Former Trump administration Homeland Security staffer Miles Taylor zeroed in on what he saw as an egregious use of federal power to crack down on protesters.
Writing for his Defiance Substack, Taylor highlighted how newly uncovered documents show federal agents investigated Minnesota protesters as terrorists for using tools like "wooden spoons and cookware."
"DHS opened the secret investigation out of its St. Paul office in late January, four days after a Border Patrol agent shot and killed Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old nurse who was filming officers during the immigration crackdown," said Taylor. The agency infamously buried any investigation into the agents involved in that attack — but instead, they "set out to probe the protest movement itself, including labor unions, community organizers, and a climate group called the Sunrise Movement."
Not only that, he said, but The New York Times reveals agents "infiltrated activists’ internal meetings at libraries, public parks, and in churches, recording not just what people said but who they were." Ultimately, a handful of activists who had thrown chunks of ice at ICE vehicles got arrested in June, after the full might of the counterterrorism apparatus was thrown at them looking for anything.
This is incredibly unusual and alarming, wrote Taylor, because the surveillance went into watching entire political groups, and not just individuals who were under suspicion of committing crimes.
"I spent years at DHS and have worked with almost every head of the department, under Democratic and Republican administrations. Until Trump’s first term, few of them would’ve been caught dead overseeing an investigation like this," wrote Taylor, adding that anyone who did this in those days would have been fired and the incident reported to Congress. "No longer. In story after story, we are witnessing the slide of DHS down a slippery slope into becoming the warden of a burgeoning police state."
The bottom line, said Taylor, is that Trump "wants Americans to think twice before joining a group chat, attending a training at a church, or banging a pot outside a hotel in protest of his administration" — and for that reason, the American people need to "keep on banging."
