The Border Mosque Immigrant & Refugee Bail Fund - We have heard the stories of hundreds of Muslims locked up in detention centers around the US, help us bail them out

For over a year now the Border Mosque has joined our friends from the Border Church at Friendship Park on the US/ Mexico Border for monthly prayer services with separated families. In this short time, we have built what we believe is one of the most important Muslim / Christian relationships in the world where our communities don’t just meet together we have our ceremonies together.

In the midst of this global pandemic, we believe it is as important as ever for us to continue building this relationship between Christian and Muslim communities as much of the political and religious rhetoric of the moment will continue to divide us.

In 2020 our plan was to begin to focus on working to get our Sisters and Brothers free from immigrant detention centers around the US, working with Believers Bailout. Of course with the COVID 19 virus, this situation has become even more dire, as there have been several deaths at these facilities. According to our research inside immigrant detention centers, there are hundreds of Muslim asylum seekers who are being held in some cases for years.

In the above video, we visited the Otay Mesa facility with the Muslim asylum lawyer, Nicholas Pierce who told us the story of Abu Diop, an abolitionist from Mauritania who fled his country after working to free people from slavery. Abu Diop leads the five daily prayers at Otay Mesa for the brothers on his detention block and has told us stories of the other Muslims locked up there. 

Over the last year, we have found an emerging Muslim ban community in Tijuana and we have learned about people like a sister from Yemen who has been moved from detention center to detention center over the last year, despite having family sponsors in the US. 

Working with groups like Al Otro Lado in Tijuana / San Diego who take hundreds of asylum cases per year, we have heard stories of the arbitrary detention of Muslims at our various ports of entry. Like this brother we just heard about last week from Pakistan who was detained for 6 months when he tried to enter the US to see his family. 

National Muslim organizations are not generally working in detention centers in the United States and this is a zakat eligible way to help free our sisters and brothers from incarceration. 

Muslim detainees at immigration facilities are especially vulnerable because they are often denied their basic religious rights. As we work on these cases our plan is to continue to research Muslim immigration detention as we report back the cases we are working on. 

Over the last year, I have produced two short films about the Border Mosque work, we are now shifting to produce a third short film about Muslims in detention centers, and to produce a feature-length film about Global Muslim Refugees. The Center for Global Muslim Life has a deep commitment to researching and telling stories about the most vulnerable of our diverse Muslim populations, and we hope to continue to expand this set of media production work in the coming years.

Join us for part two of our four-part series, “Building our Global Muslim Future - Connecting the Diaspora of Hearts.”

Did you miss part 1? Here is the video with Dr. Hatem Bazian, Imam Khalid Latif, Mokhtar Alkhanshali, Maryam Kashani, Ismahan Abdulahi, and Imam Ahmed Khan.