Taking Pakistan Out of Brooklyn

The neighborhood used to be vibrant, beautiful. In the evenings, people were walking down the street,” says Asghar Choudry, an accountant and Chairman of Midwood, Brooklyn’s Pakistani American Merchants Association. “Now, people don’t go outside. They are scared.”

Midwood is the home of the country’s largest residential and commercial Pakistani neighborhood. According to MSNBC, 125,000 of the 200,000 Pakistanis in the country live there. Known to locals simply as “Coney Island,” Midwood is actually several miles from the Coney Island of hot dog and roller coaster fame. The working-class Pakistani neighborhood presumably received its name from the thoroughfare that serves as its commercial heart—Coney Island Avenue. 

Awnings bearing Urdu lettering are concentrated most heavily on the few blocks between Avenue H and Newkirk Avenue. Storefronts offer Pakistani groceries and prepared foods, Urdu translation services, and South Asian music, books, and videos, interspersed with barbershops, travel agencies, and offices of accountants like Choudry.

Walking down the street, weaving through children playing on the sidewalk and hijab-clad mothers with strollers, a newcomer might think that the storeowners, taxi drivers, barbers and grocery clerks who occupy the neighborhood feel exceedingly comfortable there, having carved out an urban space that incorporates both Pakistani Muslim culture and Brooklyn life. Nothing speaks more to the dual cultural identity of “Coney Island” than Makki Masjid. The mosque occupies a large space carved out of the insides of three adjoining brick apartment buildings, preserving the external structure of the row. Makki Masjid asserts itself as a distinct yet unassuming space on the block—a center of religious life in the neighborhood and for the entire Pakistani community of Brooklyn.

The surface calm belies the reality of post-9/11 Midwood. Though it maintains its Pakistani flavor, Midwood’s growth has been arrested in the past two years and there is evidence that its decay has begun. The destructive changes are palpable. Stores are closing. According to Choudry, a video store, a restaurant, and a jewelry store are now gone from Coney Island Avenue. People have started to flee the neighborhood, some for other parts of the United States, but most returning to Pakistan or leaving for more hospitable countries like Canada. The New York Times recently reported that the number of Pakistanis requesting asylum at crossing points in British Columbia this past January was more than double the number of applicants in all of 2002.

No exact figures are available on the numbers of Pakistanis who have left Midwood. Jagajit Singh, Director of Programs at Council of Pakistan Organizations, a community-based organization in Midwood, offers a heuristic means to estimate a number. “The neighborhood grocery store’s sales are down 30 percent to 40 percent—these are stores that sell Pakistani food products to Pakistani customers. You do the math,” he says. Choudry concurs. “Businesses are dying, and a lot of people have fled. I have many fewer clients than I used to.”

The Threat to “Coney Island”

The cause of the sudden halt in the neighborhood’s growth is not crime or natural disaster. Shortly after 9/11, the FBI, INS, and other agencies began rounding up hundreds, if not thousands, of noncitizens around the country, and continue to do so to date. In immigrant communities it has become routine to hear stories of local and federal officials pounding on an apartment door at 5 a.m. Sometimes, law enforcement is looking for a particular person. In other cases, a person is detained because he has a minor, non-criminal immigration violation and was in the wrong place at the wrong time, such as the two men who, after being falsely accused and then cleared of being perpetrators in the Washington, D.C.-area sniper attacks, were still detained on immigration proceedings.

Most non-citizens held in immigration proceedings face months in detention and possible exile from the United States, yet they are not legally entitled to a government-funded lawyer and most sit in jail awaiting an immigration decision. “The government has gone overboard since 9/11. People have been treated unfairly, inhumanely, and, in some cases, illegally, and particular communities are being targeted on the basis of ethnicity or religion,” claims Sin Yen Ling, a staff attorney at Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF) who has offered assistance to numerous Pakistanis since 9/11.

The long-term detention of individuals has obvious consequences for their communities. Since Pakistanis are prime targets of the government’s actions, scores of individuals in Pakistani neighborhoods in Brooklyn have been directly affected. The detentions mean that families lose support, employers lose labor, and governments lose tax revenue, thus endangeringthe social and economic fabric of communities like Midwood.

