Reframing Antisemitism as a National Security Threat

## How America Is Building a Counterterrorism Architecture to Combat Foreign-Influenced Hate The era in which antisemitic violence could be dismissed as isolated hate crime—in which foreign state direction could be obscured through criminal proxies, in which ideological incitement carried no accountability, and in which funding could flow without transparency—that era is closing. The policy infrastructure documented in this assessment represents the most significant U.S. domestic counterintelligence realignment since the post-9/11 fusion-center build-out. This is not a temporary posture but a **structural realignment**. Executive Order 14188, the multi-agency Task Force, JTTF integration, social media screening, funding disclosure requirements, international intelligence cooperation—these represent not incremental adjustments but the **securitization of a hate crime category**, the process by which something moves from law enforcement domain to national security apparatus with different authorities, resources, and international reach. For those who have created havoc in an atmosphere of terror, the assessment is straightforward: **The evidence is being compiled. The networks are being mapped. The authorities are being exercised. The accountability is coming.** The only variable is whether individuals choose to exit these networks while exit remains possible, or whether they will be processed through the enforcement architecture now being assembled. The Jewish communities of the United States have been targeted with impunity for too long. That impunity is ending. ## I. THE LEGAL FOUNDATION: EXECUTIVE ORDER 14188 AND THE IMMIGRATION NEXUS On January 29, 2025, a policy earthquake registered barely a tremor in mainstream consciousness. President Trump signed Executive Order 14188—"Additional Measures to Combat Anti-Semitism"—which was subsequently published in the Federal Register on February 3, 2025 (90 FR 8847, Document Number 2025-02230). Legal scholars would later recognize it as the most comprehensive federal framework for antisemitism enforcement since the adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition under EO 13899 in 2019. But this was no mere reaffirmation of existing policy. The order's language carried the precision of a carefully calibrated weapon system: "It shall be the policy of the United States to combat anti-Semitism vigorously, using all available and appropriate legal tools, to prosecute, remove, or otherwise hold to account the perpetrators of unlawful anti-Semitic harassment and violence." That single word—**remove**—represented a categorical shift. The order explicitly directed executive departments to examine authorities under 8 U.S.C. 1182(a)(3), the inadmissibility grounds related to alien students and staff, creating mechanisms for monitoring and reporting activities that could lead to investigations and, if warranted, actions to remove such aliens. For the first time in American history, the federal government explicitly linked antisemitic activity to the supreme authority of immigration enforcement, where noncitizenship is privilege rather than right, where deportation requires no criminal conviction, where the tools of counterterrorism can be deployed without the constitutional safeguards that constrain domestic law enforcement. The accompanying White House fact sheet made the operational intent unmistakable: "To all the resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist protests, we put you on notice: come 2025, we will find you, and we will deport you. I will also quickly cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses." This was not rhetoric. This was **doctrine**. The order directed every executive department to inventory "all civil and criminal authorities or actions" within its jurisdiction that could "curb or combat anti-Semitism," along with "an inventory and analysis of all pending administrative complaints" involving higher education institutions. Within weeks, DHS would operationalize this directive through systematic social media screening. Within months, DOJ would establish a Federal Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism with campus enforcement as its primary mandate. The machinery, as it turned out, had been built. It merely awaited activation. ## II. THE CATALYST: LETHAL ATTACKS AND THE COLLAPSE OF POLITICAL RESISTANCE Policy infrastructure can exist dormant for years, waiting for the predicate event that transforms possibility into necessity. For the antisemitism securitization architecture, that predicate arrived with brutal clarity in spring 2025. ### The Capital Jewish Museum Shooting (May 21, 2025) Elias Rodriguez traveled from Chicago to Washington, D.C. with a handgun in his checked luggage and purchased a ticket to the American Jewish Committee's "Young Diplomats Reception" at the Capital Jewish Museum approximately three hours before it began. As Israeli Embassy staffers Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim—a couple planning their engagement—left the event around 9:08 p.m., Rodriguez approached and opened fire. The crime scene investigation and subsequent federal indictment revealed Rodriguez's premeditation and ideological motive. Surveillance video captured him pacing outside the museum before approaching the group of four people and opening fire. As Lischinsky and Milgrim fell to the ground, Rodriguez advanced closer, leaning over them and firing additional shots. He appeared to reload before jogging off. Upon entering the museum and being detained by security staff, Rodriguez stated: "I did it for Palestine, I did it for Gaza, I am unarmed." As law enforcement led him away, witnesses reported him shouting "Free, free Palestine!" His social media history—now evidence in federal proceedings—revealed extensive anti-Israel extremism, including posts calling to "vaporize every Israeli 18 and above." Yaron Lischinsky, 30, was a German-Israeli researcher in the political department of the Israeli Embassy. Sarah Milgrim, 26, was an American citizen from Kansas working in the embassy's public diplomacy department, responsible for community relations. According to Israeli Ambassador Yechiel Leiter, they were planning to become engaged in Jerusalem the following week. Rodriguez now faces nine federal counts including hate crime resulting in death and murder of foreign officials—charges that make him eligible for the death penalty. He simultaneously faces state murder charges. But more significantly for the policy architecture being assembled, his case became the archetypal example—the perfect storm of antisemitic motive, anti-Israel ideology, deliberate premeditation, and lethal action that would justify every expansion of federal authority that followed. ### The Boulder Firebombing (June 1, 2025) One week later, Mohamed Sabry Soliman provided the second pillar of the enforcement justification. An Egyptian national whose lawful status had lapsed, Soliman attacked a "Run for Their Lives" event in Boulder, Colorado—a gathering advocating for the release of Israeli hostages—using incendiary devices and a makeshift flamethrower he had constructed after being denied a firearm purchase due to his immigration status. At least 12 people were injured, including elderly participants and an 82-year-old Holocaust survivor, Barbara Steinmetz. Karen Diamond, 82, died from her burn injuries on June 25, 2025—24 days after the attack—making the incident a homicide. According to affidavits and extensive media reporting, Soliman admitted to studying YouTube tutorials on Molotov cocktail construction, assembling the devices with methodical precision, and harboring the explicit desire to "kill all Zionist people." The Boulder attack carried additional symbolic weight: it targeted not random Jewish Americans but those explicitly engaged in advocacy for Israeli hostages—the living embodiment of the U.S.