https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-lines-up-next-target-as-bolton-could-face-life-in-prison
The nation’s special education services have been significantly impacted after Friday’s mass layoffs within the Department of Education and it could have an immediate impact on children with disabilities, education department sources told ABC News.
“Do people realize that this is happening to this population of vulnerable students?” one education department leader told ABC News.
“[If] there’s no staff, who the heck is going to administer this program? That’s the absurdity of this,” the source, who asked not to be identified for fear of retribution, added.
The department leader stressed that several employees within the offices of Special Education Programs and the Rehabilitative Services Administration — the two divisions that make up the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services (OSERS) — were cut over the weekend.
The agency enforces the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), the law creating a free and appropriate education for children with disabilities, and funds special education services to the tune of around $15 billion.
The education department leader called the layoffs to this division “ridiculous,” contending that families of special needs students will be harmed.
“There is a risk that the money to educate their children will not be given to the state, and that their access to support and advocacy for their children with special needs will no longer continue because there is no staff available to administer IDEA,” the department leader noted.
The education department is the smallest cabinet-level agency in the U.S. government.
At the start of the Trump administration, the department had just over 4,000 employees. After buyouts, early retirements, voluntary separations and a Reduction in Force, the agency was shrunk nearly in half earlier this year.
Multiple sources said several departmental offices have now been gutted again, including the offices of Communications and Outreach, Elementary and Secondary Education and other divisions.
A lawsuit brought by the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest union of federal workers, said the education department RIFed 466 employees – or at least another 20% of the agency’s workforce — during the shutdown.
Rachel Gittleman, the president of AFGE Local 252, believes all remaining offices in OSERS below the senior executive services level were RIFed Friday.
“The RIF of OSERS and OESE doubles down on the harm to K-12 students and schools across the country, which are already feeling the impacts of a hamstring Office for Civil Rights (OCR) from the March RIF,” she said.
News of the shutdown RIF was surprising for many within the special education offices. The employees who lost their jobs are distraught, according to the source familiar with the RIF.
Education department sources also told ABC News that the job cuts could hamstring states.
“If this RIF notice is carried out, the Department of Education can no longer administer IDEA,” one source said. “I have no staff to put the money out and to monitor the states.”
Critics of the Trump administration’s plans to shutter the agency told ABC News that preserving IDEA is one of their top concerns. It is a statutory program mandated by law and has bipartisan support on Capitol Hill.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon, whose mission is to return education power and responsibilities to the state and local level, has attempted to assuage concerns by stating that the department would continue to fully fund and carry out all of Congress’ statutorily required programs.
But the education department leader told ABC News that the latest RIF flies in the face of McMahon’s pledges.
“She’s consistently said she’ll protect IDEA,” the source said. “Well, now, this is not protecting IDEA if they’re getting rid of the team,” adding, “What is she doing with IDEA? Who’s going to administer it?”
The Department of Education did not immediately respond to ABC News’ requests for comment.
President Trump has said the Health and Human Services Department under Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will handle the special needs and nutrition programs for students, but that transfer has not happened yet.
Meanwhile, the education department leader predicts remaining staff within the special education division will not be equipped to take on the responsibility of those who were fired.
“That’s like taking a surgeon and telling them you’re now a brick layer or telling a brick layer you’re now a surgeon: It’s like you just don’t do that,” the leader said. “It’s just so absurd.”
FBI Director Kash Patel and Attorney General Pam Bondi on Thursday failed to name one terrorist organization they plan to investigate during a news conference at the Oval Office with President Donald Trump.
Trump signed a memorandum on the implementation of the death penalty in Washington, D.C, then a series of press questions followed after claims that “this is a very safe city right now, we don’t play games.”
“Who do you specifically want to target?” a reporter asked.
The three leaders were unable to respond to the questions, saying that they would “follow the money” and investigate “any organized group.”
But they still didn’t specifically name anything or anyone.
When pressed again, he responded, “antifa Soros… Well, [billionaire Democratic donor George] Soros is a name certainly that I keep hearing… I hear a lot of different names. I hear names of some pretty rich people that are radical left people, Maybe I hear about a guy named Reid Hoffman.”
Trump reportedly demanded that Soros, a longtime villain to conservatives, be thrown in prison, and the senior DOJ official’s directive lists possible charges – from arson to material support of terrorism – that prosecutors could file, according to a copy of the document viewed by The New York Times, which noted the memo suggests department officials are targeting individuals on the president’s orders.
“I don’t know, maybe, and maybe could be him, could be a lot of people,” Trump said.
Trump indicated that he wants to stop these unnamed groups or individuals from “performing acts of violence.”
“We’re looking at the funders of a lot of these groups. You know, when you see the signs, and they’re all beautiful signs, made professionally. These aren’t your protesters that make the sign in their basement late in the evening because they really believe it,” Trump claimed.
“These are anarchists and agitators — professional anarchists and agitators — and they get hired by wealthy people, some of whom I know, I guess, you know, probably know ’em. And you wouldn’t know it. You’re at dinner with them, everything’s nice and then you find out that they funded millions of dollars to these lunatics.”
Trump also invited his deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, to say a few words.
“This is a very historic and significant day,” Miller said. “This is the first time in American history that there is an all-government effort to dismantle left-wing terrorism, to dismantle antifa, to dismantle violence and terrorism.”
Last week, Trump designated antifa as a “domestic terrorist organization.” The loose-knit group does not have a leader and is comprised of people who generally describe themselves as anarchists, socialists, communists, and don’t generally share their identities to avoid retaliation from right-wing conservatives.
Miller argued that the government was looking at Black Lives Matter, Charlie Kirk’s killing, and attacks on ICE agents as “not lone, isolated events, this is part of an organized campaign of radical left terrorism… there is really no parallel like this…”
He claimed that a feeder organization was isolating public officials, doxxing government officials and attempting political assassinations.
“It is terrorism on our soil. Because of this executive order, Kash and Pam are going to have the tools they need working with Scott to take these organizations apart piece by piece, and the central hub of that effort is going to be the Joint Terrorism Task Force, or JTTF, which sits inside the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” Miller said.
Miller added that the investigation of terrorists, although it’s unclear who they are, would have the full support of the U.S. government.
“But for those at home who are worried about terrorism, understand because of President Trump’s strength, because of his vision, because of his leadership, we are now going to use the entire force of the federal government to uproot these organizations root and branch,” Miller said.
U.S. President Donald Trumpsigned an executive order on Monday calling the antifa movement a “terrorist organization,” the White House said, after promising actions targeting left-wing groups following Charlie Kirk’s assassination.
Kirk, a prominent conservative activist with close ties to Trump, was assassinated on September 10 while speaking on a college campus in Utah. A 22-year-old technical college student has been charged with Kirk’s murder.
Investigators are still looking for a motive and have not said the suspect operated in concert with any groups. But the Trump administration has used the killing as a pretext to revive years-old plans to target left-wing groups they regard as being hostile to conservative views.
Antifa, short for anti-fascist, is a “decentralized, leaderless movement composed of loose collections of groups, networks and individuals,” according to the Anti-Defamation League, which tracks extremists.
“While some extreme actors who claim to be affiliated with antifa do engage in violence or vandalism at rallies and events, this is not the norm,” it says on its website.
Trump’s 370-word executive order directs “all relevant executive departments and agencies” to “investigate, disrupt, and dismantle any and all illegal operations” conducted by antifa or anyone who funds such actions, according to the White House.
