New initiative could use terror laws against college students who protest war in Gaza

CHICAGO (WLS) -- The Trump administration's new Justice Department Joint Task Force purports to seek justice for the victims of the October 7th attack while addressing ongoing threats from Hamas and its affiliates.

However, some tell the ABC7 I-Team this will allow the FBI to weaponize the free speech of college students who have spoken out against the war in Gaza.

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"They're trying to bring the war on terror home, and I think that's exactly what they're doing here," Thomas Durkin, a former federal prosecutor turned defense attorney, told 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."

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.'"

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"If they can come after the students, they can come after anyone," Durkin said.