The Trump administration’s Department of Justice has officially declared that filming immigration raids can constitute “domestic terrorism.”

Let that sink in: the same government that brings its own film crews to document ICE operations for propaganda purposes now wants to prosecute civilians who do the exact same thing.

WHAT’S GOING ON: A December 4 Justice Department memo, leaked by journalist Ken Klippenstein, encourages federal prosecutors to pursue “domestic terrorism” charges against people for “doxing” law enforcement officers.

In practice, this means recording on-duty agents conducting immigration raids—an activity that has been firmly protected by the First Amendment for decades.

DHS Secretary Kristi Noem made the administration’s position crystal clear in July: “Violence is anything that threatens [agents] and their safety, so it’s doxing them, it’s videotaping them where they’re at when they’re out on operations.” Recording cops is now “violence.” Cool, totally normal country we have here.

BUT BUT BUT: The hypocrisy is staggering. When Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino returned to Chicago on December 16 with several hundred federal agents, he brought along a film crew to document the raids. Noem herself posted footage of agents raiding a South Shore apartment building on social media.

The DHS has an official Instagram account dedicated to immigration arrest content.

So filming raids is terrorism—unless you’re doing it to promote Trump’s increasingly unpopular deportation policies. Then it’s just good content creation.

THE DETAILS: The memo targets anyone it deems an “Antifa-aligned extremist,” which it helpfully defines as someone holding “extreme viewpoints on immigration,” such as supporting “mass migration and open borders.”

Translation: if you disagree with the administration’s immigration policies and document their enforcement, you’re a terrorist.

David Bier of the Cato Institute calls this “a nationwide policy of intimidating and threatening people who attempt to observe and record DHS operations.”

WHY IT MATTERS: Recording police is one of the most important accountability tools citizens have. It’s how we got evidence of countless abuses.

Now the federal government is criminalizing that oversight—but only when the cameras aren’t in friendly hands.

This isn’t about safety. It’s about controlling the narrative while terrorizing anyone who might document what’s actually happening in immigrant communities.

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson’s office had it right: “These tactics are destabilizing, wrong, and must be condemned.”