The U.S. government has long maintained lists of terrorist organizations. Groups classified as “Specially Designated Global Terrorists” or “Foreign Terrorist Organizations” have been hit with financial penalties, immigration restrictions, or other sanctions. Groups on the FTO list, such as Al Qaeda and ISIS, have been targeted with lethal strikes.

But these designations aren’t enough for President Donald Trump. The U.S. government has instead begun drawing up new lists of terrorist organizations without disclosing the identities of the groups to Congress or the American people.

One of these lists is tied to Trump’s undeclared war in the Caribbean and the Pacific Ocean, where the U.S. military is summarily executing alleged drug traffickers. There are reportedly dozens of groups on the list, but only two organizations — the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua and the Colombian guerrilla group Ejército de Liberación Nacional — are publicly known.

Trump has also ordered his administration to compile a domestic terrorist list made up of his political foes, despite the fact there is no legal mechanism for labeling exclusively domestic organizations as terrorist groups. Under Trump’s National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, or NSPM-7, he instructed his administration to target U.S. progressive groups and their donors as well as political activists who profess undefined anti-American, anti-fascist, or anti-Christian sentiments.

Unlike with prior lists, such as the State Department’s register of FTOs, it’s currently impossible to know if you are a member of a domestic terrorist group and what the penalties might include.

“Existing laws allow the president to create two types of lists: designated foreign terrorist organizations and specially designated global terrorists. Statutes specify the results of being on these lists, such as being liable for material support and financial sanctions,” Faiza Patel, the senior director of the Brennan Center’s liberty and national security program told The Intercept. “But neither of these lists, and none of these laws, authorizes the president to designate domestic groups as terrorist organizations.”

Lawmakers see Trump’s push to build secret terrorist lists as an authoritarian overreach that could result in government violence — or even deadly force — against American citizens exercising their constitutional rights in the United States.

“You can easily see a world where the president of the United States labels protest groups ‘terrorists,’ doesn’t tell anyone, and creates an excuse to unilaterally use the military inside our cities, similar to the way he’s used them in the Caribbean,” Sen. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., said in a Senate floor speech last month. “This time, instead of stopping drug traffickers, it will be stopping Americans, potentially from exercising their right to free speech.”

“I don’t think that’s an irrational fear to have,” Rep. Sara Jacobs, D-Calif., a member of the House Armed Services Committee, said of the possibility of Trump expanding his war on supposed terrorists in the Caribbean and the Pacific to the United States. “I represent a border community. I have a lot of fears about what this will mean for my community and what they’ll try to use these so-called authorities to do domestically.”

The Department of War, Department of Justice, and the White House all failed to provide lists of the groups being targeted to The Intercept. The White House did not respond to repeated requests to clarify whether those on the administration’s domestic enemies list are subject to summary execution.

Antifa, short for anti-fascist, is a decentralized, leftist ideology; a collection of related ideas and political concepts much like feminism or environmentalism. Over the last decade, however, Republicans have blamed antifa for violence and used it as an omnibus term for left-wing activists — as if it were an organization with members and a command structure.

In 2019, during his first term, Trump floated the idea of declaring antifa “a major Organization of Terror,” likening the group MS-13, an international criminal gang that originated in the U.S. that the Trump administration added to the FTO list earlier this year. “The United States of America will be designating ANTIFA as a Terrorist Organization,” Trump tweeted in 2020, during protests after the police killing of George Floyd. But then-FBI Director Christopher Wray said antifa was “not a group or an organization” but a “movement or an ideology.” Trump lashed out, calling antifa “well funded ANARCHISTS & THUGS who are protected because the … FBI is simply unable, or unwilling, to find their funding source.” After Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, in order to overturn his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden, Trump blamed “antifa people” for inciting violence.

In September, Trump signed an executive order designating antifa as a “domestic terror organization.” He followed it by issuing NSPM-7, which directs the Justice Department and elements of the Intelligence Community and national security establishment to target “anti-fascism … movements” and “domestic terrorist organizations.”

Under U.S. law, the government can designate “foreign terrorist organizations,” a process that typically entails a formal declaration by the secretary of state at the direction of the president, allowing the Treasury Department to impose financial penalties and the Justice Department to prosecute people for providing “material support” to the group. Congress has not passed any law creating a domestic terrorism designation, nor is there a standalone crime of “domestic terrorism.”

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