(Chicago Tribune) Since 2016, documentary filmmaker Assia Boundaoui has been waiting for answers from the FBI to one question: Which parts of her Arab American community in Bridgeview were surveilled after 9/11? After a court hearing last week, she learned she will have to keep waiting.
Growing up, Boundaoui heard stories from her mother and other community members about FBI agents visiting her neighborhood and knocking on doors. After two family friends were jailed for white-collar crimes, Boundaoui said in her 2018 documentary about Bridgeview, she feared her family would be next.
A journalist by profession, Boundaoui said she needed to know why her community was being tracked so in 2016, she submitted questions through a Freedom of Information Act request to the FBI. Eventually, she received more than 33,000 heavily redacted documents that contained more than 500 names of people and organizations from Muslim communities around the country.