-Israel relationship that foreign adversaries sought to fracture. It was, in the language of intelligence assessment, a **transmission belt attack**—violence emerging from online ecosystems where anti-Israel narratives blur into antisemitic incitement, where ideological distance from terrorism provides increasingly illusory insulation from material support charges. Soliman faces first-degree murder charges for Karen Diamond's death, along with 184 total state criminal charges including 28 counts of attempted first-degree murder, plus 12 federal hate crime counts. His case immediately became central to congressional debates around immigration screening, visa revocation, and deportation for individuals engaged in antisemitic extremist behavior. DHS officials cited the attack in justifying enhanced social media screening. Congressional hearings featured it as evidence of "antisemitic anti-Israel terrorism on U.S. soil." ### The Political Transformation What happened next was perhaps more significant than the attacks themselves: the **collapse of political resistance** to the emerging enforcement architecture. Before the violence, civil liberties objections to broad federal action had been robust. Organizations like the ACLU and Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA) had warned that legitimate security fears were being instrumentalized for broader political goals, that the administration focused disproportionately on campus/left-wing antisemitism while scaling back resources for monitoring white supremacist threats, that vague definitions of "Hamas sympathizer" risked encompassing protected political dissent. After the D.C. and Boulder attacks, those objections didn't disappear—they became politically untenable. Every Democratic senator who had previously signed "protect free speech on campus" letters went radio-silent on the new enforcement architecture. Remaining congressional holdouts—the Squad plus the Massie/Paul libertarian axis—fundamentally changed their objection. They were no longer saying antisemitism wasn't a threat or that incidents were overblown. They were now saying "don't expand the surveillance state"—a defensive framing that conceded the premise and quibbled only with methodology. This shift in argument, from questioning the existence of the threat to questioning the tools used to combat it, represented a decisive sign that the new security doctrine had been accepted as baseline reality in Washington. The debate was now about methodology, not mandate. The operational calculus had changed. The machinery had been activated. ## III. THE FOREIGN NEXUS: IRAN, IRGC, AND STATE-SPONSORED ANTISEMITIC TERRORISM The domestic attacks provided the visceral justification. But the intellectual architecture for treating antisemitism as national security threat required demonstrating **foreign state actor involvement**—the nexus between ideological incitement, terrorist organization coordination, and kinetic violence that would transform hate crime into hybrid warfare. That nexus had been documented for years. It merely required synthesis and amplification. ### IRGC External Operations: The Documented Pattern The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps—Quds Force (IRGC-QF) represents Iran's primary instrument for covert lethal activities abroad. Designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the United States, the IRGC-QF operates through a sophisticated network of criminal proxies, ideological allies, and deniable intermediaries to conduct assassination plots, terrorist attacks, and influence operations targeting Jews, Israelis, and dissidents across Europe and the Americas. The U.S. Department of Justice has documented this pattern through multiple high-profile indictments: In November 2024, federal prosecutors charged **Farhad Shakeri** and co-conspirators in an IRGC-linked murder-for-hire plot targeting former President Trump and other high-profile U.S. figures. The indictment revealed extensive coordination between IRGC handlers in Tehran and criminal proxies in the United States, using encrypted communications and cryptocurrency payments to maintain operational security. In November 2025, DOJ announced charges in connection with an Iranian plot to assassinate Israel's ambassador to Mexico—another example of IRGC targeting Jewish and Israeli figures through intermediaries. Treasury Department sanctions accompanied the indictment, freezing assets of Iranian officials and proxy networks involved in the operation. These are not isolated incidents. Research from institutions including the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism, and the Foundation for Defense of Democracies documents a persistent pattern: IRGC-QF operations targeting Jews and Israelis across multiple continents, using criminal networks for plausible deniability, executing plots with increasing sophistication and decreasing concern for international norms. The National Counterterrorism Center describes IRGC-QF as central to Iran's strategy of "using proxy networks and intermediaries to target perceived enemies—including Jews and Israelis—while maintaining plausible deniability." The mechanism is elegant in its simplicity: ideological incitement creates the narrative framework, designated terrorist organizations provide tactical guidance and validation, criminal proxies execute operations, and Iranian intelligence maintains strategic distance. ### The DHS National Terrorism Advisory: Connecting the Dots On June 22, 2025—three weeks after the Boulder attack—the Department of Homeland Security issued a National Terrorism Advisory System (NTAS) bulletin that made explicit what intelligence analysts had been documenting privately: The ongoing Israel-Iran conflict could motivate U.S.-based individuals to carry out attacks on Jewish, pro-Israel, or government targets. Iran and its proxies have shown increased interest in retaliatory action, including potential religious rulings (fatwas) that could inspire violence. Recent antisemitic attacks in D.C. and Boulder demonstrate a broader landscape of anti-Israel motivated terrorism. The bulletin highlighted concern that **Iran-aligned extremist media** are "doubling down" on calls for attacks against Jewish targets in the U.S.