By John & Nisha Whitehead
The Rutherford Institute
April 18, 2025
" Homegrowns are next. The homegrowns. You gotta build about five more places [like the CECOT prison]. It's not big enough."-President Trump on his desire to send American citizens to a megaprison in El Salvador, beyond the reach of U.S. courts and the Constitution
It has begun, just as we predicted, justified in the name of national security.
Mass roundups. Raids. Indefinite detentions in concentration camps. Martial law. The erosion of habeas corpus protections. The suspension of the Constitution, at least for select segments of the population. A hierarchy of rights, contingent on whether you belong to a favored political class.
This is what it looks like when the government makes itself the arbiter of who is deserving of rights and who isn't.
Here is what we know: one segment of the population at a time, the Trump Administration is systematically and without due process attempting to cleanse the country of what it perceives to be " undesirables" as part of its purported effort to make America great again.
This is how men, women and children are being made to disappear, snatched up off the streets by press-gangs of plainclothes, masked government agents impersonating street thugs.
Presently, these so-called "undesirables" include both undocumented and legal immigrants-many labeled terrorists despite having no criminal record, no court hearing, and no due process-before being extradited to a foreign concentration camp in an effort to sidestep judicial oversight.
By including a handful of known members of a vicious gang among those being rounded up, the government is attempting to whitewash the public into believing that everyone being targeted is, in fact, a terrorist.
In recent years, the government has used the phrase "domestic terrorist" interchangeably with "anti-government," "extremist" and "terrorist" to describe anyone who might fall somewhere on a very broad spectrum of viewpoints, characteristics and behaviors that could be considered "dangerous."
Thus, without proof, a sheet metal worker has been labeled a terrorist. A musician has been labeled a terrorist. A makeup artist has been labeled a terrorist. A cellular biologist has been labeled a terrorist. A soccer player has been labeled a terrorist. A food delivery driver has been labeled a terrorist.
Unfortunately, the government's attempts to dehumanize and strip individuals of their inalienable rights under the Constitution by labeling them criminals and "terrorists" is just the beginning of the dangerous game that is afoot.
It's only a matter of time before American citizens who refuse to march in lockstep with the government's dictates are classified as terrorists, denied basic rights, and extradited to a foreign prison.
That time is drawing closer.
Indeed, Trump has repeatedly spoken of his desire to be able to send American citizens- whom he refers to as "homegrowns," as in homegrown terrorists-on a one-way trip to El Salvador's mega-prison, where conditions are so brutal that officials brag the only way out is in a coffin. His administration is currently trying to find a way to accomplish that very objective.
We're not quite there yet, but it's coming.
What we are witnessing is history repeating itself in real-time: the widening net that ensnares us all. In other words, it's only a matter of time before anyone who is not fully compliant gets labeled a terrorist.
A prime example of how the government casting its net in ever-widening circles can be seen in the government's sudden decision to target academics in the U.S. on work and student visas who have been critical of Israel's war on Gaza, which has killed more than 50,000 people (nearly a third of them under the age of 18), as threats to national security.
Given Trump's eagerness to take ownership of the Gaza strip in order to colonize it, build resorts and turn it into "the Riviera of the Middle East"-at taxpayer expense-it should come as no surprise that the Trump Administration is attempting to muzzle any activities that might stir up sympathy for the Palestinians.
Thus, the government is classifying any criticism of Israel as antisemitic and equating it with terrorism.
Under such a broad definition, Jesus himself would be considered antisemitic.
So you can add antisemitic to the list of viewpoints that could have one classified as a terrorist, rounded up by ICE, stripped of the fundamental rights to due process and a day in court, and made to disappear into a detention center.
Mind you, the government isn't just targeting protest activities and expression that might have crossed over into civil disobedience. It's also preemptively targeting individuals who have committed no crimes but whose views might at some point in the future run counter to the government's self-serving interests.
This is precrime taken to a whole new level: targeting thoughts, i.e., thought crime.
The ramifications are so far-reaching as to render almost every American with an opinion about the government or who knows someone with an opinion about the government an extremist in word, deed, thought or by association.
As German pastor Martin Niemöller lamented:
"First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out-because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out- because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out-because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me-and there was no one left to speak for me."
You see how this works?
Let's not mince words about what's happening here: under the guise of fighting terrorism, the U.S. government is not just making people disappear-it is making the Constitution disappear.
