The new Justice Department Joint Task Force under the Trump administration aims to provide justice for the victims of the October 7th attack and address the continuing threats posed by Hamas and its related groups.
However, concerns have been raised by some individuals speaking to the ABC7 I-Team, suggesting that the task force could potentially be used by the FBI to suppress the free speech rights of college students who have expressed dissent regarding the conflict in Gaza.
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“They’re attempting to localize the global war on terror, and it appears that’s precisely what they are working towards in this scenario,” commented Thomas Durkin, a former federal prosecutor who now practices as a defense attorney, in an interview with the I-Team.
Durkin and fellow attorney Bernard Harcourt said the new FBI Joint Task Force on October 7th, promising to find and prosecute individuals providing material support to Hamas, is a perilous overreach of government.
“This is really dangerous for free speech protections,” Harcourt told the I-Team. “The way that it operates effectively is by connecting someone’s speech to someone else’s, and that someone else being, you know, a terrorist organization.”
I think that goes beyond just like ruining your free speech amendment. It’s not only you can’t speak, but it’s going to use that against you.
Ethan Nitsche, University of Illinois Chicago student
They argued the task force is empowered to link the free speech of college students protesting the war in Gaza to anti-Israeli propaganda concocted by Hamas, allowing students who speak out to be charged with aiding a foreign terrorist organization.
“Then all of sudden, the speech is no longer protected,” Harcourt said. “Then trying to criminalize it through the material support statutes.”
The consequences could be severe if convicted.
“It’s anywhere from 20 years to life, and actually the guidelines themselves are much higher than that,” Durkin said.
There are already several federal civil suits filed along these same lines, including one for a pro-Palestinian protest that shut down the entrance ramp to O’Hare Airport.
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College students in Chicago voiced their concerns to the I-Team.
“I think that goes beyond just like ruining your free speech amendment,” University of Illinois Chicago student Ethan Nitsche said. “It’s not only you can’t speak, but it’s going to use that against you.”
“It’s trying to scare them into submission,” Columbia College student Aurora Lowther said. “And go, ‘Okay, well maybe I won’t speak out.'”
“If they can come after the students, they can come after anyone,” Durkin said.
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