—a clear signal that DHS now viewed the information environment as directly connected to the threat environment, that online incitement was no longer protected speech but operational preparation, that the transmission belt from Tehran to American streets had been documented and would be disrupted. ### The 2026 ODNI Threat Assessment: Formalizing the Doctrine While the 2025 ODNI Annual Threat Assessment addressed antisemitism within existing frameworks for Domestic Violent Extremism (DVE) and Foreign Malign Influence (FMI), informed sources indicate that the 2026 assessment will mark a categorical evolution. According to near-final draft language obtained through congressional sources, the assessment will state: "Iran, and to a lesser extent Qatar and Turkey, continue to exploit antisemitic narratives as a **low-cost asymmetric instrument** to degrade U.S. societal cohesion, erode support for the U.S.–Israel relationship, and generate indirect pressure on U.S. decision-making. Tehran increasingly relies on criminal proxies and online influence networks to conduct or inspire attacks against Jewish and Israeli targets in the Homeland, presenting a **persistent terrorism threat that intersects with state-sponsored malign influence**." This will mark the first time ODNI has fused "antisemitism" with "state-sponsored malign influence" in an unclassified Annual Threat Assessment—the formal doctrinal recognition that antisemitic violence is not merely bigotry but **adversarial statecraft**, that combating it requires not just law enforcement but counterintelligence capabilities, that the threat exists at the intersection of ideology and operations. The implications are profound. Once a threat category enters the ODNI Annual Threat Assessment with explicit foreign state actor attribution, it triggers systematic intelligence community prioritization: collection requirements, analytical production, coordination with allied services, congressional briefings, budget allocations. The machinery becomes self-sustaining. ## IV. THE STATISTICAL PREDICATE: ADL DATA AND THE STRUCTURAL SURGE Policy infrastructure requires not just spectacular attacks but structural baselines—statistical evidence that transforms anecdotes into trends, that justifies systematic intervention rather than reactive enforcement. The Anti-Defamation League's 2024 Audit of Antisemitic Incidents provided that baseline with devastating clarity: **9,354 antisemitic incidents in 2024**—the highest number in ADL's 46-year tracking history. This represented a 5% increase over 2023, a 344% increase over five years, and an approximately 893% increase over a decade. The category breakdown revealed the threat's multifaceted nature: - 196 assaults (up 21% from 2023) - 2,606 acts of vandalism (up 20%) - Thousands of harassment incidents spanning physical intimidation to coordinated online campaigns Perhaps most significantly: **1,694 incidents occurred on college campuses**—84% higher than 2023, representing 18% of all recorded incidents. For the first time in audit history, a majority of incidents (58%, or 5,452 total) included elements related to Israel or Zionism. This last statistic carried enormous policy implications. It provided empirical foundation for the analytic proposition that **anti-Israel agitation and antisemitism are increasingly interlinked in practice**, even if conceptually distinct. It justified treating campus environments as transmission belts where foreign influence operations, terrorist organization propaganda, and domestic extremist mobilization converge. It enabled DHS to frame social media screening not as thought policing but as identifying connections to designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations. The statistical backdrop provided quantitative rationale for treating antisemitism not as a marginal problem but as a **structural security issue** requiring systematic federal response. ## V. THE ENFORCEMENT ARCHITECTURE: TASK FORCES, SCREENING, AND FINANCIAL PRESSURE With legal foundation established, lethal attacks providing political mandate, foreign nexus documented, and statistical baseline secured, the final component was operational capacity—the actual mechanisms through which the new doctrine would be enforced. ### The Federal Task Force to Combat Antisemitism In February 2025, following EO 14188's directive, the Department of Justice announced formation of a multi-agency Federal Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism. The Task Force's first priority: "root out anti-Semitic harassment in schools and on college campuses." This seemingly modest mandate obscured the structural significance. Federal task forces represent coordination mechanisms that enable information sharing, resource pooling, and synchronized action across agencies that would otherwise operate in separate lanes. The antisemitism task force brought together: - DOJ's Civil Rights Division and National Security Division - DHS's Office of Intelligence and Analysis - FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs) - Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights - State Department's Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism The task force announced visits to ten college campuses that had experienced significant antisemitic incidents, framing these visits as both investigative and deterrent—a signal that federal authorities were no longer treating campus antisemitism as an internal university matter but as a domain of federal enforcement interest. Some sources suggest the task force will be formally renamed and expanded in January 2026 as the "Joint Task Force to Counter Foreign-Malign Influence Targeting Jewish Communities and U.S.–Israel Relations" (JTF–FMI–J), with NSC leadership and DOJ co-chair—a structure that would formally integrate counterintelligence and law enforcement authorities under unified command. ### DHS Social Media Screening: The Digital Dragnet On April 9, 2025, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services operationalized EO 14188's immigration enforcement directive through systematic social media screening of noncitizens for antisemitic content linked to terrorist organizations. The screening applies to applicants for permanent residence and certain nonimmigrant categories, including those associated with educational institutions. It specifically targets support for Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and similar entities designated as Foreign Terrorist Organizations. DHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin framed the policy in stark terms: "There is no room in the United States for the rest of the world's terrorist sympathizers, and we are under no obligation to admit them or let them stay here." The mechanism is elegant in its simplicity: social media activity that would be constitutionally protected for U.S. citizens becomes grounds for visa denial, revocation, or deportation when engaged in by noncitizens. The screening doesn't require proof of material support charges or terrorism conspiracy—merely evidence of ideological alignment with designated terrorist organizations, particularly when that alignment manifests as antisemitic incitement. Civil liberties organizations, including JCPA and ACLU, raised concerns about vagueness, overbreadth, and discriminatory application. But their objections faced a fundamental problem: the Supreme Court has repeatedly held that noncitizens do not possess the same First Amendment protections as citizens, particularly in the context of immigration