Muslim lockdown

If you’re expecting to be booked into Indiana’s Terre Haute federal correctional facility anytime in the near future, feel free to cram your body cavities with all the contraband you want. The guards there will probably be too busy implementing a quietly handed-down order from the U.S. Justice Department to keep a closer watch on Muslims and those too olive-skinned to be real Americans. Ignoring the federal laws governing changes to the U.S. prison system, a special “Communications Management Unit” (CMU) has been established at Terre Haute. Its purpose is to live-monitor and record any phone calls, visits or correspondence between Muslim prisoners and the outside world. To make things easier for the CMU, the prisoners must communicate solely in English. Muslims also have stricter, far-reduced visitation rules and phone access than non-Muslim prisoners.

The program is remarkably similar to another initiative proposed last April, that was abandoned after civil liberties groups protested that the surveillance rules were to be applied even to “witnesses, detainees or otherwise.” The only difference in the new program is that, contrary to the Federal Administrative Procedures Act, no public discussion on the CMU was opened.

—Scott Saxon