Witnesses and lawmakers at a House Homeland Security subcommittee hearing on Wednesday repeatedly blasted the proceedings as an attack on free expression.
Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), the chairman of the panel, convened the hearing to focus on violent extremism in US prisons, noting that hundreds of individuals have been imprisoned since 9/11 on homegrown terrorism charges.
“We cannot forget about these individuals once they’re incarcerated,” Rep. King said. “We’ve never been faced with such large numbers of terror inmates before.”
The subcommittee’s ranking member, Rep. Brian Higgins (D-N.Y.) in his opening remarks countered that a law enforcement solution to “radicalization” would flout basic principles enshrined in the Bill of Rights.
“As we begin today’s discussion I believe it is important to distinguish between the terms radicalization and terrorism,” Higgins told his colleagues. “Under the first amendment, an individual’s thought and speech are protected including radical and extremist thought and speech,” he added.
A witness at the hearing, Brian Levin, the Director of the Center for Study of Hate and Extremism, rang similar alarm bells.
“We must be very careful with respect to civil rights and civil liberties concerns,” he said, noting that the Supreme Court has ruled that “the constitution does not stop at prison walls.”
Levin added that as lawmakers consider a “variety of rehabilitative and monitoring programs” to combat prison extremism, it is “crucial” that they be applied across the board, and not just against religiously-motivated radicalism.
Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) also urged a broader view of politically-violent inmates. He said the spread of white supremacist ideology in prison “should not be ignored,” noting that there are 15,000 members of the white power motivated Aryan Nation in prison and outside.
“The willingness so these groups to use violence, undermine order, and commit mayhem is not dependent on religion belief or political ideology nor do these group limit their terrorist acts to within prison walls,” Rep. Thompson claimed.
While Rep. King said he agreed with those sentiments, he told his colleagues that the emphasis for the hearing was on “Islamic radicalization.”
It’s not the first time King has used a committee gavel to probe Muslims in America. A series of “radicalization” hearings in 2011 elicited a shark rebuke from Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.)—the first Muslim ever elected to Congress. While fighting back tears during testimony at the hearing, Ellison said the committee’s approach runs “contrary to the best of American values and threatens our security.”
King defended his agenda at the time, claiming, “to back down would be a craven surrender to political correctness.”
Jerome Bjelopera, another witness—a specialist in organized crime and terrorism at the Congressional Research Service—acknowledged on Wednesday that the link between prison extremism and terrorism in the US is almost non-existent.
“Only one post-9/11 homegrown jihadist terrorist plot has involved people who clearly radicalized behind bars,” Bjelopera told the legislators.
