National Security & Civil Rights

Adil Raniwala is a Community Rights Advocate in the National Security and Civil Rights program at Asian Law Caucus. His work involves networking with Masjids and Muslim community centers to provide legal resources and educate Muslim communities about their rights, especially pertaining to police surveillance and other discriminatory practices.

Adil has worked closely with Muslim youth, involving himself in advocacy and religious settings in the Muslim Students Association West nonprofit, where he managed a professional development and mentorship program for Muslim college students. There, he also organized political advocacy trainings and conducted research on Countering Violent Extremism and police abolition programs. Adil also manages a public service program funded by the Strauss Scholarship Foundation dedicated to ending food insecurity in the Berkeley Muslim community. Adil graduated from UC Berkeley in August 2022 with a major in Political Science and a minor in Political Economy.

Caroline Marks works in the National Security and Civil Rights program at Asian Law Caucus. Caroline’s work focuses on, among other things, state legislative and administrative advocacy challenging surveillance and counterterrorism programs and narratives that harm Arab, Middle Eastern, Muslim and South Asian communities and other communities of color.

Before coming to ALC, Caroline worked on litigation and advocacy with the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at NYU Law, to hold the United States responsible for its extraordinary rendition program—whereby the U.S. kidnapped and transferred individuals to black sites and proxy governments for their subsequent torture and secret detention. Specifically, Caroline participated significantly in litigation before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in the case Mohamed et al. v. United States.

Caroline graduated from NYU School of Law and holds a BA in International Relations from Brown University. During her time at Brown, Caroline spent a semester Amman, Jordan learning the Levantine dialect and expanding her knowledge of modern standard Arabic.

*Pending admission to the California Bar

Hammad Alam is a Staff Attorney and Program Manager in the National Security and Civil Rights program at Asian Law Caucus. Hammad’s work focuses on, among other things, the federal Countering Violent Extremism program and state of California’s directly linked Preventing Violent Extremism and other similar surveillance and criminalization programs targeting Muslim and other immigrant and communities of color.

Hammad has helped lead coalitions against both of these programs, helping devise strategy engaging policy advocacy, community organizing, and the law to place pressure on government actors to defund and dismantle these harmful programs. Most recently, as part of the NoPVEinCA Coalition, Hammad led a statewide campaign to defund PVE in California, successfully blocking the harmful program from receiving state funding to staff and operate it.

In addition to anti-surveillance and anti-policing work, Hammad also drives NSCR’s work against the Muslim Ban, through both litigation and ALC’s participation as a core member of the No Muslim Ban Ever campaign. Hammad comes to ALC with prior federal litigation experience and served as a law clerk in the Eastern District of California. He is a graduate of the UCLA School of Law and holds a Masters in Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School.

Sanjana is a Community Advocate in the National Security and Civil Rights program at Asian Law Caucus. Prior to ALC, Sanjana worked as a community organizer in the Seattle area with college students, immigrant rights and racial justice organizations, and community members focusing on anti-imperialist, surveillance, and racial justice work through community teach-ins, coalition building, and advocacy.

Sanjana graduated from the University of Washington, Seattle, with a B.A in International Studies and Law, Societies, & Justice with a specialization in South Asia. As an undergraduate, she took an interest in studying criminal justice, researching post-colonial legal systems, migration patterns, and the politics of spiritual-artistic traditions in South Asia. In her free time she enjoys writing, photography, practicing Hindustani classical music, and reading film reviews on Letterboxd.