“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.”
Federal law enforcement officials already investigate violent and organized crime associated with a variety of hate groups and ideological movements.
The U.S. government does not currently officially designate solely domestic groups as terrorist organizations in large part because of constitutional protections.
But a Justice Department official with knowledge of discussions on the issue said Trump’s order would unlock expansive investigative and surveillance authorities and powers.
The person, who declined to be named, said the designation would allow the U.S. government to more closely track the finances and movements of U.S. citizens and to investigate any foreign ties of the loose network of groups and nonprofits the Trump administration views as antifa.
FOCUS IS ON FOREIGN FUNDING
Critics of the administration have warned it may pursue an attack on free speech and opponents of the Republican president.
The FBI’s Counterterrorism and Counterintelligence Divisions will be used to track finances – both domestic and foreign sources of funding – and attempt to identify the central leadership of antifa, the official said. FBI surveillance and investigative operations are normally restricted in how they can target U.S. citizens.
“The big picture focus is on foreign money seeding U.S. politics and drawing connections to foreign bank accounts,” a White House source familiar with the plans told Reuters.
“The designation of antifa gives us the authority to subpoena banks, look at wire transfers, foreign and domestic sources of funding, that kind of thing,” the White House source said.
It was not clear which individuals would be the target of such a probe.
Political violence experts and U.S. law enforcement officials have previously identified far-right attacks as the leading source of domestic violent extremism. Trump administration officials have sought to portray left-wing groups as the main drivers of political violence in their remarks since Kirk’s death.
Legal experts have said the domestic terrorism designation may be legally and constitutionally dubious, hard to execute and raise free-speech concerns, given that subscription to an ideology is not generally considered criminal under U.S. law.
During the first Trump administration there were at least two failed efforts to designate antifa a terrorist organization, according to internal Department of Homeland Security communications viewed by Reuters.
President Donald Trump announced in a social media post on Wednesday night that he is “designating ANTIFA, A SICK, DANGEROUS, RADICAL LEFT DISASTER, AS A MAJOR TERRORIST ORGANIZATION.” He made the same declaration in 2020 amid the Black Lives Matter protests against the police killing of George Floyd, with no real effect on the ground.
But Trump’s new declaration came with another, more specific order: “I will also be strongly recommending that those funding ANTIFA be thoroughly investigated in accordance with the highest legal standards and practices.” And that may be the real significance of his decision.
There is no such thing as a domestic terrorist organization list in the United States. When Congress debated the first counterterrorism legislation in the 1990s, the Clinton administration and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) pushed for sweeping domestic police powers. It was Republicans who opposed those measures at the time because they worried that counterterrorism would be weaponized against the right.
As a compromise, the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 only allowed the government to designate and ban foreign terrorist organizations. The first Trump administration reportedly tried to paint Antifa as a foreign organization by pointing to Antifa activists who fought for Kurdish militias in Syria. The problem is that the same Kurdish militias were also allied with the U.S. military, which introduced a foreign policy complication.
The current administration could try to use the Palestinian solidarity movement to paint the left as foreign terrorists. Both Republican politicians and the ADL have tried to imply that student protesters are materially connected to Hamas. As with the Kurdish connection, however, the Palestinian connection to Antifa is fairly stretched.
During the 2020 unrest, then–Attorney General Bill Barr also reportedly told prosecutors to consider using the “seditious conspiracy” law against rioters. The law, passed during the Civil War to round up Confederate guerrillas, punishes any group of people that violently opposes the authority of the U.S. government. The government did not end up pursuing those charges.
The most obvious measure is one that Trump has already hinted at using: the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. After protesters disrupted Trump’s dinner last week, Trump told reporters that he asked the attorney general “to look into that in terms of RICO, bringing RICO cases against them. Criminal RICO. Because they should be put in jail, what they’re doing to this country is really subversive.”
Originally designed to go after the mafia, the RICO Act allows prosecutors to charge an entire organization for criminal behaviors. In September 2023, the state of Georgia tried to use its own state-level RICO law to prosecute members of Stop Cop City, a protest movement against a new police training center. A judge threw out the charges last week.
As many critics have pointed out, Antifa doesn’t exist—at least not as a centralized organization. Anti-fascist is a label that many different left-wing and anarchist activists around the country have adopted, along with similar tactics and aesthetics. But the vagueness of the label can help rather than hinder the Trump administration, if its goal is to crack down on political enemies.
The RICO Act allows prosecutors to define more or less anything they want as a mafia organization, and the charges are nearly impossible to defend against, partly because the government can seize the defendant’s assets before trial, making it impossible to pay a defense lawyer.
Trump’s reference to “those funding ANTIFA” is a hint that he wants to tie Antifa rioting to various progressive donors, as in earlier attempts to go after the Palestinian movement. In May 2024, the House Oversight Committee and House Education Committee demanded information from a wide range of philanthropists—George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, the Pritzker family’s Libra Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation—about their connection to campus protests.
At the time, Foundation for Middle East Peace President Lara Friedman told Reason that this investigation was meant “to demonize parts of the tax-exempt sector that a part of the Republican Party views as a key target in the war on woke….If you make this about supposedly fighting antisemitism, you bring parts of the Democratic Party with you.”
Now that the Republicans are in power, they may calculate that the war on woke no longer needs Democratic support, and they can go after their targets much more directly. But it doesn’t take much imagination at all to see what the retaliation by a future Democratic administration might look like.
The Biden administration used seditious conspiracy charges to pin the January 2021 riot at the Capitol on the leaders of the right-wing Proud Boys, whom Trump later pardoned. Trump himself was charged under Georgia’s RICO law in 2023 for alleged election interference, a case that is currently on pause but could be resumed in the future.
Of course, Trump’s declaration about domestic terrorism was empty bluster in 2020. Given how much blood the Trump administration tastes from its successful attacks on critical media, and the fact that Democrats have broken the seal on other forms of domestic repression, this time might turn out to be more serious. The tools are there for a political crackdown—not a full descent into dictatorship, but for an escalation of the current surveillance state.
Ayman Soliman, a beloved former children’s hospital chaplain in the Cincinnati area, has been jailed by Donald Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement since July 9. Soliman was finally released today, multiple sources familiar with the matter tell Rolling Stone.
Just before 1:15 p.m., Adam Allen — one of the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital chaplains who was fired after publicly backing Soliman — said in a brief phone call, “He’s at a mosque.”
The imam’s attorney, Robert Ratliff, confirms that Soliman was released and “headed home,” and that he expects U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to fully reinstate his client’s legal asylum status, which was officially terminated by the Trump administration the month before his arrest.
Ratliff says he is awaiting written confirmation from the government, but he views this as an unequivocal victory, clearing the way for his client to continue seeking his green card and getting his family members from Egypt to America.
The attorney adds that this morning, a staffer at Rep. Greg Landsman’s (D-Ohio) office called him to let him know that they had heard the termination of legal status would be rescinded imminently, and that Soliman would be let out of the Butler County jail within hours. Then, at 12:13 p.m., Ratliff says, he got confirmation from an attorney for the Trump Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that they had filed a motion to dismiss.
“It is 100 percent [good news], absolutely no downside to it,” Soliman’s lawyer says.
Soliman and his advocates have long claimed that if the U.S. government were to return him to Egypt, he would face political retribution, or even death. For years, Soliman has built a reputation in Ohio and northern Kentucky for his work as a chaplain at his former employer, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, where he was widely celebrated for his work that included comforting the parents of severely ill or dying kids.
