New York: It has been reported by the New York Times that the New York City police department has been recruiting Muslim immigrants to act as informants in Cafes, restaurants and mosques.

The newspaper claimed that the department requires the help of immigrants such as a food cart vendor from Afghanistan, an Egyptian-born limousine driver and an accounting student from Pakistan. According to the Times news paper, most of them had been arrested for minor offenses.

It is said that Detectives working for a unit known as the ‘Citywide Debriefing Team’ have conducted 220 interviews with immigrants in the first quarter of this year and hundreds of interviews in the other years.

The report came weeks after the earlier information that the police department had ended investigation on Muslims, after severe protests.

However, in the recent cases police officials have described the interviews to the Times as voluntary, but the Times paper said that several Muslim immigrants spoke to it were felt shaken by the encounters.

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