Trump Administration Issues Memorandum to Prevent Antifa Entry to United States

On January 5^th, President Donald Trump issued a memorandum which seeks to prohibit international Antifa members from entering the United States. Specifically, the memorandum orders the Secretary of State to review evidence to justify the designation of Antifa as a foreign terrorist organization, and further consider listing Antifa as an “Identified Criminal Organization.” Both actions would effectively ban foreign travelers who were identified as Antifa members from entering the United States.

Press Secretary Kayleigh Mcenany issued a statement on the decision:

Antifa activists have brutally attacked our law-abiding friends, neighbors, and business owners, and destroyed historic landmarks that our communities have cherished for decades.  This violence and lawlessness has no place in the United States and will be called out for the domestic terrorism that it is.  Today, President Donald J. Trump signed a memorandum to ensure that Federal officials assess actions of Antifa activists in light of Federal laws that restrict the entry of aliens associated with terrorist organizations and aliens intent on criminal activity.  President Trump will not allow Antifa, or any terrorist organization, to destroy our great country.

This is an important step which the Center has long advocated. As we noted in our June 2020 Decision Brief:

Antifa operates in multiple countries, including the United States, and throughout much of western Europe. International structures link Antifa affiliates, including for example, the International Antifa Defense Fund, which claims to have provided funds to Antifa in 18 countries.  Designating Antifa a Foreign Terrorist Organization would restrict the travel of its members, make illegal virtually all types of support for Antifa and authorize the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) to seize any assets discovered and reported under mandatory reporting by all financial institutions.

While the vast majority of Antifa’s criminal acts in the United States are undertaken by U.S. nationals, the restriction of Antifa movement would have an impact on the movement’s coordination across international borders. Antifa groups are operative in most Western European countries, as well as Canada, and much of Latin America. Antifa activists routinely travel across borders to attend scheduled demonstrations (for example targeting meetings of the G20 economic forum), hold international conferences for planning and propaganda purposes, and in a few limited cases serve as foreign fighters (most notably in Northern Syria and Ukraine.) Disrupting these activities is a worthy goal for U.S. national security.

Given that the State Department bureaucracy is unlikely to move quickly enough to enact these changes before January 20^th, can we expect that a future administration will take advantage of the Trump memorandum?

It seems unlikely, given the intensely partisan environment surrounding the topic, where significant Democratic lawmakers have declined to even admit that Antifa exists.

Yet this has not always been the case.

As Center for Security Policy Senior Analyst for Strategy J. Michael Waller noted in his contribution to the Center’s Monograph Unmasking Antifa: Five Perspectives on a Growing Threat, under the Obama administration federal law enforcement investigated and documented the international nature of the threat:

Antifa became more organized and more militant during the last years of the Obama administration. In late 2015 or early 2016, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) began investigating Antifa for links to foreign violent extremist groups. “The purpose of the investigation, according to the April 2016 assessment,” Politico reported, was “to determine whether the U.S.-based anarchists might start committing terrorist bombings like their counterparts in ‘foreign anarchist extremist movements’ in Greece, Italy and Mexico, possibly at the Republican and Democratic conventions that summer.” Antifa was declaring war on America’s entire political system.

Following the election there may open up more room for Democratic leaders to recognize the danger, as Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler did last week in a press conference where he singled out Antifa by name.

As Antifa continues to adjust its rhetoric and activity to include the targeting liberals as well as conservatives for violence, a future administration should not be so hasty in seeking to ignore or rescind this memorandum. They may come to quietly thank President Trump for taking this important step.