None of that mattered to Trump and his administration, which jailed him for more than two months, and have been publicly trashing him (based on flimsy so-called evidence) as being connected to Islamist terrorists.
DHS did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
This is the complete text of a Department of Justice study regarding right-wing extremism that the Trump administration has tried to remove from the Internet.
This complete text was retrieved from the Internet Archive.
January 4, 2024
By
Militant, nationalistic, white supremacist violent extremism has increased in the United States. In fact, the number of far-right attacks continues to outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism. Since 1990, far-right extremists have committed far more ideologically motivated homicides than far-left or radical Islamist extremists, including 227 events that took more than 520 lives.[1] In this same period, far-left extremists committed 42 ideologically motivated attacks that took 78 lives.[2] A recent threat assessment by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security concluded that domestic violent extremists are an acute threat and highlighted a probability that COVID-19 pandemic-related stressors, long-standing ideological grievances related to immigration, and narratives surrounding electoral fraud will continue to serve as a justification for violent actions.[3]
Over the past 20 years, the body of research that examines terrorism and domestic violent extremism has grown exponentially. Studies have looked at the similarities and differences between radicalization to violent domestic ideologies and radicalization to foreign extremist ideologies. Research has found that radicalization processes and outcomes — and perhaps potential prevention and intervention points — vary by group structure and crime type. In addition, research has explored promising and effective approaches for how communities can respond to radicalization and prevent future attacks.[4]
The National Institute of Justice (NIJ) has played a unique role in the evolving literature on terrorism and violent extremism. NIJ has promoted the development of comprehensive terrorism databases to help inform criminal justice responses to terrorism, address the risk of terrorism to potential targets, examine the links between terrorism and other crimes, and study the organizational, structural, and cultural dynamics of terrorism. In 2012, the U.S. Congress requested that NIJ build on these focal points by funding “research targeted toward developing a better understanding of the domestic radicalization phenomenon and advancing evidence-based strategies for effective intervention and prevention.”[5] NIJ has since funded more than 50 research projects on domestic radicalization, which have led to a better understanding of the processes that result in violent action, factors that increase the risk of radicalizing to violence, and how best to prevent and respond to violent extremism.
This article discusses the findings of several NIJ-supported domestic radicalization studies that cover a range of individual and network-centered risk and protective factors that affect radicalization processes, including military involvement and online environments. The article also explores factors that shape the longevity of radicalization processes and their variation by group structure and crime type, and examines factors that affect pathways away from domestic extremism. It concludes with a discussion of how these findings can inform terrorism prevention strategies, criminal justice policy, and community-based prevention programming.
Over the past two decades, research that seeks to understand individual-level engagement in violent extremism has grown tremendously. However, as the research field has developed, a gap has emerged between the increasingly sophisticated arguments that scholars use to explain extremism and the availability of data to test, refine, and validate theories of radicalization.
In 2012, NIJ funded the Empirical Assessment of Domestic Radicalization project to address the data gap in radicalization research.[6] The project created the Profiles of Individual Radicalization in the United States (PIRUS) database, a cross-ideological repository of information on the characteristics of U.S. extremists. In 2017, NIJ supported a follow-on project[7] that sought to replicate the PIRUS data for individuals in the United States who commit hate crimes. This project yielded the Bias Incidents and Actors Study (BIAS) dataset, the first data resource for researchers and practitioners interested in understanding the risk and protective factors associated with committing hate crimes.
PIRUS and BIAS are designed to provide users with information on a wide range of factors that can play a role in a person’s radicalization to criminal activity.[8] These risk and protective factors can be divided into four domains:[9]
The PIRUS and BIAS data have been used to generate insights on a range of important topics related to hate crime and extremism; however, there are three overarching findings common to both datasets: diversity in beliefs, diversity in behaviors, and diversity in characteristics.
Although it is not uncommon for a particular ideology to dominate the public discourse around extremism, the PIRUS and BIAS data indicate that U.S. extremists and individuals who commit hate crimes routinely come from across the ideological spectrum, including far-right, far-left, Islamist, or single-issue ideologies. These ideologies break down into particular movements, or sub-ideologies. For instance, in 2018, the PIRUS data identified extremists associated with several anti-government movements, Second Amendment militias, the sovereign citizen movement, white supremacy, ecoterrorism, anarchism, the anti-abortion movement, the QAnon conspiracy theory, and others.[10] The prevalence of particular movements can ebb and flow over time depending on political climate and law enforcement priorities, but at no point in recent U.S. history has one set of beliefs completely dominated extremism or hate crime activity.[11] Furthermore, the PIRUS and BIAS data reveal that U.S. extremists and individuals who commit hate crimes are often motivated by overlapping views. For instance, it is common for individuals from the anti-government militia movement to adopt views of white supremacy or for those from the extremist environmental movement to take part in anarchist violence. Nearly 17% of the individuals in PIRUS were affiliated with more than one extremist group or sub-ideological movement, and nearly 15% of the individuals in BIAS selected the victims of their hate crimes because of multiple identity characteristics, such as race and sexual orientation.[12]
Although radicalization to violence has been a primary topic in extremism and hate crime research, the PIRUS and BIAS data indicate that U.S. extremists and individuals who commit hate crimes often engage in a range of violent and nonviolent criminal activities. Indeed, 42% of PIRUS and nearly 30% of BIAS individual actors engaged exclusively in nonviolent crimes, such as property damage, financial schemes, and illegal demonstrations.[13] Moreover, the violent outcomes represented in the PIRUS and BIAS data vary in scope and type. For instance, approximately 15% of those in BIAS committed or planned to commit mass casualty crimes, while the remaining subjects targeted specific victims.[14] Similarly, nearly 50% of those in BIAS did not premeditate their crimes but rather acted spontaneously after chance encounters with their victims.[15]
One of the more common conclusions of recent research on radicalization is that no single profile accurately captures the characteristics of the individuals who commit extremist and hate crimes.[16] The PIRUS and BIAS data support this finding, revealing that background characteristics vary considerably depending on ideological affiliations. For instance, white supremacists in PIRUS tend to be older and less well-educated and are more likely to have criminal histories than those who were inspired by foreign terrorist groups, such as al-Qaida or the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or those associated with the extremist environmental or anarchist movements.[17] Despite these differences, some risk and protective factors tend to separate violent from nonviolent individuals, regardless of ideology.[18] In the PIRUS data, individuals with criminal records, documented or suspected mental illness, and membership in extremist cliques are more often classified as violent, while those who are married with stable employment backgrounds are more likely to engage in nonviolent crimes.[19] Similarly, in BIAS, violent individuals are more likely to co-offend with peers, have criminal histories that include acts of violence, and offend while under the influence of drugs or alcohol.[20]
According to current statistics, individuals with military backgrounds represent 11.5% of the total known extremists who have committed violent and nonviolent crimes in the United States since 1990.[21] Although this percentage seems small, there has been a growing trend of (former) military members engaging in extremist offenses in recent years. An average of seven people with U.S. military backgrounds per year committed extremist crimes between 1990 and 2010. That rate has risen to an average of 29 people per year over the past decade. Also worth noting is that more than half (52%) of extremists with military experience are identified as violent.
