CNN has hired John Miller , a former New York City Police Department official who lied about the departments history of surveilling Muslims, to be its chief law enforcement and intelligence analyst a move that has alarmed civil rights leaders and activists.

John will help deliver on CNN s commitment to tackle complex issues while presenting audiences with independent, objective news and meaningful analysis across platforms, Chris Licht, CNNs relatively new chairman and CEO, said in a press release Tuesday. As both a brilliant journalist and experienced, compelling subject matter expert, he brings to the network an incredible breadth of knowledge.

Critics, however, have called attention to other aspects of Millers record. While testifying before the New York City Council in March, Miller denied that the NYPD ever inappropriately spied on Muslims, even though the department has acknowledged that it ran a Muslim surveillance program after the Sept. 11 attacks.

While running the program which was exposed in 2011 in a Pulitzer Prize-winning Associated Press report the NYPD used census data to spy on Muslim Americans in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, placing undercover informants in predominantly Muslim communities. The informants took pictures and videos of mosquegoers, recorded the license plate numbers of worshippers, chatted with Muslim business owners, hung out in hookah bars and reported everything back to the NYPD.

The NYPD has admitted that the program did not produce a single lead to any terrorist plot, and the department has settled at least three lawsuits pertaining to the surveillance program in the past few years. Miller refused to admit any wrongdoing by the NYPD, and claimed there was no evidence of inappropriate surveillance.

But members of the Muslim community say the program caused irreversible damage, and they question what Millers new role at CNN could mean for coverage of Muslim Americans at a time when Islamophobia is on the rise.

CNN did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Shahana Hanif, the first female Muslim member of New Yorks city council, told HuffPost that Miller should be removed, and that she does not believe he could be objective.

For him to be able to take on a position that will give him a broader impact to an outlet that many of us trust is just another reminder of just how Muslims in our city are treated, Hanif said. I hope that CNN is watching the kind of backlash and the response to this hiring, and they should take very seriously the voices of the Muslim community because we are viewers too. We too want objective news.

Hanif, who questioned Miller during an eight-hour city council meeting earlier this year, was one of several Muslim leaders who met with New York City Mayor Eric Adams after the testimony and pushed for Miller to be fired. Miller, who was the deputy commissioner of intelligence and counterterrorism at the time, resigned from the NYPD after local officials, including Adams, disavowed the comments he made during his testimony.