adjudications. The government's plenary power over immigration—the doctrine that federal authority in this domain is virtually uncheckable—meant that legal challenges faced nearly insurmountable barriers. The practical effect: hundreds of thousands of noncitizens in the United States, particularly students and recent immigrants, now face retroactive scrutiny of their digital histories. Old social media posts expressing support for Palestinian resistance, criticism of Israel, or sympathy for populations affected by conflict could become evidence of terrorist organization sympathies, grounds for immigration consequences that carry no criminal conviction but permanent exclusion from American presence. ### FinCEN Geographic Targeting Order: Following the Money On November 21, 2025, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) issued a Geographic Targeting Order (GTO) under Section 311 of the USA PATRIOT Act—one of the federal government's most powerful financial enforcement tools, rarely deployed and carrying significant international implications. The GTO imposes enhanced due diligence requirements on large Qatar-linked wire transfers to certain 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations, particularly those associated with educational institutions. Financial institutions must now report detailed information about the source, purpose, and ultimate disposition of these funds, creating a comprehensive paper trail that enables Treasury investigators to map influence networks, identify potential violations of disclosure requirements, and build predicate for enforcement actions. The targeting of Qatar-linked funding reflects analytic assessments—some contested—that Gulf state actors have channeled billions of dollars into American universities, with concern that some funding may be tied to Islamist ideological projects or anti-Israel advocacy that crosses into antisemitic territory. While causation remains debated, the GTO transforms correlation into investigative priority, enabling federal authorities to scrutinize funding streams that were previously opaque. The mechanism demonstrates how financial tools can reshape organizational behavior without criminal charges: universities and nonprofits receiving Qatar-linked funds now face intensive reporting requirements, reputational risk, potential loss of federal funding, and banking relationship complications. The administrative burden alone may deter some institutions from accepting foreign funds, while others will self-police their ideological portfolios to avoid federal scrutiny. ### DHS Security Grants: Hardening the Targets Parallel to enforcement mechanisms, DHS dramatically expanded the Nonprofit Security Grant Program (NSGP), awarding \$94+ million to 512 Jewish organizations in 2025—explicitly justified by the surge in antisemitic violence and the D.C. and Boulder attacks. These grants fund physical security enhancements: fencing, lighting, surveillance systems, armed security personnel, active shooter training, emergency notification systems. But they also represent an ideological signal: the federal government now treats Jewish institutions as critical infrastructure requiring protective investment comparable to chemical plants and airports. Some grant language referenced cooperation with DHS and immigration officials, prompting JCPA to raise concerns about "confusing and concerning language" that might serve as back-door constraints on sanctuary policies or immigrant-serving institutions. But the grants proceeded regardless, establishing a funding stream that will grow with each subsequent attack, each statistical report, each congressional hearing demonstrating ongoing threat. ## VI. THE HUDSON DOCTRINE: INTELLECTUAL SCAFFOLDING FOR POLICY ELITE Policy infrastructure requires not just legal authorities and operational capabilities but **intellectual legitimacy**—the think tank conferences, academic papers, and expert testimony that mainstream controversial frameworks into respectable discourse. On December 12, 2025, the Hudson Institute convenes a conference titled "Antisemitism as a National Security Threat." The event represented something more than intellectual exercise—it was the **public coronation of the doctrine**, the moment when what had been quietly operational became openly advocated. The conference framing made the strategic logic explicit: "US adversaries are engaged in coordinated campaigns to exploit antisemitism to infiltrate American institutions, sow domestic division, damage vital US alliances, and spread narratives that weaken US leadership. In a rapidly shifting information environment and political landscape, understanding and confronting the intersection of antisemitism, disinformation, and great power competition demands a coordinated strategy." The speaker roster read as a who's who of national security conservatives and pro-Israel hawks. Most significantly, Sebastian Gorka—Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Counterterrorism at the NSC—delivered the 9:00 a.m. keynote in his official capacity, marking the first time a sitting NSC Senior Director had keynoted a think tank event on this precise threat frame. Gorka's participation carried doctrinal weight. It signaled that antisemitism securitization was not a fringe position or advocacy group demand but formal executive branch policy, endorsed at the highest levels of national security decision-making. Other speakers included Michael Doran, Bernard Haykel, Rebeccah Heinrichs, and Bernard-Henri Lévy—a convergence of conservative foreign policy, Middle East expertise, and transatlantic civilizational discourse. The event established several key frames that would likely guide policy development: 1. **Antisemitism as asymmetric warfare**: Foreign adversaries, particularly Iran, exploit antisemitic narratives as low-cost instruments to degrade American power without direct military confrontation. 2. **Campus environments as battlespace**: Universities are not neutral venues for free inquiry but contested terrain where foreign influence operations, terrorist propaganda, and domestic extremism converge to target Jewish students and erode support for the U.S.-Israel alliance. 3. **Information operations as kinetic precursors**: Online incitement, coordinated harassment campaigns, and ideological mobilization are not protected speech but operational preparation for violence, requiring disruption through intelligence and law enforcement tools. 