Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign is supposed to target illegal immigrants. But the Department of Homeland Security is also becoming Donald Trump’s enforcement squad against protesters, turning its power inward in a campaign of intimidation, arrests, and malicious prosecutions against U.S. citizens.
The Wall Street Journal investigates:
Of the 279 people accused by [DHS] officials on X of attacking federal officers in the past year, 181 were U.S. citizens, the Journal found. Close to half of those Americans were never charged with assault. None have been convicted at trial.
Yet names, mug shots and other identifying details posted by the government put a bull’s-eye on them. They had to explain the accusations to family, friends and employers. In a few cases, their home and workplace addresses were leaked online, drawing death threats. …
Federal prosecutors in cities with high-profile immigration operations said they have been pressured by Justice Department leaders to aggressively pursue assault charges, even in cases undermined by contradictory evidence or ones that fail to appear worthy of prosecution. Some have quit in response. Others say the time spent on flimsy cases takes them away from prosecuting drug cases, public corruption and gun-related crimes.
Federal agents have acted as if civilians have no right to observe or record them, said David Bier of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington. “Once you adopt those positions then everyone’s a viable target,” he said. The consequences—physical intimidation, tackling, arrests and hours in custody without access to a lawyer—“amounts to going after the political opposition,” Bier said.
Constitutional experts say aggressive policing tactics can deter people from exercising their First Amendment rights, which include the freedom to witness or protest government activities in public places.
There is an old lesson that we have to re-learn: When we give our government unchecked powers to go after a foreign bogeyman, those powers often end up being turned back against ourselves.
The Executive Watch is a project of the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, and its flagship publication The UnPopulist, to track in an ongoing way the abuses of the power of the American presidency. It sorts these abuses into five categories: Personal Grift, Political Corruption, Presidential Retribution, Power Consolidation, and Policy Illegality. Click the category of interest to get an overview of all the abuses under it.
© The UnPopulist, 2026
Follow us on Bluesky, Threads, YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and X.
 | A guest post by
|