The Obama administration is launching an outreach effort to raise awareness within American Muslim communities about young people joining the Islamic State (Isis), a push that comes amid an atmosphere of distrust within those communities over government surveillance and other civil rights concerns.

US attorney general Eric Holder on Monday announced a “pilot program” taking shape in several US cities in the coming months, aiming to bring together law-enforcement officials, US attorneys, and community and religious leaders to discuss radicalization.

In addition to the Justice Department, the National Counterterrorism Center and the White House are also involved in the pilot program, with the White House planning a summit in October on what it calls “Countering Violent Extremism.”

A video Holder released on Monday to promote the effort contained few specifics, but referred to “the emergence of groups like [Isis], and the knowledge that some Americans are attempting to travel to countries like Syria and Iraq to take part in ongoing conflicts.”

The Washington director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, Haris Tarin, said he was unaware of the details of the project, nor how it differed from existing community roundtables like ones hosted quarterly by the Department of Homeland Security.

“If there is something substantive, that would be great, because communities generally also want to address the grievances they have, issues like surveillance, issues like problematic training of law enforcement agencies,” Tarin said.

Marc Raimondi, a Justice Department spokesman, said the administration was not yet releasing the locations of cities hosting the pilot program. Unlike earlier efforts that focused on “engagement between public safety and community leaders,” the administration wants dialogue with “a wide range of social service providers including education administrators, mental health professionals, and religious leaders to provide more robust support and help facilitate community-led interventions,” Raimondi said.

The National Counterterrorism Center’s director, Matt Olsen, said earlier this month that fewer than 100 Americans have traveled to Syria to fight alongside various Syrian rebel factions, some fraction which have joined Isis. A Defense Department spokesman estimated that Isis counts perhaps a dozen Americans in its ranks.

Last week, Barack Obama announced that he will expand air strikes against Isis in Iraq into a political-military campaign that may target the group in its eastern Syrian enclave. Senior US officials have said they do not believe Isis is planning to attack the US domestically, but voice fear that Americans fighting alongside the group will return home and conduct terrorist attacks.

The inchoate outreach effort is complicated by years of law enforcement, homeland security and intelligence activities that have targeted US Muslims in the name of counterterrorism.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has placed informants inside mosques and creates maps of Muslim community centers, businesses and places of worship without individualized suspicion of criminal activity. Local police departments like New York’s have extensively surveilled Muslim enclaves. US Muslims report federal agents attempting to use terrorism watchlists to pressure them into becoming informants.

Counter-terrorism training material in the FBI and intelligence agencies has portrayed Islam itself as a threat to US national security and referred to Muslims with epithets like “Mohammed Raghead.”

“We’ve seen no meaningful response from this administration to revelations and concerns about FBI spying, monitoring and infiltration of American Muslim communities,” said Naureen Shah, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union.

“We’ve heard officials say they are committed to civil liberties. But too often, that hasn’t matched the reality of government practices that treat entire communities as inherently suspect and target Americans for investigation based on their religion or beliefs.”

Fahana Khera, the executive director of the law firm Muslim Advocates, cautioned the administration “not to fall into the trap of using misguided strategies that focus on particular houses of worship or faith communities based on stereotypes, not evidence of wrongdoing.”

Since 2010, the administration has launched “countering violent extremism” outreach initiatives countrywide to build trust between mostly Muslim communities and the government. The typical message is to encourage Muslims to alert law enforcement of signs of domestic radicalization, particularly from young men.

In practice, participants say, little substantial work is accomplished, and the presence of security officials and prosecutors – often the only representatives the government sends – creates confusion as to whether US Muslims are seen as partners or targets.

“Oftentimes, they’re people venting about government policies and people from government being like, ‘Well, that’s not us, that’s the FBI,’ and the FBI’s like, ‘That’s not us, that’s the NSA,’” said Linda Sarsour, the executive director of the Arab American Association of New York.

Sarsour said she was on her way to such a meeting earlier this month when a drunk Brooklyn man threatened her with beheading.

Tarin of the Muslim Public Affairs Council said Muslim communities were better placed to address youth radicalization than federal law enforcement, “frankly, because the trust is not very high.”