Trump Is Using Task Forces to Criminalize Activists and Non-Profits. Why Is NY Funding Them?

In September, President Trump issued a National Security Presidential Memorandum (NSPM-7) called “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence” with chilling implications for political speech in America. The memorandum appears to be designed to crack down on activists and non-profits. And based on the list of political views the document targets, the Trump administration could use NSPM-7 to go after pretty much anyone who isn’t a MAGA faithful.

Under the logic of NSPM-7, the Trump administration categorizes views it equates with “anti-Americanism,” “anti-Christianity,” “extremism on migration,” “extremism on race,” “extremism on gender,” or opposition to what it regards as “traditional American views on family, religion, and morality” as domestic terrorist threats.

Whether one agrees or disagrees with these views, the First Amendment undoubtedly protects them. And no matter what Trump and his allies think, NSPM-7 cannot override our constitutional rights, which still protect freedom of speech and association.

Our fear is that, under NSPM-7, constitutionally protected speech could become the grounds for criminal investigation by the Trump administration. There is no federal crime of “domestic terrorism.” But the memo seems designed to allow First Amendment protected speech to be the basis for beginning law enforcement investigations that could lead to other criminal charges, and chill free speech and association. In other words, NSPM-7 could open the door to criminalizing those who have viewpoints the Trump administration doesn’t like.

Central to Trump’s effort to “dismantle left wing terrorism,” as Trump’s homeland security advisor Stephen Miller puts it, are Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs). JTTFs, as the ACLU’s National Security Project Director Hina Shamsi explains, are “FBI-operated task forces that are intended to work with state and local law enforcement agencies to conduct counterterrorism investigations.” The NYCLU and ACLU have long raised concerns about JTTFs, which are notoriously opaque and unregulated, and pose serious risks to our civil liberties. For example, they’ve been used to spy on Black Lives Matter protesters and other political activists for years.

Now, Miller says JTTFs are “the central hub” of the Trump administration’s effort to go after “the left.”

As Shamsi explains:

The memo tells JTTFs to investigate ‘potential federal crimes relating to’ ‘recruiting or radicalizing’ people for what it describes as ‘political violence, terrorism, or conspiracy against rights’ as well as investigations of funders and their leadership.

There are around 200 JTTFs across the country and at least five in New York State located in Albany, Buffalo, New York City, Plattsburgh, and Rochester. But we know very little about what JTTFs do, what policies and rules they follow, what agencies or individuals they involve, what types of data they have access to, what information they share and with whom, and what invasive surveillance technology they use.

As just one example of the types of specific questions we’d like answered, to what extent can the New York City JTTF access the vast surveillance systems of the NYPD? The department currently collects footage from tens of thousands of cameras, license plate readers, and other technology that can trace the movements of millions of New Yorkers. In many cases, this information is stored for years and it’s integrated into the city’s all-encompassing Domain Awareness System. Is this incredibly sensitive information available to the Trump administration?

The JTTFs in New York receive millions of dollars in state funding. In fact, as part of her public safety agenda, Governor Hochul has increased funding to JTTFs by millions of dollars over the last few years. Now these JTTFs are the tip of the spear for the Trump administration’s attacks on its political opponents.

JTTFs are just one of several types of law enforcement entities that combine federal, state, and local law enforcement resources, data, and funding and operate almost completely in the dark. There are also fusion centers, which the Department of Homeland Security describes as entities that “gather, analyze, and share comprehensive crimes, hazards, and terrorism information to inform local, regional, and national threat analysis …”

In practice, this could mean that data collected from local and state surveillance technologies – such as license plate readers, facial recognition cameras, drones, and social media monitoring software – could be combined with arrest and conviction databases, voter registries, DMV data, and other government and corporate databases in a way that enables government entities to surveil New Yorkers in unprecedented ways. This could all happen without any significant oversight or guardrails.

Fusion centers have reportedly spied on racial justice protesters, environmental activists, and counselors at an Israel-Palestine peacebuilding camp, and they’ve even snooped on nonpolitical cultural events. They’ve also been used by ICE to tap into local law enforcement databases to track down and deport immigrants. Here in New York, Governor Hochul increased funding for the state’s primary fusion center – the New York State Intelligence Center (NYSIC) – by $527,000 to expand its social media surveillance and tracking of domestic extremism.

To begin to understand this secretive and undemocratic infrastructure, the NYCLU submitted a Freedom of Information Request to NYSIC last year. We requested information on NYSIC’s surveillance capabilities, policies governing these technologies, and how NYSIC ensures New Yorkers’ privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties are protected. We are still waiting for the documents.

Another such federal-state-local collaboration involves the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas (HIDTA) programs. According to the Drug Enforcement Agency, these programs provide “assistance to federal, state, local, and tribal law enforcement agencies operating in areas determined to be critical drug-trafficking regions of the United States.”

HIDTA’s are just another cog in America’s decades-long failed war on drugs that incarcerates millions of mostly Black and brown people while doing nothing to stop the flow of drugs, addiction, or other harmful impacts from drugs. What’s worse, HIDTA’s operations appear to have expanded into much broader areas: For example, the NYPD regularly utilizes facial recognition services provided by HIDTA through an online portal. As the New York City Department of Investigation report notes: “How long these [facial recognition] records are kept, in what format, and with whom the records could be shared are all controlled by HIDTA.”

All of these entities are run without even minimal public transparency. Yet every year, our state leaders spend millions of New Yorkers’ taxpayer dollars to fund and expand them – without any accountability for what they are doing.

Governor Hochul has celebrated “record funding for law enforcement technology” and that under her leadership, “funding for the State’s Crime Analysis Centers has tripled.” Crime Analysis Centers are local-level fusion centers. Funding these centers was never a good idea, but it’s an especially perilous proposition now.

The Trump administration has made explicitly clear that it wants “total information-sharing in the context of both federal law enforcement and immigration enforcement,” particularly to obtain information about immigrants in sanctuary jurisdictions. Trump wants “access to department of motor vehicles and voter registration databases” for similar reasons. And he wants information on people seeking or providing reproductive care or gender-affirming care, and to ramp up social media surveillance.

Given this environment and the Trump administration’s insatiable desire for sensitive state and local information, there has never been a more important time for New York to sever ties with these law enforcement entities.

Whether it’s JTTFs, NYSIC, CACs, or HIDTAs, all these federal-state-local intelligence and data sharing partnerships are opaque and unaccountable. They have metastasized far beyond their initial purpose and they lack any semblance of local or democratic control. Governor Hochul and our local leaders should take immediate action to sign executive orders to drastically limit cooperation or end participation in these partnerships, and they should cut state and local funding to them as well.

This is especially critical at a time when the Trump administration is using these programs to target law abiding people, activists, immigrants, students, and any other group the President wants to terrorize.