Equating Protest With Terrorism: A Narrative Against Dissent

This story by Samanta Azpurua originally appeared on Global Voices on September 29, 2026.

This story is part of Undertones, Global Voices’ Civic Media Observatory’s newsletter and column. It is also part of Global Voices’ September 2026 Spotlight series, “Protest in Democracy.” With this Spotlight, we seek to explore the many forms of protest, the tactics states use to delegitimize and suppress them, and the complex relationship between protest and democracy.

In July 2020, amid the crackdowns on the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests in the United States, the UN Human Rights Committee issued a comment on what constitutes lawful peaceful protest. It noted that Governments could not prohibit protests based on “generalized references to public order or public safety, or an unspecified risk of potential violence.” The Committee further affirmed that protesters had the right to wear masks or hoods to conceal their faces and that governments should not collect personal data to harass or intimidate participants. 

The UN Human Rights Committee’s comment was shared a month after then U.S. President Donald Trump tweeted, “Domestic Terrorists have taken over Seattle, run by Radical Left Democrats, of course. LAW & ORDER!” referring to the Capitol Hill Organized Protest (CHOP), a 23-day demonstration held in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle in Washington State, where protesters against police violence merged with the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement.

Donald Trump’s first administration was not the first to connect the Black Lives Matter movement with the notion of terrorism. In 2015, The Intercept reported an unusual use of the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force to track the time and location of a Black Lives Matter protest in December 2014 in Bloomington, Minnesota.

See Also: Trump’s ICE Wasted Millions of Dollars on Deadly Immigrant Detention Drive: Audit

Narrative: Those protesting are domestic terrorists

Early 2026, during Trump’s second administration, Alex Pretti, a protester shot to death by U.S. Border Patrol officers in Minnesota, was framed as a terrorist by Stephen Miller, White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy. In a first post on X, replying to U.S. Senator from Minnesota Amy Klobuchar’s post on the shooting, Miller stated, “A domestic terrorist tried to assassinate federal law enforcement and this is your response?…” Miller also shared a second post on X with similar messaging, responding to a post made by the Democratic Party denouncing the killing of Pretti and calling for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to withdraw from Minneapolis.

Miller’s posts supported the version of the events shared by then U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, who claimed that Pretti “came with weapons and ammunition to stop a law enforcement operation of federal law enforcement officers, committed an act of domestic terrorism.” According to Noem, Pretti “arrived at the scene to inflict maximum damage on individuals and to kill law enforcement.” Trump’s officials’ framing of the situation was quickly refuted by videos showing that Pretti appeared to be using his phone to record federal agents when a federal officer shoved him. Moments later, the officer repeatedly pepper-sprayed Pretti and then appeared to pull him into the street, where he was surrounded by several officers who shot him 10 times.

Protests against ICE’s recurrent use of force and the Trump administration’s mass deportations policy have been framed as acts of terrorism by Miller since 2025. In an interview in October 2025 on CNN, when referring to the protest in Portland, Oregon, Miller described the situation as a “textbook definition of domestic terrorism,” since he considered that protesters were “using the actual imminent threat of violence to keep federal officials from doing their jobs.”

This narrative is not exclusive to the U.S. or the Trump administration. In 2022, Sri Lanka’s then-President, Ranil Wickremesinghe, described protesters as “terrorists” and used the anti-terror law, the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA), to arrest protesters demanding a solution to the country’s economic crisis. In 2023, Tunisia’s President, Kais Saied, described those detained as part of his crackdown on dissidents as “terrorists” and accused them, without offering proof, of being involved in a “conspiracy against internal and external state security,” a situation that continues to happen under Saied’s rule. In 2024, after the contested presidential elections, Venezuela’s government massively detained and processed protesters and electoral workers, accusing them of terrorism. 

A version of this narrative was also shared in 2025 in the UK when the activist group Palestine Action was labeled a “terrorist” organization and banned, a government decision that was later ruled to be lawful by Britain’s Court of Appeal. The UK Government proscribed Palestine Action under the Terrorism Act 2000 after members broke into a military airfield in June and reportedly spray-painted two military aircraft, and carried out other acts of property damage. According to UN Human Rights Chief Volker Türk, banning Palestine Action raises serious concerns that counter-terrorism laws in the UK are being applied to behaviors that are not terrorist in nature, warning that such measures risk restricting the legitimate exercise of fundamental freedoms across the country.

See Also: Beyond protest: Mob violence and the struggle for institutional response in Bangladesh

The context surrounding the narrative

In mid 2025, protests began in Portland, Oregon, after several asylum seekers were arrested outside immigration court. In October 2025, Trump said he would send troops to control the situation as protests continued, a decision that was blocked by a federal judge. At the end of 2025, more than 3,000 ICE and Border Patrol officers (CBP) were deployed across Minnesota in a large-scale immigration enforcement operation (Operation Metro Surge) that, according to Trump, resulted in more than 4,000 arrests. During the deployment, ICE and CBP agents used aggressive tactics during raids and shot three people during the operation, two of them fatally, including Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti. The real number of detainees remains unknown. In September 2026, activists unfurled a 24-foot-long quilt protesting ICE violence and ongoing detentions at the Minnesota State Capitol. The quilt features 11,000 patches representing the 11,000 people disappeared. 

Oregon and Minnesota are not the only states affected by the administration’s immigration crackdown. ICE and CBP’s excessive use of force has been widely documented across the country. 

Trump’s administration narrative on domestic terrorism is also being expressed in new regulation. In September 2025, President Trump signed an executive order aiming to designate “Antifa” as a “domestic terrorist organization.” Antifa, short for “anti-fascist,” refers to a decentralized network of activists, primarily associated with the far left.

Days later, he issued National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7), outlining the administration’s approach to countering domestic terrorism and organized political violence. Both actions have been strongly criticized for violating the First Amendment and for criminalizing a long list of activities, including “handing out water at a protest featuring visible antifa supporters to supplying online messaging or social media services in the usual course of business to people ideologically aligned with antifa.”

In December 2025, then-U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi issued a memorandum conceived to implement President Trump’s September memo. The document invites prosecutors to look for “conspiracies to impede” the actions of law enforcement and connects Antifa with shutdowns of immigration policy enforcement — cementing the rhetoric used by Miller and Noem.

Anticipating a massive deployment of federal law enforcement during the coming mid-term elections, a coalition of civil rights groups filed a lawsuit in September 2026 against the administration.

[HP]

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