existence and evolution, join us and our partners at the Center for Constitutional Rights, Amnesty International, and the National Immigrant Justice Center for a virtual panel on Wednesday, January 15th from 1:00-2:30 PM EST.
The panel will also address the logics and operations of Guantanamo as part of the US carceral state beyond domestic borders. Finally, the panelists will speak to how we can unify our collective resistance and advocacy efforts to: 1) ensure the closure of the prison and the Migrant Operations Center, and 2) protect all of our communities from the brutality that Guantanamo represents.
Panelist Bios:
Mansoor Adayfi is a writer, artist, human rights advocate, and former prisoner who spent over 14 years at Guantánamo Bay Prison Camp without charges or trial. His first book titled, "Don’t Forget Us Here: Lost and Found at Guantanamo," was published by Hachette and met with critical acclaim with reviews in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and numerous others. Mansoor is also a co-founder and the outreach director for the Guantanamo Survivors Fund.
Erik Crew is a Staff Attorney at Haitian Bridge Alliance, now leads HBA’s impact litigation docket and HBA’s work in international legal fora. Prior to HBA, Erik was a Bertha Justice Fellow with the Institute of Justice & Democracy in Haiti and the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. He is a member of the New York State Bar and a registered practitioner with the Department of Justice’s Executive Office of Immigration Review.
Dr. Maha Hilal is the author of the book Innocent Until Proven Muslim: Islamophobia, the War on Terror, and the Muslim Experience Since 9/11 and her writings have appeared in Vox, Al Jazeera, Middle East Eye, Newsweek, Business Insider, The Daily Beast, and Truthout, among others. She is also the founding Executive Director of Muslim Counterpublics Lab. Dr. Hilal is also an Adjunct Professorial Lecturer at American University in Washington, DC where she also earned her doctorate in May 2014 in Justice, Law, and Society.
Jesse Franzblau is the senior policy analyst for NIJC's D.C.-based Policy Team. He works on NIJC's Transparency and Human Rights Project and conducts investigative research on human rights abuses at the U.S.-Mexico border. Previously, Jesse worked at Open the Government, directing the FOIA projects and specializing in open government laws to increase access to information on immigration policies, and has published articles with Al Jazeera, The Nation, The Intercept, Truthout, Huffington Post, Michigan Journal of Public Affairs, Proceso (MX), the Columbia Human Rights Law Review, and other outlets.
Moderator Bio:
Nadia Ben-Youssef is the Advocacy Director at the Center for Constitutional Rights. She directs all advocacy around issues related to the promotion of civil and human rights.
ASL Translation and live transcription will be provided for this event.
You can register for the event by clicking here.
We look forward to seeing you online next week!
In solidarity,
Muslim Counterpublics Lab