The Bush Administration has publicly stated that new, post–9/11 immigration policies do not focus on any particular ethnicity, race, or religion. Then-INS spokesperson Karen Kraushaar told AsianWeek in October 2002 that “the investigations are not targeting nationalities or people of any creed or color. The investigations are intended to bring to justice those who attacked the U.S. on September 11 and to prevent and disrupt the efforts of anyone who would perpetrate another terrorist attack.”

Advocates respond by pointing to policies like the Alien Absconder Initiative, which explicitly targets 6,000 people from “countries with Al Qaeda presence” out of a total of 300,000 people who have outstanding deportation orders, as well as the post–9/11 detentions of South Asians, Arabs, and Muslims as evidence that profiling is occurring.

Moreover, the Administration itself has admitted and defended its focus on Pakistanis. In discussing the new Special Registration policy, Counsel to the Attorney General, Department of Justice Kris Kobach told reporters on January 17, 2003, “The United States recognizes that Pakistan has been a great ally in the war against terrorism…[but] the unfortunate reality [is] that some of our greatest allies…their citizens are involved in this.”

In addition to the detentions, the government has engaged in a number of other practices that have led to widespread fear and subsequent flight from ethnic enclaves. Visits by FBI agents, allegedly just to talk, send individuals into hiding because residents fear the crackdown on Pakistanis. 

Federal Policy Comes Home

The April 2002 announcement by the Justice Department that it would encourage collaboration among local, state, and federal law enforcement on immigration issues poses additional practical problems for communities like Midwood.

According to a statement by Police Commissioner Ray Kelly to the New York City Council Public Safety Committee, the NYPD is participating in the Joint Counterterrorism Task Force with agencies like the INS and the FBI. “The era of defending the city against conventional crime alone is over. Counterterrorism is now part of our mission… We can’t rely on Federal authorities alone. We are assuming a lot of the responsibility ourselves. We have to. New York [has] been targeted four times by terrorists in the last decade alone; twice successfully,” Kelly told the committee. According to the New York Daily News, the NYPD has questioned eighty-six individuals as part of the FBI’s controversial “voluntary interview” program. AALDEF reports that the NYPD has participated in house raids as recently as February 2003.

Special Registration has been the most significant policy adversely affecting Midwood and similar communities in the past six months. The government’s program requires tens of thousands of men and teenage boys from twenty-four Muslim countries and North Korea to appear at an INS office for fingerprinting, photographing, and questioning under oath. Thousands have also either been detained or issued a Notice To Appear (NTA), the document that begins their deportation proceedings. In December of 2002, the Bush Administration announced the inclusion of Pakistanis in the Special Registration program augmenting the level of fear and frustration in Pakistani communities. “Why should we go register?” one resident asked. “So they can deport us?”

Some opponents of police enforcement of immigration laws argue that such an approach is likely to result in the underreporting of crime by undocumented witnesses and victims. In neighborhoods with high populations of immigrants, this underreporting can have severe effects on quality of life and local safety. Communities, advocates contend, will see an increase in crime and residents and nonresidents, citizens and noncitizens will suffer. It would hardly be a surprise if growing mistrust between immigrants of color and the overstretched New York Police Department leads to less reporting of crimes and fewer people coming forward as witnesses—a “national security” strategy that ironically leads to less safety on the streets for all New Yorkers. In Midwood, there is evidence that such dire predictions are already becoming reality.

“One man came to us who had been stabbed in the chest by a group of men. He is frightened to report his crime to the police because he is undocumented,” said Singh.

New York, New York

Beyond an increased fear of the police, it is hard to tell what other unintended consequences the dissolution of ethnic neighborhoods may have for New York. The city is already under stress from the interrelated burden of fiscal problems, the psychic and economic toll of 9/11, the recession, and the unpredictable consequences of the Iraq war and its aftermath, including the possibility of additional terrorist attacks on the city.

The flight or deportation of many working class people from New York will likely undermine the already sagging economy of a city whose immigrants of color—staffing thousands of bodegas, taxicabs, restaurants, and other businesses—represent a substantial part of the labor force.

