WHEN THE FBI COMES KNOCKING: As Suppression Of Dissent Increases, Know Your Rights
The FBI is hassling Palestine activists. ICE is compiling dossiers on those who criticize it. More and more are being targeted. Know your rights and other steps to resist the fascist coup.
First it’s someone on the other side of town.
Then it’s your neighbor.
Then there’s a knock on your door in the middle of the night.
By Mark Taylor
DeMOCKracy.ink (2/21/25)
If you think the grotesque, increasingly brutal and unconstitutional actions by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and various local and state law enforcement agencies will just be limited to illegal immigrants you don’t know the history of fascism. Under fascist regimes, the list of targeted groups always expands. The circle of approved always gets smaller and smaller.
First it’s someone on the other side of town.
Then it’s your neighbor.
Then there’s a knock on your door in the middle of the night.
Here’s a dose of reality from the first article below:
People are often inclined to think that, if they’ve done nothing “wrong,” they won’t get caught up in the federal government’s surveillance dragnet. But we can see from documents like ICE’s recent contract solicitation and Trump’s directive that universities monitor pro-Palestine protesters on student visas, that this simply isn’t true. In simply exercising your First Amendment right to criticize the Trump administration and its agencies, you, too, could be placed under government watch or hassled by a state agent.
Number One thing to remember
Be it be a traffic stop or a middle-of-the-night knock on the door, the first thing to remember: While it is illegal for you to lie to law enforcement, police and federal agents are permitted to lie to you.
Police are also well trained in verbal techniques and tricks to get you to let down your guard or trick you into revealing information that can be turned around on you.
There is only thing one should politely say to a police officer questioning you: “Contact my attorney.”
Personal experience
A decade ago I had a strange experience with the local sheriffs office in a community I lived in. At the time I had started a news website in response to abusive policies coming from a far right state legislature and Trump-like governor. I was living in a rural, sparsely populated valley. One evening there was a knock on the door and I found a police officer standing outside. Without thinking, I opened the door and invited him in.
The experience was odd. He was asking if I knew where he could find someone he said lived in the valley. Literally, there were well under a hundred people living in the valley scattered among a couple dozen homes and farms. I had never heard the name he gave. As we talked, I could see his eyes glancing about the living room and a side room. It felt odd, but I was naively trusting.
He was only there for ten minutes and nothing happened afterward, but as I thought about it later, it felt odd. Weird. Was it legitimate, or connected in some way to my activism? I don’t know and nothing came of it. But…
As noted in the third item below, never permit law enforcement to enter your home unless they have an official court warrant signed by a judge. Without that. they have no right to enter your home.
You can find good YouTube videos by lawyers explaining your rights when dealing with police; what they are and are not permitted to do. If you watch a few you will — for a short time — receive others for a day or two before the corporate state algorithm now quickly culls them out.
Groups like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) provide information and defense of our civil rights and liberties. Visit their websites to learn more and support them if you can. No doubt they will be targeted.
Something you can do today
Finally, on a more personal note.
Civil servants are being smeared, targeted and fired by the Elon/Trump corporate coup. As noted in the final item below, the layoffs and firings we are seeing will — and already are — directly impacting our lives and safety. Yesterday, my postman came walking up as I was shoveling snow off the walkway. I made a point of telling him that as a citizen I appreciate his service to the community and support his union. He thanked me.
Later in the day, I was in a meeting of a group addressing community mental health needs. Half the people there were city and county civil servants. When the time came to address new business, I said that as a citizen and taxpayer I appreciate the good work the civil servants at the table do.
One of them noted that with the cuts Trump is proposing, there had been a huge increase in people calling in stressed and fearful for their families.
It’s time for all of us to put aside our differences and stand together.
When The FBI Comes Knocking
[I]f someone does come knocking on your door, you don’t have to say a thing. “Do not answer any questions.… Do not let them in your house/apt,” reads the advice from Palestine Legal. “Only give them permission to enter if they show you a warrant signed by a judge that accurately lists your address and apartment number…. Say, ‘Please leave your business card, my lawyer will call you.’ Repeat it over and over and over again, no matter how nice they are. Do not say anything else.”