Given the growth of violent domestic extremism among military personnel, the relationship between military service and radicalization has become a major concern. Prior NIJ-funded studies have identified military experience as a potential risk factor for attempted and actual terrorism.[22] The likelihood of radicalization and radicalization to violence increases when individuals have already left military service.[23] This research suggests that military service is not a social bond that inhibits extremist violence.
NIJ studies have also shown that individuals with military experience may be susceptible to recruitment by domestic violent extremist groups due to their unique skills, which an extremist group may perceive as contributing to the success of a terrorist attack.[24] Also, transitioning from military to civilian life appears to be a pull factor for engaging in violent extremism.[25] Indicators for potential involvement in extremism may include a lack of a sense of community, purpose, and belonging. If these indicators are identified early, community stakeholders — in partnership with military agencies — could have an opportunity to intervene. Although such knowledge is valuable, the role of military service in radicalization to violent extremism still requires study.
In 2019, NIJ funded researchers at the University of Southern California to study the link between military service and violent domestic extremism. They are also examining the differences between military veteran and civilian extremists in terms of their characteristics and social networks.[26] Although this study is ongoing, preliminary findings have been drawn from a secondary analysis of the American Terrorism Study data, which contain information on people federally indicted for terrorism-related crimes by the U.S. government between 1980 and 2002.[27] With these data, the researchers compared the demographic and homegrown violent extremist characteristics among military veterans and civilians. The demographic characteristics considered were age, race, sex, marital status, and education level. The homegrown violent extremist characteristics consisted of the length of group membership, type of terrorist group, role in the group, mode of recruitment into the group, primary target, and the state of indictment.
The research team observed significant differences between military veteran and civilian extremists across both demographic and homegrown violent extremist characteristics. First, they found that military veteran and civilian extremists differed with respect to age, sex, and marital status. Specifically, individuals with military service who engaged in homegrown violent extremism were more likely to be older, male, and in marital or cohabiting relationships than civilians who engaged in homegrown violent extremism. Second, analyses revealed that, compared to civilian extremists, military veteran extremists had greater affiliations with right-wing terrorist groups (versus left-wing, international, or other terrorist groups) and were more likely to hold leadership positions within these groups and either initiate a terrorist group or unite groups together. Finally, other than government/federal officials or buildings, which were the primary targets across all groups, the primary targets of veterans were diverse social groups, such as those belonging to racial, ethnic, and religious minority groups.
The University of Southern California researchers intend to supplement these results by interviewing members from the social networks of military veterans and civilians who committed homegrown violent extremism between 2003 and 2019. The findings produced thus far are important, especially because the association between military experience and terrorism is understudied. Ultimately, these results suggest that people who transition from active duty to veteran status experience a nuanced, complex, and potentially lifelong process. Veterans who encounter difficulties during this transition and desire — but lack — a sense of community, purpose, and belonging after leaving the military may be attracted to the pull of domestic extremist groups. In these groups, veterans can lead and collaborate with others of similar ideologies to accomplish a shared mission akin to what they did in the military. For example, the military veterans in this study largely endorsed right-wing values; thus, perhaps something about the narratives of right-wing extremist groups compensates for the void felt when leaving military service. With such insights in mind, researchers recommend forming partnerships among civilians, the military, and veteran communities to identify and prevent violent extremism among U.S. veterans.
A major question for researchers and counterterrorism officials is how to prevent the next act of terrorism or violent extremism from occurring. As such, much attention has been paid to disrupted plots and successful interdiction tactics that ultimately led to arrest and indictment. Less attention has been given to what those responsible for acts of terrorism and violent extremism do to successfully evade detection and arrest. In other words, the focus has not been on what terrorists and violent extremists are doing “right.”
In 2013, NIJ funded researchers at the University of Arkansas’ Terrorism Research Center to study the sequencing of precursor behaviors for individuals who have been federally indicted in the United States for charges related to terrorism and domestic violent extremism.[28] Based on preliminary analyses, the researchers somewhat serendipitously observed lifespan differences between lone actors and those operating in small cells or more formalized groups. Consequently, it warranted a more comprehensive examination of the factors that increased the likelihood of terrorists and violent extremists evading arrest. NIJ funded the researchers to identify behaviors that improved the chances of plot longevity — or the ability for terrorists to commit acts of terrorism and evade capture by law enforcement — for individuals federally indicted on terrorism-related charges.[29]
Data on the longevity of terrorism and violent extremism plots come from the American Terrorism Study, the longest-running project on terrorism and violent extremism in the United States. With NIJ funding that began in 2003,[30] the American Terrorism Study maintains the most comprehensive dataset on temporally linked precursor behaviors and outcomes of terrorism and violent extremism plots. To examine plot longevity, the Arkansas researchers[31] limited their analyses to 346 federally indicted individuals who were linked to the planning or completion of a terrorist attack in the United States from 1980 to 2015. Longevity, or duration of their “terrorist lifespan,” is based on the date of a person’s involvement in their first preparatory activity and their “neutralizing” date (usually the date of arrest).
One of the key findings from this research is a correlation between significant declines in the lifespan of individual terrorists and major changes to the U.S. Attorney General guidelines established to combat terrorism and violent extremism in the United States. For example, those who began in the mid- to late 1970s, following Watergate, COINTELPRO, and the Privacy Act, had a median longevity of 2,230 days. In contrast, the median lifespan of terrorists who began operating in the mid-1980s decreased to 1,067 days. Later, in the early 2000s, it fell even further to 99 days, which reflects the FBI’s tighter focus on terrorism and violent extremism and guidelines granting law enforcement more discretion in the investigative techniques employed.
The researchers also found that the lifespans of terrorists and violent extremists vary significantly depending on key attributes, such as ideology, sex, and educational attainment. For example, environmental and extreme left-wing violent extremists tend to sustain themselves for relatively long periods of time (5.4 and 4.3 years, respectively), while the longevity of extreme right-wing and radical Islamist terrorists is, on average, two years or less.
Females federally indicted on charges related to terrorism and violent extremism also tend to have increased longevity compared to male terrorists and violent extremists, perhaps because of females’ disproportionate representation in longer-lasting extreme left-wing and environmental movements, as well as increased representation in left-wing group leadership roles. Females involved in terrorism and extremism are usually more educated, which is also associated with extended longevity. Further, females who play support roles in terrorism and extremist groups — as is more often the case for right-wing extremists and radical Islamist terrorists — also appear to have longer lifespans. In contrast, males have been more likely to engage in overtly criminal preparatory behavior and actual incident participation than females. Both types of behavior are significantly more likely to attract the attention of law enforcement and would be expected to shorten the longevity of both male and female terrorists and violent extremists.
Finally, longevity also depends on a plot’s sophistication and the extent of the planning required to carry it out. Less sophisticated plans or executed plots, or those using simpler and less advanced weapons, are generally associated with longer lifespans for terrorists and violent extremists. More sophisticated plots may provide greater potential for missteps by terrorists and violent extremists and leads for law enforcement. Additionally, more sophisticated plots are associated with more meetings with accomplices and necessitate extra preparation. Importantly, both the number of meetings and preparatory activities have been found to be negatively related to the successful completion of terrorist incidents, suggesting that early intervention or arrest are also linked to these two factors.
