Among the innovations introduced after 9/11 was the National Security Exit–Entry Registration System (NSEERS), which streamlined the documentation, detention, and eventual deportation of Muslims from a prepared list of twenty-five largely Muslim countries. “Even more sinister,” remark Neil Smith and Setha Low, “the Patriot Act (2001) thoroughly spatialized its circumspection of the public sphere with the invention of ‘homeland security,’ as a cabinet level preoccupation. Consequently, the domestic public sphere suffered a clampdown, with library accounts, university computers, bank accounts and other modes of daily communication placed under unprecedented surveillance.”

Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, loc. 264