When rights become privileges, the Constitution-and the rule of law-becomes optional.
We are almost at that point already.
Trump's list of " the enemies from within" is growing in leaps and bounds.
The list of individuals and groups being classified as anti-American gets bigger by the day: Immigrants, both legal and undocumented. Immigration attorneys. Judges. Lawyers. Law firms. Doctors. Scientists. Students. Universities. Nonprofits.
Given what we know about the government and its expansive definition of what constitutes a threat to its power, any one of us who dare to speak truth to power could be targeted next as an enemy of the state.
Certainly, it is easy to remain silent in the face of evil.
What is harder-what we lack today and so desperately need-are those with moral courage who will risk their freedoms and lives in order to speak out against evil in its many forms.
Throughout history, individuals or groups of individuals have risen up to challenge the injustices of their age. Nazi Germany had its Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The gulags of the Soviet Union were challenged by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. America had its color-coded system of racial segregation and warmongering called out for what it was, blatant discrimination and profiteering, by Martin Luther King Jr.
And then there was Jesus Christ who not only died challenging the police state of his day but provided a blueprint for civil disobedience that would be followed by those, religious and otherwise, who came after him.
Any reflection on Jesus' life and death within a police state must take into account several factors: Jesus spoke out strongly against such things as empires, controlling people, state violence and power politics. Jesus challenged the political and religious belief systems of his day. And worldly powers feared Jesus, not because he challenged them for control of thrones or government but because he undercut their claims of supremacy, and he dared to speak truth to power in a time when doing so could-and often did-cost a person his life.
It makes you wonder how Jesus-a Palestinian refugee, a radical, and a revolutionary-would have fared in the American police state under a Trump regime.
Would Jesus-who spent his adult life speaking truth to power, challenging the status quo of his day, and pushing back against the abuses of the Roman Empire-have been snatched up in the dead of night, stripped of any real due process, made to disappear into a detention center, and handed a death sentence when he was delivered into a prison where the only way out is in a wooden box?
Consider that the charges leveled against Jesus-that he was a threat to the stability of the nation, opposed paying Roman taxes and claimed to be the rightful King-were purely political, not religious.
Jesus was presented to Pontius Pilate " as a disturber of the political peace," a leader of a rebellion, a political threat, and most gravely-a claimant to kingship, a "king of the revolutionary type."
After Jesus was formally condemned by Pilate, he was sentenced to death by crucifixion, "the Roman means of executing criminals convicted of high treason." The purpose of crucifixion was not so much to kill the criminal, as it was an immensely public statement intended to visually warn all those who would challenge the power of the Roman Empire. Hence, it was reserved solely for the most extreme political crimes: treason, rebellion, sedition, and banditry.
This radical Jesus, the political dissident who took aim at injustice and oppression, is not the politically mute, humble and obedient one whom Trump praised in his presidential proclamation.
Almost 2,000 years after Jesus was crucified by the police state of his age, we find ourselves confronted by a painful irony: that in the same week commemorating the death and resurrection of Jesus, a Palestinian refugee who was killed by the police state for speaking truth to power, the U.S. government is prosecuting Palestinian refugees who are daring to challenge another modern-day police state's injustices, while threatening to impose widespread martial law on the country to put down any future rebellions.
President Trump has hinted that he could invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807, which would allow the president to use the military on American soil.
This would in effect be a declaration of martial law.
Trump has already authorized the military to take control of the southern border, which puts parts of the domestic United States under martial law.
What comes next?
Trump has long speculated about using his presidential powers under the Insurrection Act to direct the military to deal with his perceived political opponents, whom he likens to "the enemy from within."
As Austin Sarat writes for Salon: "The president alone gets to decide what constitutes an 'insurrection,' 'rebellion,' or 'domestic violence.' And once troops are deployed, it will not be easy to get them off the streets in any place that the president thinks is threatened by 'radical left lunatics.'"
So where do we go from here?
History offers some clues.
Exactly 250 years ago, on April 19, 1775, the American Revolution began with a " shot heard round the world." It wasn't sparked by acts of terrorism or rebellion-it was triggered by a government that had grown deaf to the cries of its people.
What we don't need is violence in any form-by the people or their government.
What we do need is a revival of moral courage.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, we are desperately overdue for a reminder to our government: this is still our country.
Or, as Thomas Paine so powerfully put it: "It is the duty of the patriot to protect his country from its government."
This originally appeared on The Rutherford Institute.