We’re All “Domestic Terrorists” Now
“It was an act of domestic terrorism,” Kristi Noem declared following Wednesday’s killing of Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, by an ICE agent in a residential neighborhood of Minneapolis. With a straight face and no evident sense of shame, the head of Homeland Security added, “This goes to show the assaults that our ICE officers and law enforcement are under every single day.” During the same press conference, she assured the public that “anyone who is a citizen of this country or is here legally, has nothing to fear.”
It’s as keen an example of the emperor having no clothes as you’ll find: Though the video of Good’s killing shows no reasonable justification for lethal force, Noem, President Trump, and their MAGA acolytes are telling us that Good was not a victim but another “terrorist” who was somehow a threat to the American people. A year into Trump’s second term, we are used to him and his administration applying that label to migrants and antifa and journalists and even some Democrats. But now, it seems, all of us are potential terrorists, at risk of being gunned down by Trump and Noem’s trigger-happy goons.
The president first experimented with an expansive definition of who qualifies as a domestic terrorist during his first term. In 2017, in an effort that mirrored the COINTELPRO surveillance of civil rights leaders under J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI created a designation of “Black Identity Extremists” that sought to conflate the shootings of police officers with an underground Black revolutionary movement connected to Black Lives Matter. Amid the protests over George Floyd’s murder by police officer Derek Chauvin, Trump lashed out at antifa, tweeting that he would designate the group a domestic terror organization. He made good on that threat this past September, issuing an executive order that declared, “Individuals associated with and acting on behalf of Antifa further coordinate with other organizations and entities for the purpose of spreading, fomenting, and advancing political violence and suppressing lawful political speech.”
Three days later he issued National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, titled “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence,” which reads like something out of the White Christian Persecution Fantasy Handbook. It cited violence and threats against right-wing figures, including himself, and claimed, “Common threads animating this violent conduct include anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the United States Government; extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.” Of course, it ignored overwhelming evidence that right-wing extremism has historically been responsible for considerably more violence than left-wing extremism. In fact, just a week prior, the DOJ removed from its website a study which demonstrated exactly that.
For its definition of what constitutes domestic terrorism, the order relied on 18 U.S.C. 2331(5), which states, in part, that domestic terrorism involves activities that “appear to be intended” to “intimidate or coerce a civilian population” or to “influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion.” This definition is extraordinarily vague, giving Trump, Noem, and Attorney General Pam Bondi wide latitude to use it as they like. The order seems to indicate that they intend to use it to monitor basic free speech activities, since it declares that terrorist “campaigns” often start with “anonymous chat forums, in-person meetings, social media, and even educational institutions.”
The net was also cast wide for groups or individuals who might be considered “domestic terrorists” by this metric. It includes “organized structures, networks, entities, organizations, funding sources, and predicate actions behind them,” all of whom will be subject to investigation. The order charges the National Joint Terrorism Task Force with investigating any person or group deemed responsible, in whole or part, for “radicalizing” people.
Bondi followed up the order with a memo that makes clear she will consider rioting or looting to be domestic terrorism, and as such the DOJ will slap federal charges on people in cases that previously would have been handled locally. Moreover, the memo states that doxxing of law enforcement officers will be considered domestic terrorism, as will the “targeting of public officials or other political actors,” without specifying what that targeting includes. Is yelling at a public official or calling them a “fascist” targeting them? We don’t know. What about attempting to drive away from ICE because you were told to, as reportedly happened to Renee Nicole Good?
In the Oval Office before a slew of reporters, Trump stated that the killing in Minnesota was “horrible to watch.” Yet he insisted on showing it to them to prove that Good had tried to “run over” ICE agents, even though the video clearly shows that she did not. This is not the first time that the administration has used this defense for killing someone amid its immigration crackdown. In an incident in September, ICE agents shot and killed Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez, an undocumented immigrant from Mexico, claiming that he had hit an agent with his car and dragged him “a significant distance,” but videos shows otherwise. In October, ICE agents became annoyed that Marimar Martinez, an American citizen, was following them and warning people in her Chicago neighborhood that agents were in the area, so they rammed her car and then shot her five times. One of the agents had screamed, “Do something, bitch!” before opening fire. That agent later boasted in texts, “I fired 5 rounds and she had 7 holes. Put that in your book boys.”
Altogether, there have been 14 people shot by ICE under Trump, including nine since September. That figure doesn’t include other people who have died at ICE’s hands or because of the aggressive tactics the administration has been employing, like Jaime Alanis, who fell from a rooftop during a poorly executed ICE raid in July, or the 32 people who have died in ICE custody—the highest on record—in part due to the inadequate facilities in which they’re placed.
But the administration feels no responsibility toward these people because they’re either “domestic terrorists” or “criminal illegal aliens,” as we’re told. Murdering a civilian is one thing; but murdering a “domestic terrorist,” or carting “terrorists” or “gang members” away to CECOT in El Salvador—that’s a different matter. That’s why, whenever its goons gun someone down, the administration’s strategy is the same: Lie about what happened, even when faced with visual evidence that refutes its story, and declare the victim guilty by calling them a terrorist. As the administration sees it, that label justifies whatever violence it commits—even shooting an innocent protester in the face.
Later it could be you or me. But I’m encouraging people to protest nonetheless. I believe in giving ICE a hard time—to make it more difficult for them to abuse people and disrupt communities. That may have been what Good was doing. And if ICE shows up in my neighborhood and starts snatching people off the street, I will be there, too. I suppose that makes me a terrorist, too.