By Schuyler Mitchell
Truthout (2/19/25)
Mara Sapon-Shevin always wondered if she had an FBI file. For more than 40 years, the Syracuse University professor has been a political activist for Palestinian liberation, first organizing with New Jewish Agenda and later with Jewish Voice for Peace.
On October 10, 2023 — in the wake of Hamas’s attack on Israel and amid the rapid escalation of Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza — Sapon-Shevin got her answer: An FBI agent was on her doorstep. He unfolded his badges from his wallet and asked for her by name.
“He said, “I’m here because a year ago you co-organized a demonstration for Palestinian justice,’” Sapon-Shevin recalled. “I was smart enough that I didn’t say, ‘Oh, which one?’”
The agent told Sapon-Shevin that nobody was in trouble, but he wanted to know if, “given the current moment,” there were any Palestinians she was “worried about.” When she declined to speak with him or give him names, he left her his business card.
While the interaction was likely intended to serve as a chilling warning, “It didn’t stop me from organizing for five minutes,” Sapon-Shevin said.
Syracuse University professor Mara Sapon-Shevin, who has organized with Jewish Voice for Peace, was hassled by the FBI at her home. Courtesy of Mara Sapon-Shevin
This rattling intrusion of the FBI into Sapon-Shevin’s home life was far from an isolated incident. In 2018, the advocacy group Palestine Legal published an advisory for pro-Palestine activists after FBI agents visited a University of California Los Angeles student at home and asked about their campus organizing.
“This is not the first FBI encounter reported to our office,” Palestine Legal wrote at the time. “However, the line of questioning reflects intensifying efforts to criminalize protected political speech and human rights advocacy.”
Those efforts have become more prevalent in the wake of October 7, 2023, and with Donald Trump back in the White House, civil liberties advocates are expecting an even broader crackdown on First Amendment-protected speech and dissent.
Spying on critics of ICE
Last week, for instance, The Intercept revealed that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is soliciting contract proposals from private companies to monitor social media users — not only for threats of violence, but also for any online criticism of the agency. The procurement notice seeks a company that will provide “proactive threat monitoring” and compile weekly updates on “social media sentiment” and “negative references to ICE found in social media.” Once the private contractor locates a person who is publicly criticizing ICE and identifies them as a target, it is then instructed to rifle through the user’s internet history and gather their personal information — including Social Security numbers, possible work and school affiliations and possible family members — in a dossier. The document also requests “Facial Recognition capabilities” that would enable the contractor to search the internet using the subject’s photo.
Federal contractor Giant Oak has helped ICE surveil the social media of immigrants and non-U.S. citizens in foreign countries since at least 2014. That system flags “derogatory” posts about the United States in a giant database, ostensibly to inform enforcement decisions such as visa applications and admission to the country. But as The Intercept reported, the newly revealed surveillance request “contains specific directions for targets found in other countries, implying the program would scan the domestic speech of American citizens.” Immigrant rights and civil liberties advocates told The Intercept that such an expansion of ICE’s surveillance capabilities could have devastating consequences for free speech under the Trump administration.
Hostile to free speech and human rights
The latest ICE announcement underscores what digital privacy experts have been warning about for years: The government’s ability to conduct mass, secretive social media surveillance of protected speech is cause for alarm under any administration. When that power is handed to an administration that is demonstrably hostile to free speech and human rights, it’s all the more likely to be abused.
A 2022 report by the Brennan Center, a nonprofit public policy institute, noted that during the first Trump administration, the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI both scoured social media to surveil Black Lives Matter activists. At the time the Brennan Center raised an alarm about the practice, arguing that it was likely to chill individuals’ willingness to talk openly online. Notably, amid protests over the police killing of George Floyd in 2020, the FBI expedited its extension of a contract with Dataminr, a controversial social media monitoring company. City police departments also used Dataminr to surveil George Floyd protesters.
The Biden administration meanwhile readily picked up the baton and continued similar surveillance practices after Trump’s first term: In 2022, Biden’s Defense Department inked another contract with Dataminr. And in 2023, the American Civil Liberties Union obtained documents showing that the Biden administration had quietly been expanding its social media surveillance of noncitizens. It is these types of activities that have laid the groundwork for Trump’s expanded powers upon his return to the White House.
