Much of what you are describing, InOBU, is racism, and as bad as this is, it does not make the U. S. a "police state."

A police state is when you happen to criticize the government to a friend, in confidence, and that night there is a heavy knock on your door and a bunch of blackshirts haul you off to jail, perhaps never to be heard from again.

I know scads of people who are highly critical of the government, both national and local, have been for years—I'm one of them myself—and they're still walking the streets and sleeping at night with no sudden knocks on the door. Some are average citizens and some of them are pretty high profile. And a couple of them are politicians themselves—scathingly critical of the government and who entered politics so they could attempt to do something.

Without going into detail, I did have some dealings with a couple of FBI agents back in the mid-1950s. They asked me for information about some people I knew (re: possible communist connections—after all, the people they wanted to know about were folk singer friends of mine). I gave them none, other than to tell them that I was sure they were barking up the wrong tree. They thanked me for my time and that was the last I saw of them. Quite polite and businesslike. Considering the spirit of the time, I was neither shocked nor horrified, nor did I conclude that this meant I was living in a police state.

By the way, there's a fellow currently living in the building in which I live who is not being hassled or shadowed at all, even if his name is Mustafa.

And I'm sorry about your friend Rios. I don't know what all was involved there;   I'd need to know the whole story. But it looks to me as if he was in a bit deeper than merely walking through a strange neighborhood at night. Some reports have it that the FBI was trying to serve an arrest warrant for his having been involved in a Wells Fargo depot robbery years before (to finance a Puerto Rican independence movement), jumping bail after his arrest on that occasion—and that when the FBI tried to serve the warrant, he started shooting first, wounding one of the agents before they opened fire. Rios followers, of course, maintain that that isn't true and that it was simply an assassination.

No matter what anyone claims, without an independent, disinterested witness, the truth may never be known.

People tend to believe what they feel serves their interests the best.

Don Firth