Federal Bureau of Investigation agents, at least one of whom works on counterterrorism, went to the home of a former member of a climate activism group for questioning last week, potentially signaling a new escalation in the Trump administration’s promise to criminalize nonprofits and activist groups as domestic terrorists.
Two FBI agents, one from New York’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, told a former member of Extinction Rebellion NYC they wanted to ask him about the group at his home upstate on Friday, an attorney for the group told The Intercept. The visit followed a prior attempt to reach him at his old address.
The FBI’s apparent probe of Extinction Rebellion NYC comes as the Justice Department ramps up its surveillance of activists protesting immigration enforcement and the Trump administration creates secret lists of domestic enemies under Trump’s National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, or NSPM-7.
“I believe this to be a significant escalation of the criminal legal system against XR and find it very troubling,” said Ron Kuby, the Extinction Rebellion attorney. “This is usually the way we find out an actual investigation is underway and is often followed by other visits and other actions.”
The former Extinction Rebellion member, who asked to remain anonymous out of fear for his safety, said that the visit came after a phone call in January from a special agent that he assumed was a scam.
“I was skeptical the phone call was really from the FBI, but after I declined to speak with the agent, she said that she was standing outside my door,” he said. She was actually at the activist’s former address, which he said made him additionally dubious. But last week, when the agents showed up at his current address, he said he saw the agent’s business card through his door.
Kuby confirmed that the agent’s business card information corresponded to a current member of the FBI’s New York Joint Terrorism Task Force. A text message from the agent, reviewed by The Intercept, shows she identified herself and stated that she was at the former member’s house to question him about Extinction Rebellion. Her name, title, and phone number match a known special agent on the task force, according to court records.
Reached by The Intercept, a public affairs officer for the New York FBI field office said, “Per longstanding DOJ policy, we cannot confirm or deny the existence or nonexistence of any investigation.”
The DOJ did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Extinction Rebellion NYC is a chapter of a loose international climate justice movement that does highly public direct actions, like an April Earth Day spray-painting over the presidential seal inside Trump Tower in Manhattan. Kuby said none of the group’s actions are violent or rise above the level of misdemeanors, and would not typically be of interest to federal counterterrorism investigators.
The former member said he had not been involved in any Extinction Rebellion actions in two years and hadn’t participated in anything that he thought would send the FBI to his door.
“They repeatedly pursued this member and traveled hundreds of miles – this suggests a real investigative effort.”
“All of our actions are incredibly public,” he said. He recalled that the agent said she had some questions about Extinction Rebellion NYC, and that he wasn’t in any trouble, before the activist declined to speak and closed his door.
Why the FBI’s counterterrorism task force would investigate Extinction Rebellion is unknown, Kuby said.
“Often, the FBI starts with former members of a group, or less central people, to begin investigations,” Kuby said. “The fact that they repeatedly pursued this member, and traveled hundreds of miles from his old address in NYC – this suggests a real investigative effort.”
Trump’s September presidential memorandum, dubbed NSPM-7, called for the National Joint Terrorism Task Force and its local offices to investigate a broad spectrum of progressive groups and donors for “anti-fascism” beliefs.
A November FBI internal report obtained by The Guardian revealed that there were multiple active FBI investigations related to NSPM-7 in 27 locations, including New York, where the agent investigating Extinction Rebellion works. Trump’s directive instructed Joint Terrorism Task Forces to proactively investigate groups and activists with vague language that civil liberty watchdogs say could easily criminalize protected speech and protest.
FBI agents also visited several activists affiliated with Extinction Rebellion and other climate groups in the Boston area last March, according to a local news report. The reasons for those visits remain unclear, and the activists involved said nothing came of them. The FBI’s Boston Division declined to comment to the press at the time.
After Extinction Rebellion NYC members protested New York Democratic Rep. Tom Suozzi’s town hall at a Long Island synagogue last month, objecting to his vote to increase ICE funding, Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon posted on X that she would be investigating the protest to see “whether federal law has been broken.”
None of the activists involved in the Suozzi protest have been contacted by federal investigators, representatives for the group told The Intercept. Suozzi did not reply to messages.
In 2023, then-Florida Senator and current Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote a letter to then-FBI Director Christopher Wray and DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas asking them to bar members of Extinction Rebellion in the U.K. from the U.S. in response to a report that the group planned to protest at federal properties.
“Among other things, the group will allegedly block highways and disrupt federal properties, but violence and terrorist acts cannot be discounted given the group’s past threats,” Rubio wrote in the 2023 letter. He also used similar language in proposed legislation against “antifa” protests in 2022.
Nate Smith, an Extinction Rebellion activist who took part in the Suozzi protest, objected to characterizations of the group’s activism as terrorism.
“Is petitioning an elected official at a public event what makes America great, or a federal offense?” Smith said. “I get if you don’t like it. That’s half the point, but ‘terrorism’?”
There have also been scattered reports of FBI agents visiting anti-ICE protesters around the country. While the FBI’s interest in Extinction Rebellion remains unclear, the group pointed to Trump’s NSPM-7 directive.
“We did not anticipate that we would be among the first groups of those who speak inconveniently to be targeted,” Extinction Rebellion NYC said in a public statement. “We did not anticipate the level of capitulation from our country’s hallowed institutions and political opposition.”
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