People are often inclined to think that, if they’ve done nothing “wrong,” they won’t get caught up in the federal government’s surveillance dragnet. But we can see from documents like ICE’s recent contract solicitation and Trump’s directive that universities monitor pro-Palestine protesters on student visas, that this simply isn’t true. In simply exercising your First Amendment right to criticize the Trump administration and its agencies, you, too, could be placed under government watch or hassled by a state agent.
What you need to remember
Still, if someone does come knocking on your door, you don’t have to say a thing. “Do not answer any questions.… Do not let them in your house/apt,” reads the advice from Palestine Legal. “Only give them permission to enter if they show you a warrant signed by a judge that accurately lists your address and apartment number…. Say, ‘Please leave your business card, my lawyer will call you.’ Repeat it over and over and over again, no matter how nice they are. Do not say anything else.”
MESSAGE TO FEDERAL EMPLOYEES: "Hold The Line, Don't Resign!"
The Majority Report (2/20/25)
23-minute video
KNOW YOUR RIGHTS! What Immigrants & Everyone Else Needs To Know
Courage California (2/20/25)
Since Trump’s inauguration, his Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency -- or ICE -- has wasted no time, arresting some 8,200 people across the country.(1)
In California, as across the country, Trump’s border goons have detained mostly law-abiding residents, like Giovanni Duran, who came to the United States at age two. Now 42, he was snatched away front of his 7-year-old son, set to be deported to a country he has never known.(2)
Multiple Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers have even been granted access to information in a database on unaccompanied children who crossed the border into the United States.(3)
Let’s be clear: what Trump’s ICE agents are doing is, in many cases, illegal. And though Trump wishes it weren’t so, all U.S. residents have constitutional rights.
Everyone’s rights
Border Patrol can’t enter private homes without warrants signed by judges. Full Stop. In California, they can’t stop someone in their car just because of their perceived ethnicity. And, regardless of your status, if you are detained, you have the right to remain silent.
These are the messages we desperately need to distribute far and wide as cruel and unconstitutional ICE searches continue, and as the agency reportedly plans a “large-scale” raid in Los Angeles by the end of the month.(4)
Communities across California are bravely standing up against Trump’s mass deportation plans and ICE raids, including educators.(4)
Now, we need to make sure individual families everywhere know their rights when ICE breaches community protections.
We have made it very simple to share this critical information -- just click the image or the link and you can share the text and image to any social media platform you post on. Or just forward this email!
“Whaddya’ mean, it might hurt MY family?!”
DRIBBLE-DOWN EFFECTS OF TRUMP”S FED FIRINGS: From Weather Alerts To Your Kid’s Food Safety To Your Tax Return
“It’s just chaos on top of chaos, on top of terror, on top of employees that want to leave are being told they can’t leave. I’m trying to think of a good word for it. I don’t know if there is one, other than clusterfuck.”
By Rachel Leingang
The Guardian (2/20/25)
You wake up to dark clouds outside, so you check the weather on your phone: a storm is coming.
That weather app uses data from the National Weather Service, a part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a small organization which could see as much as 10% of its workforce cut this week.
You grab food to make breakfast: eggs, meat, formula for your baby. The safety of your food is regulated and inspected by a host of federal employees, who flag and investigate when items shouldn’t be eaten.
The former head of the Food and Drug Administration’s food division resigned this week because he thought firings and layoffs at the agency would hinder its work. “I didn’t want to spend the next six months of my career on activities that are fundamentally about dismantling an organization, as opposed to working on the stated agenda,” he told Stat News.
“Flat-out reckless”
You check your flight reservations for an upcoming trip to a national park. The safety of that flight is overseen by the Federal Aviation Administration, which experienced layoffs this month despite recent high-profile aviation accidents. The national park will probably see its staff gutted, leaving it more vulnerable to wildfires and without search and rescue capabilities. “I honestly can’t imagine how the parks will operate without my position,” a park ranger who was cut wrote on Instagram. “I mean, they just can’t. I am the only EMT at my park and the first responder for any emergency. This is flat-out reckless.”