Terrorists and terrorist groups use the internet to share propaganda and recruit new members. The internet provides a platform to strengthen their members’ commitment to the cause, encourage radicalized individuals to act, and coordinate legal and illegal activities. A recently published meta-analysis concluded, “Exposure to radical content online appears to have a larger relationship with radicalization than other media-related risk factors (for example, television usage, media exposure), and the impact of this relationship is most pronounced for the behavioral outcomes of radicalization.”[32]
In 2014, NIJ funded a study to develop a deeper understanding of what domestic terrorists discuss on the internet.[33] The study analyzed 18,120 posts from seven online web forums by and for individuals interested in the ideological far right. The research team read each post’s content and coded it for either quantitative or qualitative analyses depending on the project’s objective.
The project provided several important insights into terrorist use of the internet. First, the web forums included discussions about a variety of beliefs, such as gun rights, conspiracy theories, hate-based sentiments, and anti-government beliefs; however, the intensity of ideological expression was generally weak. The nature of the online environments that far-right groups use likely facilitates the diffusion of ideological agendas.
Second, the amount and type of involvement in these forums played a key role in radicalization. Posting behaviors changed over time. Users grew more ideological and radical as other users reinforced their ideas and connected their ideas to those from other forums. (It is important to note that the study focused on online expression and not conversion to offline violence.)
Third, far-right extremists were primarily interested in general technology issues. Discussions focused on encryption tools and methods (such as Tor), internet service providers and social media platforms, and law enforcement actions to surveil illicit activities online. These far-right extremists appeared more interested in defensive actions than sophisticated schemes for radicalization or offensive actions such as criminal cyberattacks.
The study used social network analyses to visualize user communications and network connections, focusing on individuals’ responses to posts made within threads to highlight interconnected associations between actors. The social network analyses indicated that far-right forums have a low network density, which suggests a degree of information recycling between key actors. The redundant connections between actors may slow the spread of new information. As a result, such forums may inefficiently distribute new knowledge due to their relatively insular nature. They may also be generally difficult to disrupt, as the participants’ language and behaviors reinforce others and create an echo chamber. These networks are similar to others observed in computer hacker communities and data theft forums,[34] which suggests that there may be consistencies in the nature of online dialogue regardless of the content.
The study also indicated that extreme external events usually did not affect posting behaviors. However, there were significant differences associated with conspiratorial, anti-Islamic, and anti-immigrant posts after the Boston Marathon bombing. It may be that violence or major disruptive events inspired by jihadist ideologies draw great responses from far-right groups relative to their own actions. The same appears to be true for the 2012 presidential election; the study observed increases both in the number of posts in the month after the election and in overt signs of individual ties or associations to far-right movements through self-claim posts, movement-related signatures, and usernames. These findings are consistent with other recent work comparing online mobilization after the 2012 and 2016 presidential elections.[35]
An NIJ-funded research team led by RTI International examined the complex social-psychological processes involved with entering, mobilizing, and exiting white supremacy in the United States.[36] The researchers conducted in-depth life history interviews with 47 former members of white supremacist groups in 24 states and two provinces in Canada.[37]
For this project, white supremacy referred to groups that reject essential democratic ideals, equality, and tolerance. A key organizing principle is that inherent differences between races and ethnicities position white and European ancestry above all others. Those interviewed were authoritarian, anti-liberal, or militant nationalists who had a general intolerance toward people of color. They had used violence to achieve their goals and supported a race war to eradicate the world of nonwhite people.[38]
The study led to several key findings about entering and exiting white supremacy in the United States.
The study found that most people do not join white supremacist groups because they are adherents of a particular ideology. Rather, a combination of background factors increases the likelihood that someone will be susceptible to recruitment messaging (for example, propaganda).[39] Previous research has highlighted that hate or adherence to racist violence was an outcome of participation in white supremacist groups.[40] The commitment to white supremacist groups lacked a preexisting sense of racial grievance or hatred that motivated an individual to join the racist movement.[41] One former member reported having “no inkling of what [Nazism] really was other than what you saw on TV.”[42] The NIJ-funded study found that people joined white supremacist groups because they were angry, lonely, and isolated, and they were looking for opportunities to express their rage.[43]
The former white supremacists had various personal, psychological, and social vulnerabilities that made them strive for what psychologists have framed as developing a new possible self.[44] High levels of negative life experiences — including, but not limited to, maladjustment, abuse, and family instability — potentially make a person imagine a new, different, and more fulfilled self.[45] They can imagine an empowered future self with friends and a purpose. Extremist recruiters prey on these desires. The former white supremacists indicated high levels of physical, sexual, and psychological abuse as children; strained personal relationships; and general difficulties throughout their lives. These struggles made white supremacy seem like an improvement to their sense of self, as the group came with a ready-made set of friends, social events, and camaraderie among individuals with similarly rough pasts. Besides these social benefits, white supremacist groups provided members with a deeper sense of belonging and explanation for their life troubles, rooted in a sense of racial pride and empowerment.
Most white supremacists in this country do not remain members for life. Rather, group membership is often temporary (but not always short-lived), and many become disillusioned and burnt out over time. The study showed that the exit process is gradual, as the former white supremacists reported slowly becoming dissatisfied with the ideology, tactics, or politics of a group.[46] They described an identity that became filled with negative encounters with other members, even breeding distrust. White supremacy requires the development of a totalizing identity that results in isolating members from nonextremists. This marginalization fosters a sense of social stigma that makes white supremacy less attractive and further supports disengagement and deradicalization processes.
This research reported that emotional dynamics create trajectories of development and decline in white supremacy and the role of disillusionment among the reasons why members exit the organization.[47] These analyses offer an explanation for how white supremacist organizations maintain solidarity even though many individuals stay in groups after losing their ideological commitment. They also demonstrate that exit from a group is a nonlinear process.[48] Meanwhile, in other analyses, the study team reported that, even after an individual exits a group, their white supremacist identity lingers with a residual effect.[49] That research likened hate to an addiction that creates an uncontrollable emotional, social, and cognitive hold over adherents, which has the ability to pull former members back into hate almost against their will.[50] The former white supremacists shared experiences in which music, environments, and images created desire, longing, and curiosity about their old lifestyle within the organization.
The NIJ-funded study found several blind spots in terms of identification and awareness among criminal legal system practitioners and other responders. This resulted in several missed opportunities for intervention and practical solutions. Exhibit 1 details four areas in which the study findings can contribute to criminal justice policy and practice.[51]
Exhibit 1. Missed Opportunities for Intervention and Practical Solutions
The results of the NIJ-funded studies discussed in this article have several implications for policy and practice. First, they illustrate that extremism is complex and that successfully countering it will require a unified response that bridges law enforcement, community partners, health officials, and concerned citizens. To facilitate a shared understanding of the extremist threat, stakeholders engaged in counterextremism efforts routinely use findings from these studies to provide training to concerned family and friends about potential radicalization warning signs and how best to respond. They also use the findings to educate law enforcement, corrections and probation officers, and mental health professionals on the complexity of radicalization so they can accurately gauge and respond to extremism in their communities. These types of training initiatives will remain critical to counterextremism efforts as the threat continues to evolve.
Second, the studies highlight the importance of focusing criminal justice resources on domestic extremism. Although international terrorist organizations remain a threat, these studies show that domestic extremists continue to be responsible for most terrorist attacks in the United States. Historically, far fewer resources have been dedicated to the study of domestic extremism, leaving gaps in our understanding about terrorist trends, recruitment and retention processes, and online behaviors. Due in large part to NIJ’s commitment to funding research on domestic radicalization, considerable progress has recently been made in addressing these topics. But this work will need to continue if we hope to keep pace with the rapidly evolving threat landscape.
