Experts dispute Noem’s description of Al-Jadeed as a “domestic terrorist.” Here’s what this term means

This article originally appeared on PolitiFact.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem described the actions of Renee Nicole Judd, a Minneapolis woman who was shot and killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer, as “domestic terrorism.”

Noem said Judd refused to obey orders to get out of her car, “arm her car,” and “tried to run over” an officer. Minnesota officials dispute Noem’s account, citing videos showing Judd trying to walk away.

Read more: Congress is discussing the potential consequences of ICE and Noem after the killing of Renee Judd

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, a member of the state’s Democratic Farm-Workers Party, said Jan. 8 on CNN that Noem’s statement was a “misuse of the term” domestic terrorism.

The Trump administration has used the phrase in recent months, including an immigration enforcement shooting in October.

In September, the administration issued a memorandum calling on law enforcement to prioritize threats including “violent efforts to stop immigration enforcement,” saying domestic terrorists were using violence to promote “extremist views in favor of mass immigration and open borders.” Experts said it violates freedom of expression laws.

Judd, a mother of three and a poet, lived in the Minneapolis neighborhood where she was shot. The Associated Press reported that she is a US citizen and has no criminal background. Jude’s ex-husband told the AP that she was not an activist and he did not know her to participate in the protests. Judd had dropped her 6-year-old son off at school and was driving home when she encountered ICE.

The Trump administration has strengthened immigration enforcement in Minneapolis in recent weeks, after news reports of fraud in the Somali community.

What is domestic terrorism?

Federal agencies have their own definitions of domestic terrorism.

The FBI, citing a specific section of U.S. law, defines domestic terrorism as acts that pose a danger to human life, violate federal or state criminal laws and appear to be intended to intimidate or coerce civilians. Influencing government policy through intimidation or coercion; Or influence government behavior through mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping, according to the 2020 memo.

The Department of Homeland Security uses a similar definition, citing a different law that defines domestic terrorism as dangerous to human life or potentially destructive to critical infrastructure or key resources.

“Unlike foreign terrorism, the federal government does not have a mechanism to formally charge an individual with domestic terrorism, making it sometimes difficult (and sometimes controversial) to formally designate someone as a domestic terrorist,” the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service wrote in 2023.

In 2022, former FBI agent Michael German, then a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, told PolitiFact that 51 federal laws apply to domestic terrorism.

“I think there is (and always has been) a confusion between rhetoric and law regarding terrorism,” German told PolitiFact after the shooting in Minneapolis. “There is no law that allows the United States government to designate any group or individual in the United States as a ‘domestic terrorist.’”

The federal government periodically reviews how it describes threats. For example, in 2025, federal officials sometimes used the term “nihilistic violent extremists” to describe perpetrators who do not share a single ideology but appear to be motivated by a desire, as one expert put it, for the “game” of real-life violence. Experts told PolitiFact that the term is valid, but cautioned against overusing it or citing it to mask other ideological motivations such as white supremacy.

People take part in a vigil after a US immigration agent shot and killed 37-year-old Renee Nicole Judd in her car in Minneapolis, in New York City, on January 9, 2026. Photograph by Eduardo Munoz/Reuters

The Trump administration expanded the domestic terrorism designation

DHS’s letter is similar to another immigration enforcement-related shooting in October. During the Department of Homeland Security’s months-long anti-immigration crackdown in Chicago dubbed “Operation Midway Blitz,” a Border Patrol agent shot US citizen Marimar Martinez five times.

A DHS press release described Martinez as a “domestic terrorist” and accused her of ramming her car into a Border Patrol agent’s vehicle, carrying a semi-automatic weapon and having a “history of collecting information on federal agents.”

A federal judge granted prosecutors’ request to dismiss federal charges against Martinez in November.

“Ultimately, it was determined after evaluating everything that there were serious questions about the officers’ accounts,” legal analyst Joey Jackson told CNN.

The government’s use of the term goes beyond immigration and the Department of Homeland Security.

Following the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, Trump issued a memorandum on September 25 ordering the attorney general to expand domestic terrorism priorities to include “politically motivated acts of terrorism such as organized smear campaigns, beatings, riots, looting, trespassing, assault, destruction of property, threats of violence, and civil disorder.”

Trump signed an executive order just days before designating Antifa, a broad coalition of left-wing activists, as a domestic terrorist organization.

He watches: What is Antifa and why does Trump want to classify it as a terrorist organization?

Attorney General Pam Bondi asked federal prosecutors and law enforcement agencies to prepare a list of groups “engaged in acts that may constitute domestic terrorism.”

Legal experts have raised alarms about the memorandum’s potential violations of the First Amendment.

“The order and memorandum have no basis in fact and law,” wrote Faiza Patel, director of the Brennan Justice Center for Liberty and National Security. “Acting on them would violate free speech rights, which could threaten any person or group with a broad range of unfavorable views with investigation and prosecution.”

Experts also noted the memo’s focus on left-wing violence. He did not mention the politically motivated assassination of Minnesota State Rep. Melissa Hortman, a member of the state’s Democratic Labor Party, months ago.

Written by Thomas E. Brzoszewski, a former Justice Department adviser on domestic terrorism, said on December 12: “When a policy directive targets one ideological family and leaves others at the margins, it strips away any pretense of neutrality.”

Experts raise questions about Noem’s designation as a “domestic terrorist.”

Information is still surfacing about what happened before Judd was shot. However, frame-by-frame analyzes of video footage by The New York Times and Washington Post found that Goode’s vehicle moved toward the ICE agent, but the agent was able to move out of the way and fire at least two of the three shots from his rifle from the side of the vehicle as Goode swerved away.

Brzozowski told PolitiFact that since Judd was trying to get away, “I think calling this domestic terrorism is a stretch.”

However, he said the bigger concern is that Noem is using the term domestic terrorism in the absence of any actual findings before the investigation.

“Within hours of the incident occurring that labeled this activity as domestic terrorism, what that does is strip domestic terrorism of its importance,” he said, calling it “a blatant partisan effort to label it as domestic terrorism.”

“Now, what is domestic terrorism? Whatever the Secretary of Homeland Security says? She can call anything she wants domestic terrorism. She does it without any facts.”

“While intentionally ramming a vehicle for a political purpose could amount to terrorism in a different context, the videos from the Minneapolis incident appear to show a woman trying to get away from ICE officers, not hit them,” Shirin Sinar, a Stanford Law School professor, told PolitiFact. “Here, the administration’s labeling of her as a domestic terrorist is merely an attempt to discredit a protester and justify her killing by an ICE officer.”

German told PolitiFact after the shooting in Minneapolis that there was no public evidence to suggest that Judd “engaged in prosecutable conduct under the terrorism chapter of the United States Code,” referring to Chapter 18 U.S. Code 113B. “So for a government official to label her as a domestic terrorist is not supported by law, and is absolutely contemptuous and harmful.”