You keep an eye on the bird flu levels and a measles outbreak – the winter has been punishing for illnesses. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were hit with a first round of layoffs this week, which could affect outbreak response and reporting. The Epidemic Intelligence Service, a disease-detective training program, could be on the chopping block.
Oh, and you’re working on your taxes – while thousands of Internal Revenue Service probationary employees are expected to be laid off during tax season.
The government certainly has room for improvement – backlogs that should be cleared, investigations that should be more thorough, communication that should be sharper, actions that should be more transparent. But all of this work is done by the federal government and its millions of workers and contractors, whose daily jobs touch the lives of all Americans and many around the globe.
Hobbled and terrified
In the first weeks of the Trump administration, the president and the billionaire Elon Musk, tasked with cutting government through the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge), have waged war against federal workers. Musk and his team have moved from agency to agency, indiscriminately firing probationary employees and those whose work they say doesn’t align with the administration’s priorities, including many who work on diversity initiatives or in international development.
The result is a hobbled and terrified federal workforce that is just at the beginning of the expected cuts – and an American public that is starting to experience the repercussions.
“We’re playing Russian roulette, and basically you’re putting a whole bunch of more bullets in the chambers,” said Max Stier, the CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, a non-profit that advocates for a strong civil service. “You can’t prevent all bad things from happening, but our federal government is, in a lot of ways, a manager of risk, and it does a pretty darn good job of managing that risk, even though it can be improved.”
An email went out in January to millions of federal employees offering a deferred resignation, which the White House says about 75,000 people have accepted, although it’s unclear how many of the people who accepted are actually eligible.
Joel Smith works at the Social Security Administration and is the president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 3184, which covers more than 90 agency offices in parts of Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and Louisiana. He said the office of management and budget, which has coordinated the buyout program it’s calling a “fork in the road”, hasn’t communicated with the agencies about which employees accepted the buyout. Some employees didn’t show up the first day the program’s leave was supposed to begin, and the agency had to call them to figure out where they were, he said.
“It’s just chaos on top of chaos, on top of terror, on top of employees that want to leave are being told they can’t leave. I’m trying to think of a good word for it. I don’t know if there is one, other than clusterfuck,” Smith said.
Those that remain in their jobs worry about whether they’re next as they add to their workloads to cover for those who lost their jobs or quit. People eyeing next career moves will avoid civil service, previously seen as a stable career, to stay out of the current chaos.
Many people take core functions of the federal government for granted, as it protects them from disasters or national security concerns, but might not otherwise affect them. But that could change after widespread firings. …
Send Us A Tip — If you have information you’d like to share securely with the Guardian about the impact of cuts to federal programs or the federal workforce, please use a non-work device to contact us via the Signal messaging app at (646) 886-8761.
Critics Warn Trump’s Executive Orders To Reshape NIH ‘will kill’ Americans — Academics and scientists who work with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) said the Trump administration’s orders have severely disrupted work – delaying projects and casting the future of research funding and jobs into doubt as chaos in the agency reigns. An array of orders seeks to fundamentally reshape the NIH, the world’s largest public funder of biomedical and behavioral research, in the Trump administration’s image. The agency’s work is the wellspring of scientific advancement in the US, and helped make the country a dominant force in health and science. “They will have drastic effects on all of us – this is not hyperbole, this is fact,” said Todd Wolfson, the president of the American Association of University Professors…
I feel miserable for the 'poor' in every country BUT the USA has never known poverty on this scale. You can deride the Europeans as much as you want BUT we still have reasonably good healthcare here in France which is why many older Americans are coming here.
Here is the rub! When Americans get here: they buy up property and rent it out to BNB.
The French have just implemented a Law: Tax on 2nd homes.
This could be done in the USA!
MY neighbours Americans have sold their 2 properies because of this Tax. Great, we are now getting French neighbours.
I did not come to France from America to have American neighbours who have done NOTHING for our community.
Remember, you never have to let any law officer into your home without a warrant signed by a JUDGE. If the cops don't have the correctly filled out paperwork, just say no!