Finally, the studies highlight the need for communitywide partnerships that link government and nongovernment organizations in support of community-level prevention and intervention programs. Law enforcement and criminal justice resources for countering extremism are finite and scarce, making it imperative that we focus our research and support efforts on understanding what occurs before a crime takes place. As the studies reviewed in this article show, there is often an opportunity to intervene to help individuals exit extremism before they engage in criminal activity. Similarly, prevention efforts are needed in digital spaces where extremist narratives often flourish. Achieving these goals will require community members, policymakers, and practitioners to commit to supporting counterextremism efforts.
This article was published as part of NIJ Journal issue number 285. This article discusses the following awards:
Opinions or points of view expressed in this document represent a consensus of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position, policies, terminology, or posture of the U.S. Department of Justice on domestic violent extremism. The content is not intended to create, does not create, and may not be relied upon to create any rights, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law by any party in any matter civil or criminal.
[note 1] Celinet Duran, “Far-Left Versus Far-Right Fatal Violence: An Empirical Assessment of the Prevalence of Ideologically Motivated Homicides in the United States,” Criminology, Criminal Justice, Law & Society 22 no. 2 (2021): 33-49; Joshua D. Freilich et al., “Introducing the United States Extremist Crime Database (ECDB),” Terrorism and Political Violence 26 no. 2 (2014): 372-384; and William Parkin, Joshua D. Freilich, and Steven Chermak, “Did Far-Right Extremist Violence Really Spike in 2017?” The Conversation, January 4, 2018.
[note 2] Duran, “Far-Left Versus Far-Right Fatal Violence”; Freilich et al., “Introducing the United States Extremist Crime Database (ECDB)”; and Parkin, Freilich, and Chermak, “Did Far-Right Extremist Violence Really Spike in 2017?”
[note 3] U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Homeland Threat Assessment: October 2020, Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Homeland Security, 2020, 4.
[note 4] Allison G. Smith, How Radicalization to Terrorism Occurs in the United States: What Research Sponsored by the National Institute of Justice Tells Us, Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice, June 2018, NCJ 250171; and Michael Wolfowicz, Badi Hasisi, and David Weisburd, “What Are the Effects of Different Elements of Media on Radicalization Outcomes? A Systematic Review,” Campbell Systematic Reviews 18 no. 2 (2022).
[note 5] Aisha Javed Qureshi, “Understanding Domestic Radicalization and Terrorism: A National Issue Within a Global Context,” NIJ Journal 282, August 2020.
[note 6] National Institute of Justice funding award description, “Empirical Assessment of Domestic Radicalization (EADR),” at the University of Maryland, award number 2012-ZA-BX-0005.
[note 7] National Institute of Justice funding award description, “A Pathway Approach to the Study of Bias Crime Offenders,” at the University of Maryland, College Park, award number 2017-VF-GX-0003.
[note 8] The PIRUS and BIAS datasets are based on the same data collection methodologies and share similar goals. Both contain random samples of individuals who committed crimes in the United States that were motivated by their extremist ideologies or hate beliefs. The PIRUS dataset includes 2,225 individuals from 1948 to 2018, and BIAS is based on 966 cases from 1990 to 2018. Both datasets are collected entirely from public sources, including court records, online and print news, and public social media accounts. Both seek to capture individuals who promoted a range of extremist ideologies and hate beliefs. PIRUS, for instance, includes those whose crimes were associated with anti-government, white supremacist, environmental, anarchist, jihadist, and conspiracy theory movements. Similarly, BIAS includes individuals who selected victims based on their race, ethnicity, and nationality; sexual orientation; religious affiliation; age; or disability.
[note 9] Michael Jensen and Gary LaFree, “Final Report: Empirical Assessment of Domestic Radicalization (EADR),” Final report to the National Institute of Justice, award number 2012-ZA-BX-0005, December 2016, NCJ 250481; and Michael A. Jensen, Elizabeth A. Yates, and Sheehan E. Kane, “A Pathway Approach to the Study of Bias Crime Offenders,” Final report to the National Institute of Justice, award number 2017-VF-GX-0003, February 2021, NCJ 300114.
[note 10] Michael Jensen, Elizabeth Yates, and Sheehan Kane, “Profiles of Individual Radicalization in the United States (PIRUS),” Research Brief, College Park, MD: National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism [START], May 2020.
[note 11] Jensen, Yates, and Kane, “Profiles of Individual Radicalization in the United States (PIRUS).”
[note 12] Jensen, Yates, and Kane, “A Pathway Approach to the Study of Bias Crime Offenders.”
[note 13] Jensen and LaFree, “Final Report: Empirical Assessment of Domestic Radicalization (EADR)”; and Jensen, Yates, and Kane, “A Pathway Approach to the Study of Bias Crime Offenders.”
[note 14] Michael Jensen, Elizabeth Yates, and Sheehan Kane, “Characteristics and Targets of Mass Casualty Hate Crime Offenders,” College Park, MD: START, 2020.
[note 15] Jensen, Yates, and Kane, “A Pathway Approach to the Study of Bias Crime Offenders.”
[note 16] John Horgan, “From Profiles to Pathways and Roots to Routes: Perspectives From Psychology on Radicalization Into Terrorism,” The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 618 no. 1 (2008): 80-94.
[note 17] Jensen, Yates, and Kane, “Profiles of Individual Radicalization in the United States (PIRUS).”
[note 18] Gary LaFree, “Correlates of Violent Political Extremism in the United States,” Criminology 56 no. 2 (2018): 233-268; Michael A. Jensen, Anita Atwell Seate, and Patrick A. James, “Radicalization to Violence: A Pathway Approach To Studying Extremism,” Terrorism and Political Violence 32 no. 5 (2020): 1067-1090; and Michael A. Jensen et al., “The Link Between Prior Criminal Record and Violent Political Extremism in the United States,” in Understanding Recruitment to Organized Crime and Terrorism, ed. David Weisburd et al. (New York: Springer, 2020), 121-146.
[note 19] Jensen, Yates, and Kane, “Profiles of Individual Radicalization in the United States (PIRUS).”
[note 20] Michael Jensen, Elizabeth Yates, and Sheehan Kane, “Violent Hate Crime Offenders,” College Park, MD: START, 2020.
[note 21] Unless otherwise noted, all data reported in this section originate from Michael Jensen, Elizabeth Yates, and Sheehan Kane, Radicalization in the Ranks: An Assessment of the Scope and Nature of Criminal Extremism in the United States Military, College Park, MD: START, January 2022. In this project, extremists with military backgrounds consisted of active and nonactive personnel from all military branches and reserves, aside from the Space Force and Coast Guard Reserves. Individuals who were honorably discharged, dishonorably discharged, or otherwise violated the Uniform Code of Military Justice were excluded from the study. Also excluded were those discharged through court martial unless information about their criminal proceedings was publicly available.
[note 22] Allison G. Smith, Risk Factors and Indicators Associated With Radicalization to Terrorism in the United States: What Research Sponsored by the National Institute of Justice Tells Us, Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice, June 2018, NCJ 251789.
[note 23] Jensen and LaFree, “Final Report: Empirical Assessment of Domestic Radicalization (EADR).”
[note 24] Smith, Risk Factors and Indicators Associated With Radicalization to Terrorism in the United States.
[note 25] Smith, Risk Factors and Indicators Associated With Radicalization to Terrorism in the United States.
