Fight the enemy within

Eight people who protested at an immigrant detention center received a combined 450 years in prison. Prosecutors treated the July 2025 demonstration as material support for terrorism; five defendants got 50 years, one got 70, one 100 and one 30. The evidence linking them included zines read by a left-wing book club, and one defendant was not at the protest. Former U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade said she might have expected 15 to 25 years, but nothing like 50 to 100. Their sentences exceeded the longest terms imposed for January 6. A law built for terrorism had been turned on domestic protest, and the penalty showed what that reclassification can do.

The machinery was assembled from the top down. National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 directed counter-terrorism task forces at individuals, funders, nonprofits and tax-exempt groups using ideological criteria such as "anti-Americanism," "anti-capitalism" and "anti-Christianity"—creeds, not crimes. A Justice Department memo converted the directive into enforcement priorities. By March 2026, FBI and IRS agents were working from a joint command center to investigate nonprofits, joining terrorism labels to subpoena power and tax files. In July, White House adviser Stephen Miller said Trump had ordered the country's law-enforcement and intelligence agencies to disrupt, defund, debank, arrest and prosecute what he called political terrorists.

The investigations began with named political targets and searched outward for charges. A presidential memorandum on online fundraising named ActBlue, the Democratic platform, and no Republican counterpart. A senior DOJ official directed prosecutors in at least seven states to prepare investigations of the Open Society Foundations under statutes ranging from arson to racketeering and material support for terrorism. Trump also designated "antifa" a domestic terrorist organization despite no statutory designation process and no membership roll; federal indictments later invoked that initiative against Cop City and Minneapolis protesters. A review of more than 1,000 pages of federal and state intelligence reports found a new "anti-tech violent extremism" category used to monitor lawful activity, while the State Department published a report naming American activists as foreign "front groups and fellow travelers." Labels created inside the executive branch were beginning to decide whose politics entered an intelligence file.

The president's named critics entered the same system. James Comey was indicted after Trump replaced a U.S. attorney who had resisted the case; a magistrate described the sequence as "indict first, investigate second," and the case was dismissed before a new indictment followed over a social-media photo of seashells reading "8647." Letitia James, who won a civil fraud judgment against Trump, was indicted, saw the case dismissed over the prosecutor's appointment and then survived two grand juries that declined to re-indict. John Bolton pleaded guilty to one retention count after an 18-count indictment. Vice President Vance referred Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, his own 2024 opponent, and the state's attorney general to DOJ. These outcomes differ, and the failures matter. They also show the burden: lawyers, reputations and months of life spent answering the state.

The president has described directing cases, and his attorney general has left room to listen. Trump said he personally called a U.S. attorney and asked him to examine an election while his endorsed candidate was trailing. He publicly attacked another prosecutor for dropping a vandalism case he wanted pursued, calling her weak by name. Attorney General Todd Blanche later declined to promise independence from the White House and said he would consider the president's view in charging decisions. That collapses the distance between a politician naming an enemy and a prosecutor deciding whether the state will charge one.

Enforcement has run in opposite directions depending on politics. Mahmoud Khalil, a lawful permanent resident and protest leader, spent 104 days in detention before a judge found the government's stated justification likely unconstitutional. The government also terminated as many as 4,700 international students' records, often over protest activity, reversed course amid more than 100 lawsuits, and then issued itself a lower standard for future terminations. Meanwhile, Trump's clemency covered about 1,500 January 6 defendants, including more than 240 who pleaded guilty to assaulting law enforcement; DOJ later had the Proud Boys' seditious-conspiracy verdicts vacated. One side met terrorism law, detention and serial indictment. The other received pardons and erased verdicts.

The danger is not that every case succeeds. It is that prosecution itself becomes the punishment for opposition. Courts and grand juries have stopped some cases, and Bolton's guilty plea is a real counterfact. But a donor, protester, nonprofit employee or critic still has to decide whether speaking, organizing or giving is worth an audit, subpoena, arrest or indictment. The working person who cannot afford counsel or months away from a job faces the harshest version of that choice. Law enforcement built to judge conduct starts by reading political position instead.