4. **Civilizational stakes**: The threat to Jewish communities represents not just bigotry but an attack on Western democratic values, requiring defense through integrated whole-of-government response. These frames would provide the intellectual architecture for congressional testimony, media engagement, and policy justification as the enforcement mechanisms expanded in 2026 and beyond. ## VII. THE DEPORTATION INFRASTRUCTURE: CECOT AND THE EXTERNALIZATION OF DETENTION While the public discourse focused on campus enforcement and social media screening, a more shadowy infrastructure was being prepared for those whose involvement crossed from ideology into operations—or who, as noncitizens, could be removed without the constitutional protections that constrain domestic prosecution. The United States has a history of externalizing detention for individuals deemed security threats: Guantánamo Bay, CIA black sites, extraordinary rendition programs. What makes the current moment distinctive is the integration of foreign partnerships and private contractors into a hemispheric detention architecture that operates largely outside public scrutiny. ### El Salvador's CECOT: The Next-Generation Facility In late 2022, El Salvador completed construction of the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) in Tecoluca—a maximum security facility explicitly designed for gang members and violent criminals but with capacity and security protocols that exceed traditional prison specifications. The facility features: - Capacity for 40,000+ inmates - Cell blocks designed for indefinite solitary confinement - Minimal due process oversight by international standards - Enhanced security technology including advanced surveillance systems - Geographic isolation from population centers and advocacy organizations While officially constructed to house Salvadoran gang members under President Nayib Bukele's controversial mass incarceration policies, informed observers note that CECOT's specifications and the nature of U.S.-El Salvador security cooperation suggest broader potential applications. In early 2025, the Trump administration formalized agreements with El Salvador for deportation flights and potential use of detention facilities for individuals removed from the United States. While official statements emphasized violent criminals and gang affiliates, the vague language around "extremists" and "national security threats" created ambiguity about who might be transferred. ### Global Crossing Airlines: The Logistical Infrastructure Central to the deportation infrastructure is Global Crossing Airlines Group Inc. (Global X Air), a private aviation contractor engaged in deportation operations under ICE directive. With a fleet of Airbus A319s and A320s, Global X has facilitated deportation flights to Guatemala, Honduras, Brazil, and—reportedly—El Salvador. A January 2025 flight to Brazil ignited regional outrage when passengers reported degrading treatment and human rights concerns. The incident drew attention to the broader deportation infrastructure, including northern logistics connections involving Canadian executives with institutional affiliations spanning academia and cultural organizations. The significance of this infrastructure lies not in its current scale—which remains modest—but in its **expandability**. Once operational relationships are established, once legal frameworks are negotiated, once logistics contractors are under contract, the infrastructure can rapidly scale to accommodate shifting enforcement priorities. ### The Expanding Categories of National Security Threat The key question is definitional: who qualifies for transfer to facilities like CECOT or detention under expanded authorities? Current documented grounds include: - Noncitizens with violent criminal histories - Individuals affiliated with designated gang organizations - Immigration violators with aggravating factors But the language around national security threats, extremists, and terrorist sympathizers creates genuine gray zones that require careful navigation. These terms are not mere rhetorical excess—they represent the government's attempt to address real patterns where ideological activity correlates with operational threat. Social media posts supporting designated terrorist organizations, participation in protests that turned violent, association with organizations later designated as material support networks—these activities exist in the space between protected political expression and genuine security concern. The challenge is profound: how does a democracy distinguish between someone who opposes Israeli government policy through legitimate political advocacy and someone who provides ideological cover for terrorist organizations? Between a student who attends a protest that unexpectedly turns violent and an organizer who deliberately creates conditions for violence? Between an academic who studies extremist movements and a faculty member who recruits for them? These are not easy questions, and dismissing them as unnecessary encroachments on civil liberties ignores the documented reality: the transmission belt from foreign influence operations to domestic violence is real. IRGC operatives do use ideological networks to identify potential assets. Online ecosystems do radicalize individuals toward violence. Funding networks do blur humanitarian aid and material support for terrorism. The administrative detention concern—individuals removed not because they've been prosecuted and found guilty but because immigration adjudicators determined they pose a threat based on ideological associations or online activity—represents both a genuine security tool and a genuine civil liberties risk. The legal pathway is straightforward: 1. DHS screens noncitizen social media and identifies support for designated terrorist organizations 2. Immigration authorities initiate removal proceedings based on visa violations or grounds of inadmissibility 3. Federal prosecutors may decline criminal charges due to First Amendment concerns or evidentiary limitations 4. Individual is deported to country of origin or—in cases involving security concerns—transferred to facilities like CECOT under U.S.-partner country agreements 5. Deportation is administrative action, not criminal punishment, requiring no conviction and limited judicial review This mechanism enables the government to address individuals deemed ideological threats without the constitutional constraints that would apply to domestic prosecution. Whether this represents necessary security flexibility or dangerous circumvention of due process depends largely on how precisely these authorities are wielded—and on whether oversight mechanisms can distinguish genuine threats from political dissent. ## VIII. THE CONVERGING ACCOUNTABILITY ARCHITECTURE With legal foundation established, lethal attacks providing political mandate, foreign nexus documented, statistical baseline secured, enforcement mechanisms operational, intellectual scaffolding constructed, and detention infrastructure prepared, the final assessment concerns **trajectory**: what happens to individuals caught in this converging architecture? The answer varies by actor category: ### Direct Perpetrators (Rodriguez, Soliman) Lethal actors face the full weight of federal and state criminal prosecution: - State murder and attempted murder charges (often carrying centuries of combined prison time) - Federal hate crime charges (potential life imprisonment or death penalty) - Terrorism enhancement provisions that increase sentencing - Digital forensics used to prove premeditation, conspiracy, and ideological motive For U.S. citizens like Rodriguez, constitutional protections apply: criminal trial, due process, appellate review. But conviction rates in terrorism-adjacent cases are extremely high, and sentences are severe. For noncitizens like Soliman, criminal prosecution may be followed by deportation proceedings—or, in cases involving countries unwilling to accept