President Trump has broadened the terrorism label in ways that now reach anti-ICE protesters, criminal drug gangs, people who endorse Palestinian causes, and liberals who oppose Trump administration policies. The shift comes as the Office of the Director of National Intelligence sits inside a post-9/11 security system that has stretched far beyond its original target.
ICE now has more than 22,000 officers and agents and a budget of $85 billion this year under President Trump. That scale gives the administration a larger enforcement apparatus to pair with a terrorism label that has been applied inside the United States, not just against foreign groups.
George W. Bush and 9/11
George W. Bush created the Department of Homeland Security in 2003 after the shortcomings and blind spots of the country’s domestic antiterrorism system were made clear by Al Qaeda. The nation had already become dedicated to defeating international terrorism after Sept. 11, 2001, when hijacked commercial jets crashed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania cornfield.
That post-9/11 framework now sits behind a broader use of terrorism language. The administration has applied the word to protesters and political critics, while also tying it to immigration enforcement through ICE and DHS. The effect is to move a national security term into disputes over protest activity and speech.
Rümeysa Öztürk
Rümeysa Öztürk was called a terrorist sympathizer by the Department of Homeland Defense because she coauthored an op-ed for a Tufts student newspaper criticizing Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza. She was arrested and nearly deported before a court later dismissed the deportation order against her.
Her case shows how the label reaches beyond weapons or attacks and into student speech tied to Gaza. A political argument in print became the basis for a deportation case, then for a judicial reversal.
Robert Pretti
Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem also labeled Robert Pretti a domestic terrorist after ICE agents shot him dead during a scuffle in Minneapolis last year. The administration later walked back those comments after video showed that he did not attack the ICE agents.
By one accounting, ICE agents have killed at least nine people in raids, several of them American citizens. The question left by these cases is not just who gets labeled, but how the administration decided which protesters or political views qualify for the terrorism label.