[note 26] National Institute of Justice funding award description, “Exploring the Social Networks of Homegrown Violent Extremist (HVE) Military Veterans,” at the University of Southern California, award number 2019-ZA-CX-0002.
[note 27] Unless otherwise noted, all data in this section come from Hazel R. Atuel and Carl A. Castro, “Exploring Homegrown Violent Extremism Among Military Veterans and Civilians,” The Military Psychologist 36 no. 3 (2021): 10-14.
[note 28] National Institute of Justice funding award description, “Sequencing Terrorists? Precursor Behaviors: A Crime Specific Analysis,” at the University of Arkansas, award number 2013-ZA-BX-0001.
[note 29] National Institute of Justice funding award description, “Radicalization and the Longevity of American Terrorists: Factors Affecting Sustainability,” at the University of Arkansas, award number 2015-ZA-BX-0001.
[note 30] National Institute of Justice funding award description, “Pre-Incident Indicators of Terrorist Incidents,” at the Board of Trustees, University of Arkansas, award number 2003-DT-CX-0003.
[note 31] Unless otherwise noted, all data in this section come from Brent L. Smith et al., “The Longevity of American Terrorists: Factors Affecting Sustainability,” Final Summary Overview, award number 2015-ZA-BX-0001, January 2021, NCJ 256035.
[note 32] Wolfowicz, Hasisi, and Weisburd, “What Are the Effects of Different Elements of Media on Radicalization Outcomes?”
[note 33] Unless otherwise noted, all data in this section come from Thomas J. Holt, Steve Chermak, and Joshua D. Freilich, “An Assessment of Extremist Groups Use of Web Forums, Social Media, and Technology To Enculturate and Radicalize Individuals to Violence,” Final Summary Overview, award number 2014-ZA-BX-0004, January 2021, NCJ 256038.
[note 34] Thomas J. Holt and Adam M. Bossler, “Issues in the Prevention of Cybercrime,” in Cybercrime in Progress: Theory and Prevention of Technology-Enabled Offenses (New York: Routledge, 2016), 136-168.
[note 35] Ryan Scrivens et al., “Triggered by Defeat or Victory? Assessing the Impact of Presidential Election Results on Extreme Right-Wing Mobilization Online,” Deviant Behavior 42 no. 5 (2021): 630-645.
[note 36] Matthew DeMichele, Peter Simi, and Kathleen Blee, “Research and Evaluation on Domestic Radicalization to Violent Extremism: Research To Support Exit USA,” Final report to the National Institute of Justice, award number 2014-ZA-BX-0005, January 2021, NCJ 256037.
[note 37] The project included three human rights groups (Anti-Defamation League, Simon Wiesenthal Center, and Southern Poverty Law Center) and Life After Hate, an organization that assists white supremacists in exiting the movement. The project partners helped develop a semi-structured interview protocol and provided contact information for initial interviewees. The study used a snowballing technique from these initial interviewees to identify former white supremacists who were in the public sphere to determine if they were interested in being interviewed. The interviews were conducted in places where the individuals would be comfortable, including hotel rooms, homes, places of work, coffee shops, restaurants, and parks. The interviews were in-depth accounts (lasting 6-8 hours each) of individuals’ backgrounds (for example, how they grew up), entry into white supremacy (for example, how they learned about the movement), mobilization (for example, rank and use of violence), and exit process (for example, initial doubts and barriers to exit). The completion of the project was a collaboration with equal contributions from Kathleen Blee, Matthew DeMichele, and Pete Simi and support from Mehr Latif and Steven Windisch.
[note 38] Steven Windisch et al., “Understanding the Micro-Situational Dynamics of White Supremacist Violence in the United States,” Perspectives on Terrorism 12 no. 6 (2018): 23-37.
[note 39] DeMichele, Simi, and Blee, “Research and Evaluation on Domestic Radicalization to Violent Extremism: Research To Support Exit USA.”
[note 40] Kathleen M. Blee et al., “How Racial Violence Is Provoked and Channeled,” Socio 9 (2017): 257-276.
[note 41] Blee et al., “How Racial Violence Is Provoked and Channeled.”
[note 42] Blee et al., “How Racial Violence Is Provoked and Channeled,” 265.
[note 43] DeMichele, Simi, and Blee, “Research and Evaluation on Domestic Radicalization to Violent Extremism: Research To Support Exit USA.”
[note 44] Hazel Markus and Paula Nurius, “Possible Selves,” American Psychologist 41 no. 9 (1986): 954-969.
[note 45] Unless otherwise noted, all data in the remainder of this paragraph come from DeMichele, Simi, and Blee, “Research and Evaluation on Domestic Radicalization to Violent Extremism: Research To Support Exit USA.”
[note 46] All data in this paragraph come from DeMichele, Simi, and Blee, “Research and Evaluation on Domestic Radicalization to Violent Extremism: Research To Support Exit USA.”
[note 47] Mehr Latif et al., “How Emotional Dynamics Maintain and Destroy White Supremacist Groups,” Humanity & Society 42 no. 4 (2018): 480-501.
[note 48] Latif et al., “How Emotional Dynamics Maintain and Destroy White Supremacist Groups.”
[note 49] Pete Simi et al., “Addicted to Hate: Identity Residual Among Former White Supremacists,” American Sociological Review 82 no. 6 (2017): 1167-1187.
[note 50] Simi et al., “Addicted to Hate.”
[note 51] DeMichele, Simi, and Blee, “Research and Evaluation on Domestic Radicalization to Violent Extremism: Research To Support Exit USA.”
https://web.archive.org/web/20250911012550/https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/what-nij-research-tells-us-about-domestic-terrorism
President Trump’s new tariff rules are causing chaos for consumers in the United States.
Shoppers are reporting they were hit with surprise charges from international shipping carriers, resulting from the expiration of the exemption on import duties for items under $800.
“It’s maximum chaos,” said Nick Baker, co-lead of the trade and customs practice at Kroll.American farmers say Trump’s trade agenda is killing sales
At the end of August, de minimis goods (small-dollar items) began facing import duties when being shipped into the U.S., meaning personalized small orders are now facing sizable tariffs from its trading partners.
“We encourage customers to take note of the shipping policies of the brands they shop with and to also remember that tariffs are payable to the U.S. government,” said a DHL representative.
The U.S. Customs and Border Protection made it clear that the logistics industry has continued to operate without a problem since the new de minimis rules took effect.
“Foreign carriers and postal operators were given clear timelines, detailed guidance, and multiple options to comply. The only thing ending on August 29 is the pathway that has been used by criminals to exploit America’s borders,” acknowledged Susan S. Thomas, CBP.
The Trump administration has made billions in revenue from the tariff rules implemented in recent months.
A legal aid group has sued to preemptively block any efforts by the U.S. government to deport a dozen Honduran children, saying it had “credible” information that such plans were quietly in the works.
The Arizona-based Florence Immigrant & Refugee Rights Project (FIRRP) on Friday added Honduran children to a lawsuit filed last weekend that resulted in a judge temporarily blocking the deportation of dozens of migrant children to their native Guatemala.
In a statement, the organization said it had received reports that the U.S. government will “imminently move forward with a plan to illegally remove Honduran children in government custody as soon as this weekend, in direct violation of their right to seek protection in the United States and despite ongoing litigation that blocked similar attempted extra-legal removals for children from Guatemala.”