returnees, indefinite immigration detention or transfer to third-country facilities. ### Foreign Operatives (IRGC Assets) Individuals operating under foreign state direction face: - Federal charges including murder-for-hire, conspiracy, and economic sanctions violations - Coordinated international counterintelligence efforts - Financial sanctions freezing assets and isolating them economically - Permanent exclusion from the United States - Potential targeted killing if operating abroad and deemed imminent threat The foiled Shakeri plot demonstrated the increasing **penetrability of proxy networks** by Western intelligence. The use of cooperating sources, undercover operations, and signals intelligence means that IRGC operational security is degrading—creating paranoia within networks and reducing operational effectiveness even absent arrests. ### Domestic Facilitators (Transmission Belt Nodes) The most legally complex category involves individuals and organizations that provide **material support**—financial, logistical, or ideological—to networks subsequently linked to violence. These actors face: - Potential designation under anti-terrorism executive orders (EO 13224) - Material support statutes that criminalize aid to designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations - Civil asset forfeiture seizing funds and property - Loss of nonprofit tax-exempt status - Banking relationship termination - Professional and reputational consequences The key legal battleground concerns **ideological distance from violence**. How many degrees of separation protect someone from material support liability? If Organization A provides funding to Organization B, which provides ideological support to individuals who commit violence, does Organization A bear liability? The government's theory—increasingly tested in campus enforcement and nonprofit oversight—is that the **transmission belt is legally actionable even without direct operational connection**. Providing platforms for incitement, funding for organizations that celebrate violence, networking opportunities for radicalization—these constitute material support even if funders never intended violence and had no knowledge of specific plots. This theory remains contested. But the task force is actively testing these boundaries, using grant conditions, federal funding threats, and visa revocations to pressure institutions into self-policing their ideological ecosystems. ### Foreign Funding Conduits Institutions accepting foreign funds, particularly from entities targeted by FinCEN's Geographic Targeting Order, face: - Intensive financial scrutiny and disclosure requirements - Potential loss of federal funding - Banking access complications - Reputational damage and donor relationship strain - Congressional investigations and media exposure The mechanism demonstrates how **administrative pressure can achieve behavioral change without criminal prosecution**. Universities don't need to be charged with crimes—merely subjected to intensive reporting requirements, federal funding threats, and public questioning—to alter their funding relationships and ideological portfolios. ## IX. THE CIVIL LIBERTIES BATTLEGROUND: BALANCING SECURITY AND FREEDOM The antisemitism securitization architecture has not proceeded without resistance—nor should it have. The tension between protecting Jewish communities from genuine threats and preserving the civil liberties that define democratic society represents one of the most difficult balancing acts in contemporary governance. ### The JCPA Critique: Instrumentalization and Resource Allocation The Jewish Council for Public Affairs—representing mainstream Jewish community organizations—raised concerns that warrant serious consideration. JCPA noted that while many in the Jewish community have legitimate fears of antisemitism, there is risk that these fears could be instrumentalized for broader political goals beyond community protection. Specifically, JCPA documented that the administration has focused heavily on antisemitism from the political left and on university campuses while simultaneously cutting programs and resources dedicated to monitoring white supremacist, neo-Nazi, and anti-government extremism—threats that have historically been responsible for the deadliest antisemitic mass shootings in American history including Tree of Life, Poway, and Jersey City. This critique highlights a persistent tension that cannot be dismissed: antisemitic violence comes from multiple ideological sources. The question is not whether to address campus-based or foreign-influenced antisemitism—clearly, the Rodriguez and Soliman cases demonstrate real threats requiring response. The question is whether resource allocation adequately addresses the full threat landscape or prioritizes some vectors over others based on political considerations rather than empirical threat assessment. ### The ACLU Perspective: Immigration Enforcement and Protected Speech The American Civil Liberties Union has focused on the immigration enforcement nexus, raising concerns that deserve engagement rather than dismissal. The core issue: how to define the boundary between protected political expression and support for terrorism when those expressing such views are noncitizens whose immigration status can be conditioned on ideological conformity. The challenge is genuine. Supporting Palestinian statehood is constitutionally protected political speech. Supporting Hamas—a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization—potentially crosses into criminal material support territory. But Hamas governs Gaza, making it nearly impossible to discuss Palestinian self-determination without touching on Hamas governance, policies, or actions. Where exactly does legitimate criticism of Israeli government policy end and prohibited support for terrorism begin? For U.S. citizens, these distinctions are worked out through criminal prosecution with full constitutional protections: right to counsel, jury trial, appellate review, clear burden of proof. For noncitizens, these same activities can trigger immigration consequences—visa denial, status revocation, deportation—through administrative proceedings with substantially fewer protections and much lower evidentiary standards. The ACLU argues this creates a parallel system where constitutional protections are evaded through administrative mechanisms. The government cannot criminally prosecute certain speech due to First Amendment constraints, but it can deport speakers. It cannot seize property through criminal forfeiture without conviction, but it can condition grants on ideological compliance. Yet defenders of the enforcement architecture make a compelling counter-argument: the United States has no constitutional obligation to admit or retain noncitizens who support terrorist organizations, regardless of whether such support would be protected speech for citizens. The plenary power doctrine gives Congress and the Executive broad authority over immigration decisions, explicitly including ideological grounds for exclusion. Treating support for designated terrorist organizations as grounds for inadmissibility is not constitutional evasion but legitimate exercise of sovereign authority. Both positions contain truth. The question is not which is correct in absolute terms but how to implement enforcement in ways that distinguish genuine security threats from political dissent. ### The Continuing Debate and Necessary Tensions These tensions will not be resolved through this enforcement architecture—they will be litigated, debated, and contested for years. And that contestation is healthy for democracy. What can be stated with confidence: 1. **Lethal attacks and explicit antisemitic plots are real and increasing**, including those motivated by anti-Israel animus and those linked to Iranian operations. The Rodriguez and Soliman cases, along with documented IRGC assassination plots, establish genuine threats requiring enhanced federal response. 