In addition to this direct economic hit, New York also faces the irreplaceable loss of part of its famed cosmopolitan diversity. The recent influx of Bangladeshis into New York seems to have ended as they too begin to leave the city in droves. Jackson Heights, Corona, Bay Ridge, Brighton Beach, “Coney Island” in Midwood—the potential deterioration of South Asian, Arab, Filipino, Indonesian, and mixed ethnic neighborhoods and institutions could strike at the essence of a city known for its diversity.

In 1995, Boutros-Boutros Ghali, then Secretary General of the United Nations, stood in the World Trade Center and was able to say to the mayor of New York, “We both love the rich ethnic, cultural, linguistic, intellectual and artistic diversity of this city… The people of New York represent almost as many nationalities as are represented in the United Nations.” Future mayors of New York may not hear similar sentiments.

The situation in Midwood is an extreme but not an isolated example of what is happening to similar communities in New York City and around the country. The Pakistani Consulate told one advocate that 5,000 to 7,000 Pakistanis nationwide had left the United States in the past three months. Moreover, since various other communities, including Bangladeshis, Indonesians, and Filipinos, have also been specifically targeted by post–9/11 immigration initiatives, one might expect that urban ethnic communities in cities like Chicago or Dallas are also taking a hit.

One pregnant Bangladeshi woman from Texas whose husband is subject to Special Registration requirements expressed her anguish, saying, “We’re in a state of anxiety. We don’t know whether to stay here or to drive to Canada.”

The Neighborhood Responds

While the picture may be bleak for many immigrant communities, the Midwood community has responded to some of the worst effects of the crisis. The fraying of economic and some social ties in Midwood has unexpectedly helped to foster new relationships and attempts to develop social and political capital.

The Council of Pakistan Organization (COPO), which was founded in February 2002, has established itself in the neighborhood over the past year with a community center offering free ESL and computer classes. COPO has also hosted and co-organized numerous events to bring citywide pro bono service-providers into Midwood, including legal assistance for noncitizens seeking advice on immigration issues. It has also come to deal with other issues of importance to the community. Prior to the January 31, 2003 Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) deadline, COPO provided space for Asian American Federation of New York and AALDEF to assist Midwood residents eligible for 9/11 disaster-relief assistance. Many neighborhood residents were unaware that they qualified for Federal funds set aside for those who lost income as a result of the World Trade Center attacks; without the new networks to link those individuals to assistance, many would have failed to capitalize on the government funds set aside to help them recover economically.

A more grassroots organizing effort, the Coney Island Avenue Project, has attempted to secure legal services and to provide direct organizing support for detainees from Midwood. Bringing these services (to name a few) into Midwood and assisting residents and service-providers in overcoming language and other barriers, COPO and Coney Island Avenue Project are actively developing greater social capital through the institutionalization of support services and promotion of community organization.

COPO and the Coney Island Avenue Project have also served as bridges to other communities in the city, helping institute advocacy efforts on behalf of other constituencies. They are helping to bring the voices of Midwood residents to larger forums, and to Brooklyn-wide and citywide efforts. From COPO’s organization of an interfaith youth basketball league with neighboring ethnic communities to Coney Island Avenue Project’s participation in countless alliances with advocacy and service organizations and contact with local elected officials, both organizations have served to bring the concerns and experiences of Midwood residents to a larger social sphere and to bring in organizations from outside the community to assist Pakistanis in Midwood.

As a result of efforts within the community and in bridge-building to outside groups and officials, the remaining residents of “Coney Island” are connected to more community networks, which are in turn connected to advocacy groups, social service non-profits, city agencies, elected officials, and other potential sources of support for the community. As local residents navigate the current crisis and those to come, they will likely be in a better position thanks to the increased availability of community networks and resources.

Will “Coney Island” Survive?

It remains to be seen whether “Coney Island” and similar communities will be able to outlast the flurry of “counterterrorism” immigration policies that target specific ethnicities or nationalities. In an article in the local ethnic newspaper Pakistan Post, writer M.N. Faroukh is not optimistic:

“It used to be an innocent joke among Pakistanis that when young men arrived at JFK…from Pakistan, the immigration officer would ask them, ‘Where in Brooklyn will you be staying?’…But that joke belongs to another era.”

Those who love “Coney Island” and the ideal of urban diversity it represents can only hope that he is wrong.