No-fly listJudge says DHS made “mistake” placing Malaysian woman on terrorist watch no-fly list

Rahinah Ibrahim, 48, was prevented by TSA agents from boarding a plane in San Francisco in 2005 because his name showed up – erroneously –on the government terrorist watch no-fly list.

Last Tuesday, U.S. District Judge William Alsup ruled that DHS made a “mistake” when it put Ibrahim, a former Stanford University Ph.D. student, on the list, and that the government must give her an opportunity to apply for reentry to the United States.

“The government concedes [she] is not a threat to our national security,” Alsup wrote.

Alsup, in a summary of a sealed ruling issued last Tuesday, said the government should “cleanse/or correct its lists and records of mistaken information and certify under oath that such correction(s) have been made.”

“In light of the confusion caused by the government’s mistake, such cleansing-certification relief is ordered in this case,” Alsup wrote.

He also ordered the government to inform Ibrahim whether she remains on the no-fly list, tell her under what section of the law she is being prevented from returning to the United States, and allow her to challenge that decision.

The Huffington Post reports that the day after she was arrested and held until her plane left, Ibrahim was permitted to leave the country with her teenage daughter for a conference in Hawaii. They continued their journey to Malaysia, where Ibrahim planned to stay for a short while before returning to Stanford to complete a doctorate in urban planning.

Elizabeth Pipkin, her lawyer, said that on the day Ibrahim was scheduled to fly back from Malaysia to California, she showed up at a Malaysian airport but was not allowed to board a plane to the United States because, she was informed, her student visa had been revoked and she could not reenter the United States.

“This has been a long slog,” Pipkin said. “She has been trying to clear her name for nine years.”

The Post notes that Pipkin helped Ibrahim challenge the government’s actions in what was believed to have been the first trial of its kind in the country, held before Alsup without a jury.

Ibrahim, however, was not permitted to return to San Francisco to testify in person or to finish her Ph.D.

The court heard her testimony on videotape, and Stanford allowed her to complete her doctoral work from Malaysia, where she is now a university dean.

Alsup said in his ruling that the public was entitled to information about what happened and ordered both sides to discuss and come to agreement by 15 April on a redacted version of the sealed ruling.

Pipkin said she did not know what led to her client’s name being placed on the watch list. “The government has never provided a good reason for that,” she said.

Pipkin also said she was under a protective order and could not reveal the procedures which allow the government to put someone on the list. She noted that Ibrahim has incurred more than $4 million in legal fees and costs and would seek reimbursement from the government.

“I hope the government will learn from this and going forward will have more transparency in the way they treat people,” Pipkin said.

The case has been going back and forth between the district court and a federal appeals court, and it is expected that the government would appeal Alsup’s ruling.