FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 30, 2025
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Washington, D.C. | The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC)’s National Executive Director, Abed Ayoub, is set to testify before the U.S. Senate Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee at a full committee hearing titled “Examining the Weaponization of the Quiet Skies Program.” The hearing convenes today, Tuesday, September 30, 2025 at 10:00 a.m. ET in SD-342, Dirksen Senate Office Building.
Watch the livestream: hsgac.senate.gov/hearings/examining-the-weaponization-of-the-quiet-skies-program.
Ayoub’s testimony lays out urgent measures that must be implemented to protect the rights and liberties of all Americans. The most important among them is revamping the redress process and offering real due process measures that go beyond DHS TRIP, allowing individuals to be removed from the list. Additional safeguards include requiring TSA and CBP to track every screening and outcome to reveal failures and disparate impacts; require the Terrorist Screening Center to report to Congress on nominations, removals, error rates, and data recalls with privacy safeguards that still expose bias; enforce transparency with firm deadlines, an independent review that can order delisting, and verification that corrections propagate across every system
Quiet Skies was a total disaster. ADC welcomes Secretary of Homeland Security’s decision to shut it down. Retiring a program that surveilled ordinary travelers without evidence of wrongdoing is a meaningful step toward fairness. But Quiet Skies captures only part of the story. The task is larger than ending one program. Immediate steps must be taken to implement due process measures to afford those on the list an opportunity to be removed.
Excerpts from Ayoub’s prepared testimony:
“I have sympathy for MAGA supporters who are experiencing watchlist harms—missed flights, repeated screenings, frozen bank accounts, job consequences—without notice or a fair way to challenge it. I don’t need to share their politics to understand that rights and liberties aren’t conditional on agreement. What they are feeling today mirrors what Arab and Muslim families have endured for decades: a secret designation that follows you from airport to employer to consulate, with no clear explanation and no reliable fix. That is not a partisan problem; it is a due-process problem.”
“If the government is going to restrict your liberties, you have a right to know why. DHS’s Traveler Redress Inquiry Program (TRIP) provides little information to travelers about why they are flagged or whether corrections are applied across the system. Without systematic tracking, bias can go unchecked, and travelers have no meaningful way to correct errors. Today, individuals on watchlists often receive no notice, no explanation, and no meaningful path off the list.
“End the watchlist. If you won’t, cage it with real notice, evidence, hearings, and strict limits so no American’s faith or viewpoint becomes a reason to be treated like a suspect,” writes Ayoub. “There is room for bipartisanship on this issue, I am confident of that. I’ll meet anyone halfway on this—left, right, or neither—because the watchlist isn’t about who you voted for; it’s about whether the government has to prove its case before it limits your life.”
For Ayoub’s complete testimony, click HERE.
Hearing details:
What: Examining the Weaponization of the Quiet Skies Program (Full Committee)
When: Tuesday, September 30, 2025, 10:00 a.m. ET
Where: SD-342, Dirksen Senate Office Building
Livestream: Committee hearing page (live video).