A civil rights group says federal investigators have been randomly stopping Somali residents at malls, college campuses and the airport to question them.
The Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations says it has heard from 50 to 100 people stopped by federal agents since news broke about the disappearance of several young Somali men. The men's families worry they have returned to Somalia to fight.
"There seems to be no consistency here on who's being questioned," said Civil Rights Director Taneeza Islam. "It does seem like religious or racial profiling." Twenty-year-old University of Minnesota sophomore Saida Hassan says she was questioned at the airport for three hours and never told why she was detained.
U.S. customs officials won't say whether recent questioning at the airport has to do with the men's disappearance. And an FBI spokesman says all of its agents' conversations with Somalis have been voluntary.
"We share the same goals and concerns of the Somali community," said FBI spokesman E.K. Wilson.
(Copyright 2009 by KARE and The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
