Post-9/11 security laws now target protesters and migrants, analysis finds

September 11, 2026 at 06:24 PM2 min

This digest was compiled by AI from multiple sources — links to the originals are below.

A quarter-century after 9/11, the legal framework built for the 'war on terror' has expanded to criminalize protest movements and detain migrants under national security logic. Mansoor Adayfi was held at Guantanamo for nearly 15 years without charge, and similar detention practices now apply to migrants. The analysis argues this is a continuation of pre-9/11 policies, not an aberration.

Key Facts

A protest movement has been proscribed as a terrorist organisation, criminalising support for those enduring a genocide.
Migrants are held in detention facilities modelled on practices documented at Guantanamo Bay, and some are sent to the Cuban detention camp itself.
Mansoor Adayfi was held at Guantanamo for nearly 15 years without ever being charged with a crime.
Surveillance infrastructure built to monitor terrorism has been turned on Palestine solidarity protesters.

Expansion of Security Laws

The legal architecture assembled after 9/11 was sold as an emergency response to a single, unrepeatable day. A quarter of a century later, it has not been rolled back or meaningfully questioned, but has become permanent. Its reach has extended steadily beyond anything its original architects would have needed to justify at the time. The same legal tools first used to justify holding men without charge have been used to designate a protest movement a terrorist organisation for the positions it holds. They are now used to run immigration enforcement on a national security logic drawn directly from the war on terror.

Historical Continuity

The hostility that the war on terror eventually gave a name to was already established Western policy long before 9/11. 9/11 did not invent the idea that certain populations could be treated as a security problem before they were treated as human beings. It simply furnished that idea with a name, a legal framework, and a budget without limit. Reading the last 25 years as a continuation of something older, rather than an aberration that began with a single attack, makes the years since start to make a different kind of sense.

Guantanamo Detention Case

Mansoor Adayfi was held at Guantanamo for nearly 15 years without ever being charged with a crime. He has written of treatment no human being should have to endure. In one episode, he opened a boxed meal to find the words 'we will never forget, we will never forgive' scrawled on the inside of the box.