98% of the names on the U.S. government’s travel blacklists, including all of the top 50 names that appear most frequently on those lists, appear to be Muslim, according to a statistical analysis commissioned by the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR).

This analysis of the so-called “watchlist” (a euphemism for “blacklist”) is included in a report released this week in conjunction with the annual Muslim Advocacy Day on Capitol Hill organized by the US Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO).

When the U.S. government’s “No-Fly list” and “Selectee list” were made public earlier this year, we were the first to point out that more than 10% of the entries on the No-Fly list (174,202 of 1,566,062) contain “MUHAMMAD” in either the first or last name fields, in addition to those entries with other spellings of Muhammad.

CAIR’s latest report goes into more detail:

CAIR has studied more than 1.5 million entries on a 2019 version of the FBI’s list, provided to us by a Swiss hacker who found them online after a regional air carrier accidentally posted them to the public internet. One scroll through it reveals a list almost completely comprised of Muslim names. In fact, more than 350,000 entries alone include some transliteration of Mohamed or Ali or Mahmoud and the top 50 most frequently occurring names are all Muslim names….

CAIR shared the leaked list with statistical experts for review to determine what percentage of the list is Muslim. The expert analysis of the people on the list—approximately 1.5 million entries—indicates that more than 98% of all records in the watchlist identify Muslims.

In its report and at the press conference announcing its findings, CAIR called out the lack of any legislative basis for secret blacklists, the difficulty of challenging secret decisions in court, and the failure of Congress to exercise its oversight responsibilities:

Congress did not give the FBI this authority. There is no law that made the watchlist…. But neither the FBI nor any other government agency should have a secret list. They’ve abused the one that they have now, and there is no such thing as a good, lawful kind of secret government list made available to hundreds of thousands of government actors. It is time to bring this practice to a close.

CAIR and other advocates for the civil rights of Muslim Americans are making this issue a priority in their meetings with members of Congress this week. We hope that their efforts will help prompt members of Congress to reintroduce and enact the Freedom To Travel Act or include it in other omnibus legislation.