FIRRP did not immediately provide The Associated Press with details about what information it had received about the possible deportation of Honduran children. The amendment to the organization’s lawsuit is sealed in federal court. The Homeland Security Department did not immediately respond to email requests for comment on Friday and Saturday.
The Justice Department on Saturday provided what is perhaps its most detailed account of a chaotic Labor Day weekend involving the attempted deportation of 76 Guatemalan children. Its timeline was part of a request to lift a temporary hold on their removal.
Over Labor Day weekend, the Trump administration attempted to remove Guatemalan children who had come to the U.S. alone and were living in shelters or with foster care families in the U.S.
Advocates who represent migrant children in court filed lawsuits across the country seeking to stop the government from removing the children, and on Sunday a federal judge stepped in to order that the kids stay in the U.S. for at least two weeks.
The government initially identified 457 Guatemalan children for possible deportation, according to Saturday’s filing. None could have a pending asylum screening or claim, resulting in the removal of 91. They had to have parents or legal guardians in Guatemala and be at least 10 years old.
In the end, 327 children were found eligible for deportation, including 76 who boarded planes early Sunday in what the government described as a first phase, according to a statement by Angie Salazar, acting director of the U.S. Health and Human Services Department’s Office of Refugee Resettlement. All 76 were at least 14 years old and “self-reported” that they had a parent or legal guardian in Guatemala but none in the United States.
The Justice Department said no planes took off, despite a comment by one of its attorneys in court Sunday that one may have but returned.
Children who cross the border alone are generally transferred to the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which falls under the Health and Human Services Department. The children usually live in a network of shelters across the country that are overseen by the resettlement office until they are eventually released to a sponsor — usually a relative
Children began crossing the border alone in large numbers in 2014, peaking at 152,060 in the 2022 fiscal year. July’s arrest tally translates to an annual clip of 5,712 arrests, reflecting how illegal crossings have dropped to their lowest levels in six decades.
Guatemalans accounted for 32% of residents at government-run holding facilities last year, followed by Hondurans, Mexicans and El Salvadorans. A 2008 law requires children to appear before an immigration judge with an opportunity to pursue asylum, unless they are from Canada and Mexico. The vast majority are released from shelters to parents, legal guardians or immediate family while their cases wind through court.
Justice Department lawyers said federal law allows the Department of Health and Human Services to “repatriate” or “reunite” children by taking them out of the U.S., as long as the child hasn’t been a victim of “severe” human trafficking, is not at risk for becoming so if he or she is returned to their native country and does not face a “a credible fear” of persecution there. The child also cannot be “repatriated” if he or she has a pending asylum claim.
The FIRRP lawsuit was amended to include 12 children from Honduras who have expressed to the Florence Project that they do not want to return to Honduras, as well as four additional children from Guatemala who have come into government custody in Arizona since the suit was initially filed last week.
Some children have parents who are already in the United States.
The lawsuit demands that the government allow the children their legal right to present their cases to an immigration judge, to have access to legal counsel and to be placed in the least restrictive setting that is in the best interest of the child.
Matthew Morrison, a 69-year-old Irish immigrant and nurse in Missouri who became an immigration example in the late 1990s, left for Ireland on July 21 after living in the United States for 40 years due to fears of removal by the Trump administration.
Why It Matters
Morrison’s self-deportation has brought further attention to the complicated realities faced by long-term undocumented immigrants in the U.S., especially those with historic convictions or high-profile political backgrounds. His case, uniquely tied to historic U.S.–Ireland relations, was previously referenced during the Clinton administration as part of U.S.’s efforts to support the Northern Ireland peace process.
Morrison’s departure also underscores the anxiety and uncertainty experienced by noncitizens who fear changes in immigration enforcement policies, particularly those perceived to be at higher risk during political shifts.
What To Know
Morrison worked for roughly 20 years as a psychiatric nurse supervisor in Missouri, including stints at a children’s hospital and several state mental health facilities. He also presented at the St. Louis County Police Academy on topics including mental health and de-escalation tactics.
He told The Marshall Project that he voluntarily left the U.S. due to fear of detention by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) under President Donald Trump‘s administration.
“I would bite the dust in an ICE holding cell,” Morrison said prior to going home to Ireland. “There is nothing to stop them from deporting me to Ecuador, South Sudan or whatever. It’s really gotten insane here. It’s crazy what they are doing now, the Trump administration. You know what I mean?”
Morrison told The Marshall Project that although his work authorization expires in October, he didn’t want to spend the next few months in anxiety worrying about being deported.
On July 21, he and his wife reportedly boarded a one-way flight from Cleveland to Dublin and left behind a life in the St. Louis area that includes grown children, grandchildren and friends.
“I’ve come full circle,” Morrison said. “I came here as an immigrant and I am leaving as an immigrant, despite everything in between. The whole thing is a crazy, stressful situation.”
Morrison first arrived in the U.S. in the mid-1980s after serving time in prison in Northern Ireland due to his involvement with the Irish Republican Army (IRA) during “The Troubles.”
In 1985, he married his American pen pal, Francie Broderick, and had two children, Matt and Katie. Morrison later remarried to his current wife, Sandra Riley Swift.
He once served as a symbolic figure in American–Irish diplomacy. The former member of IRA previously spent 10 years in prison, convicted of attempted murder in a 1976 raid on a British barracks. Other ex-IRA men, all in the New York area, faced deportation for similar reasons.
In 1995, Morrison’s wife flew to Belfast while President Bill Clinton was in the region, attempting to garner his attention and protect him from deportation, according to the Associated Press. By 1997, the family received more than $70,000 in donations to help with legal fees.
The case for Morrison and others like him drew support from local and international lawmakers, notably due to IRA members being characterized by the U.S. government as terrorists.
The Missouri Legislature passed a resolution in 1996 urging the Immigration and Naturalization Service to drop deportation proceedings against him. Members of the Derry City Council in Northern Ireland followed suit across party lines, approving a resolution urging Clinton to suspend his deportation.
Morrison’s struggle won support from countless Americans, including neighbors in this suburban St. Louis community to state legislators to members of Congress.
The Irish Northern Aid, a nonprofit organization that helps families of Irish political prisoners, and the Ancient Order of Hibernians also have come to his defense.
In 2000, the Clinton administration ultimately terminated the deportation process against Morrison and five others. Then-Attorney General Janet Reno said in a statement that she had been advised by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to drop deportation proceedings to “support and promote the process of reconciliation that has begun in Northern Ireland.”
Clinton at the time said the termination was “in no way approving or condoning their past criminal acts.” However, the ex-president echoed the sentiment of contributing to peace in Europe.
What People Are Saying
Matthew Morrison’s son, Matt, 37, to The Marshall Project about his father’s scheduled check-in with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in June in St. Louis: “We were terrified that they were just going to take him right there…He has to live under that fear of somebody knocking on the door and dragging him out of the house, just like they did in Derry when he was young. I hate it. I am just worried about him. Until recently, I hadn’t heard him cry about it.”
Morrison’s daughter, Katie, to The Marshall Project: “Even though he’s still alive, I feel like I am grieving. It’s a huge loss for me and my children.”
What Happens Next?
Swift has a house in St. Charles, Missouri, as well as family in the U.S., The Marshall Project reported. After helping Morrison transition into an apartment in the town where he grew up, she wrote in a social media post that she’s going to travel between both countries for a while.
https://www.newsweek.com/immigration-deportation-ice-nurse-irish-army-2108527