2. **Federal policy is demonstrably shifting** to treat certain antisemitic threats as hybrid domestic extremism/foreign malign influence, with new tools in immigration screening, grant oversight, campus enforcement, and security funding. This shift is operationally significant regardless of whether one views it as necessary security enhancement or concerning power expansion. 3. **Civil liberties and academic freedom concerns are legitimate and ongoing**, representing genuine risks of overreach, discriminatory application, and chilling effects on protected speech. These concerns cannot be dismissed as mere obstruction—they represent essential democratic guardrails. 4. **The architecture is being built regardless** of whether these tensions are resolved, creating urgent need for oversight mechanisms, clear limiting principles, and accountability structures. The question is not whether enforcement will proceed but how extensively, how invasively, with what limiting principles, and with what accountability mechanisms. Democratic governance requires both protecting threatened communities and preserving the freedoms that make democracy worth protecting.

## X. THE COMING RECKONING: WHAT HAPPENS NEXT As 2025 closes and 2026 begins, the antisemitism securitization architecture moves from construction to operation. The mechanisms are in place: - Executive order authority directing all-of-government response - Multi-agency task forces coordinating enforcement - DHS social media screening operational for noncitizens - FinCEN financial scrutiny creating transparency requirements - DHS security grants hardening Jewish institutions - Campus enforcement visits establishing federal presence - JTTF integration treating incidents as potential terrorism investigations - International intelligence cooperation mapping foreign influence networks - Detention infrastructure prepared for deportees The political mandate exists: - Lethal attacks providing visceral justification - Statistical baselines documenting structural problem - Foreign state actor nexus established through DOJ indictments - Civil liberties opposition collapsed or marginalized - Think tank doctrine providing intellectual legitimacy - NSC leadership signaling executive branch priority The trajectory is clear: - 2026 ODNI Threat Assessment will formalize antisemitism as state-sponsored malign influence category - Congressional appropriations will fund expanded enforcement capacity - Additional task force activities will test material support boundaries - Campus investigations will establish precedents for federal intervention - Immigration enforcement will generate test cases on protected speech limits - Financial scrutiny will reshape funding relationships For individuals and organizations in the enforcement crosshairs, the assessment is straightforward: **The evidence is being compiled.** Every social media post supporting designated terrorist organizations is being archived. Every donation to organizations later designated as material support networks is being mapped. Every attendance at protests that turned violent is being documented. Every association with individuals later charged with terrorism is being investigated. **The networks are being mapped.** Financial forensics are tracking funding flows. Intelligence community assets are identifying foreign influence operations. JTTF investigations are connecting dots between ideological actors and operational networks. International cooperation is dismantling IRGC proxy structures. **The authorities are being exercised.** Visa denials and revocations are accelerating. Deportation proceedings are expanding categories of removable offense. Grant conditions are pressuring institutional compliance. Federal investigations are testing material support boundaries. Task force coordination is enabling synchronized enforcement. **The accountability is coming.** For noncitizens whose online activity or organizational affiliations demonstrate support for designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations, deportation proceedings await. For U.S. citizens whose actions cross into material support territory, criminal prosecution looms. For organizations facilitating transmission belts from foreign influence to domestic violence, designation and asset seizure threaten. For institutions accepting foreign funding without adequate disclosure, federal scrutiny and funding loss impend. The only variable remaining is **whether individuals choose to exit these networks while exit remains possible**. Social media can be deleted—but deletion creates forensic evidence and adverse inference. Organizations can be disavowed—but past affiliations remain documented. Positions can be moderated—but prior positions shape credibility assessment. The window for credible distancing shrinks with each passing month as enforcement mechanisms operationalize. For those who believe they can hide in ambiguity, claiming their support for "resistance" didn't mean terrorism, their advocacy for "justice" didn't celebrate violence, their organizing for "liberation" didn't facilitate IRGC influence operations—that ambiguity is being systematically eliminated. The task force is operationalizing a doctrine: **proximity to violence creates presumption of complicity**. Ideological distance provides decreasing insulation. Degrees of separation matter less than network position. And the burden is shifting to demonstrate lack of connection rather than requiring government to prove it. ## XI. A WARNING TO ANTISEMITES, TERRORIST SYMPATHIZERS, AND FOREIGN AGENTS To those who have spent years celebrating Hamas rockets, justifying Hezbollah terrorism, excusing IRGC assassination plots, fundraising for organizations that facilitate violence, organizing protests that target Jewish students, spreading narratives that delegitimize Israel's existence, creating hostile environments that drive Jews from campus life, and serving as transmission belts for foreign influence operations designed to fracture American society— **Your days are numbered.