While the media continues to ignore and even mock Trump’s war on “Antifa” terrorism as legally impossible, the FBI is quietly interrogating protesters.
The Bureau is targeting anti-ICE protesters not charged with any crime, like Chicago-based English professor Elias Cepeda, as I recently reported. Often people targeted have refused to go public with their experience, fearing retribution. But one protester, fed up with the culture of self-censorship, decided to share his story. His account sheds light on the FBI’s attempts to map out some organized Antifa superstructure — and in doing so, undermining Americans’ freedom of speech and political expression.
Special-needs teacher Miles Serafini, 26, was watching a movie with his roommate when the FBI knocked on his door in suburban Tucson, Arizona last Friday. Two special agents greeted him, introducing themselves only as “James” and “Keith.” They didn’t offer their own last names, but they knew Miles’ — as well as his home address, his social media handles, what car he owns, and, unbeknownst to him, his political activities.
“We came out here to ask you questions regarding a protest that happened on the the 11th of June,” one of the agents said in an exchange captured on a Ring camera and provided to me by Serafini. “We’ve been just basically going around asking questions for a few people … and your name was brought up.”
The suggestion that his name “was brought up,” puzzled Serafini, who told me he didn’t know anyone at the protest, which he’d learned about from a post on social media. When he asked the agents how they knew who he was, they wouldn’t say — though one agent, Serafini said, later told him that they knew “way more about me than I’d think.”
The exact scale of these FBI questionings is unclear, but I’ve heard similar accounts involving protesters in Portland and Chicago. (The FBI declined to comment on Serafini’s account, citing the government shutdown.)
Serafini attended an anti-ICE protest around an ICE facility in June so he could express his opposition to the deportations, he told me.
“ICE is impacting our community and people aren’t happy,” Serafini said. “People see people around them being kidnapped and shipped away in cages and they show up to protest — It’s as easy as that.”
The protest involved an estimated 300 people gathering near the ICE field office at East Valencia Road and South Country Club Road in Tucson on June 11. The demonstration started off peacefully but later became rowdy. As the crowd gathered at the ICE office, a smaller group of protesters began throwing objects — rocks, paint-balls, fireworks and smoke devices — at what appeared to be security guards stationed outside the building. The guards responded with crowd-control munitions.
Windows of the ICE facility and adjacent buildings were broken and spray-painted with graffiti. A number of businesses nearby boarded up or posted signs distancing themselves from ICE operations. Tucson Police later announced that three people were taken into custody for charges including unlawful assembly, resisting arrest, obstructing a public thoroughfare and disorderly conduct — and said that their investigation could lead to more arrests.
Serafini said he didn’t engage in any violence and hasn’t been detained or charged with any crime. But last month’s presidential directive NSPM-7 authorizes federal law enforcement to treat “extremism on migration” as an indicator of terrorism.
Under the domestic counter-terrorism cases of the Trump administration, no crime needs to be actually committed for authorities to open an investigation. In fact, NSPM-7 explicitly calls for a preemptive approach where law enforcement intervene in things “before they result in violent political acts.” Attorney General Pam Bondi cited NSPM-7 in her own directive, ordering the FBI and other federal law enforcement agencies to crack down on anti-ICE “terrorism,” citing protests in front of ICE facilities specifically.
After 9/11, as the FBI reoriented itself to fighting terror groups like al Qaeda, they focused on identifying and locating individuals and then mapping out their networks of family, friends and associates. That’s the Trump administration approach to Antifa, imagining an organization network that encompasses everything from membership cards to elaborate funding.
This approach was evident to Serafini, who told me: “I could tell by their questioning that they were trying to figure out the shadowy entity behind the protest.”
He added: “What a waste of their time to go after shit that doesn’t exist.”
The FBI seemed more interested in who was behind the protest than the protest itself, with the agents repeatedly asking about who had produced the protest signs, he explained.
“They wanted to know where they were from and who supplied them,” Serafini said. “Nothing about what was actually on them.”
The signage has become a point of interest to the Trump administration. At a roundtable event on Antifa earlier this month, President Trump pointed to the quality of the signs as evidence that the protests must be funded by unseen benefactors.
Per Trump:
“When you see the signs, and they’re all made out of a beautiful, beautiful paper. Beautiful, nice, stiff, very expensive paper with beautiful wood handles all the same. All the same color. They come from very expensive printing machines. These are are people that write out their signs in a basement, that believe in something. These are paid anarchists.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi echoed the same sentiment recently.
“That’s one of the things about Antifa," Bondi said on Fox News earlier this month. “You’re seeing people out there with thousands of signs that all match — pre-bought, pre-put together — they’re organized and someone is funding it.”
The administration is convinced that these protests aren’t spontaneous, and because of NSPM-7, the FBI has to prioritize collecting intelligence to show that. Serafini said that a particular focus of the FBI agents was whether the violence at the protest had been premeditated; and he when he told them it all seemed spontaneous, they implied he was lying.
Per Serafini:
“They asked me if the violence (rocks, paint balloons) seemed spontaneous or premeditated. I told them it seemed spontaneous once the ICE agents escalated. They brought up that some protestors showed up with riot shields, so they questioned why they would bring shields if violence wasn’t premeditated. And they kept drilling me on the fact that I showed up alone, [that I didn’t] remember where I saw the flyer, and didn’t know anybody there. They told me that’s unusual and pretty suspicious — as if I was holding back information about whoever organized the protest. They kept insinuating that I was lying to them.”
“They showed me photos of several protestors … and tried to get information on them. They said ICE officers were badly injured and that these were the real suspects they needed info on. I told them I had no idea who they were. They seemed frustrated by that, but it’s the truth.”
According to Serafini, the two FBI agents showed him photos of himself at the protest as well as several other protesters — people he knew nothing about. The agents asked him for his cell phone, but he refused. The questioning lasted about an hour. Serafini said they left him with a chilling message: that they couldn’t guarantee this would be the last time they saw him.
The agents may not have learned anything from Serafini, but the visit — which took place one day before the No Kings protest — did accomplish one thing: Serafini decided against going to No Kings. He was spooked.
That is exactly the chilling effect on speech that the FBI investigating political matters risks creating.
“Worked on me,” he said.
— Edited by William M. Arkin