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.

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.

If someone does come knocking on your door, you don’t have to say a thing.

Last week, for instance, The Intercept

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