** Not as hyperbole. Not as threat. As **documented fact**. The machinery that protected you is being dismantled: - The ambiguity that shielded antisemitism as "criticism of Israel" is being catalogued away - The ideological distance that insulated material support is being judicially tested - The First Amendment protections that covered incitement are being narrowed for noncitizens - The administrative burdens that prevented coordination are being eliminated through task forces - The political resistance that constrained enforcement has collapsed after lethal attacks - The funding opacity that enabled influence operations is being exposed through financial scrutiny You believed you were protected by: - Academic freedom norms that universities would defend - Free speech principles that courts would uphold - Political allies who would resist overreach - Media coverage that would question enforcement - International pressure that would constrain action - Organizational affiliations that would provide insulation All of these protections are eroding simultaneously. Universities are not defending faculty who face federal investigation—they're conducting their own compliance reviews. Courts are not expanding First Amendment protections for noncitizens—they're deferring to executive immigration authority. Political allies are not resisting the enforcement architecture—they're quietly repositioning to avoid being targeted themselves. Media coverage is not questioning the doctrine—it's amplifying each new attack as justification. International pressure is not constraining American action—allied intelligence services are cooperating in network disruption. Organizational affiliations are not providing insulation—they're becoming evidence of network participation. The transformation from activist to defendant, from protected speaker to deportable extremist, from campus organizer to material support facilitator, will not require dramatic escalation on your part. **It requires only that the machinery already assembled be applied to activity already documented.** You will not get warning that you've crossed the line—because the line is being drawn retrospectively based on outcomes. If individuals you worked with later commit violence, your prior collaboration becomes evidence of facilitation. If organizations you funded later face terrorism designation, your donations become material support. If networks you participated in later prove IRGC-connected, your involvement becomes foreign agent activity. The doctrine being operationalized treats **the transmission belt as criminally liable for what it transmits**, even if individual nodes didn't intend violence, didn't know about operations, didn't direct action. You helped create the information environment. You enabled the network connections. You provided the ideological justification. You facilitated the fundraising. You organized the mobilization. That is sufficient. For noncitizens, the pathway is administrative: visa denial, status revocation, deportation proceedings, transfer to foreign detention. No criminal conviction required. No jury trial needed. No appeal to constitutional protections available. For U.S. citizens, the pathway is criminal but increasingly expansive: material support charges, conspiracy prosecutions, terrorism enhancements, asset seizure. And the precedents being established in current prosecutions will shape the boundaries for years to come. For organizations, the pathway is designation: inclusion on sanctions lists, asset freezing, banking relationship termination, tax-exempt status revocation, grant funding elimination. And once designated, reversal is nearly impossible. The Jewish communities you have targeted, the institutions you have attacked, the individuals you have threatened, the relationships you have sought to fracture—they now have the full protection of the United States government's counterterrorism apparatus. **That apparatus does not lose.** Not because it's omniscient. Not because it's infallible. But because it's **persistent, resourced, coordinated, and increasingly unencumbered by political constraints**. And it's coming for everyone whose hands have blood on them—whether that blood was spilled by their own actions or by the networks they enabled, the narratives they spread, the fundraising they facilitated, the operations they inspired. The choice is yours: - Exit the networks now, publicly and unambiguously - Cooperate with investigations into foreign influence operations - Provide documentation of funding sources and organizational structures - Accept responsibility for having served as transmission belts - Commit to actively countering the antisemitism you once enabled Or face the machinery that has been assembled specifically to process individuals like you through the accountability architecture that is now operational. **The evidence is compiled. The networks are mapped. The authorities are exercised.** **The accountability is here.** ## CONCLUSION: THE ERA OF IMPUNITY IS OVER For decades, antisemitic violence in America operated under a paradox: frequent enough to terrorize Jewish communities, yet dispersed enough to be dismissed as isolated hate crime rather than systemic threat. Foreign state actors exploited this categorization, using ideological incitement and proxy networks to inspire violence while maintaining plausible deniability. Campus environments became transmission belts where anti-Israel narratives blurred into antisemitic incitement. Funding flowed through opaque channels to organizations that facilitated this ecosystem. That era is definitively closing. Not through rhetorical commitment or symbolic gesture, but through **structural realignment** of federal authorities, resources, and priorities. The securitization of antisemitism—its transformation from hate crime to national security threat—represents one of the most significant domestic counterintelligence realignments since the post-9/11 build-out. The architecture is now operational: - Legal foundation through Executive Order 14188 - Political mandate from lethal attacks in D.C. and Boulder - Foreign nexus documented through IRGC assassination plots - Statistical baseline from ADL's record-breaking incident counts - Enforcement mechanisms via task forces, social media screening, and financial scrutiny - Intellectual legitimacy from Hudson doctrine and NSC leadership - Detention infrastructure through CECOT and deportation partnerships This represents not temporary emergency response but **permanent institutional reorientation**. The tools being deployed—JTTF integration, immigration enforcement nexus, FinCEN special measures, international intelligence cooperation—are not easily dismantled once established. They create bureaucratic momentum, generate precedent, embed in standard operating procedure. For Jewish communities long targeted with impunity, this offers genuine protection but also raises legitimate concerns about overreach, resource allocation, and civil liberties. The tension between security and freedom will not be resolved—it will be constantly negotiated through enforcement decisions, court challenges, and political debate. But one thing is certain: the individuals and organizations that have served as transmission belts for foreign influence operations, that have celebrated terrorism while claiming to support justice, that have targeted Jewish students while invoking academic freedom, that have fundraised for networks later tied to violence— Their operational space is collapsing. The evidence is compiled. The networks are mapped. The authorities are exercised. The accountability is not coming. **The accountability is here.**