September 9, 2026, New York – As the country prepares to mark the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, the Center for Constitutional Rights released the following statement: 

In the 25 years since September 11, 2001, the sweeping political project the  U.S. government undertook in its aftermath has shaped, shattered, or ended millions of lives. Exploiting fear and suffering, the Bush administration launched a limitless “war on terror,” whose stated purpose was all pretext to impose its will on other countries, expand its power beyond constitutional bounds, and target vulnerable communities. It invaded and occupied two countries while bombing six others, created a global torture program, built a prison at Guantánamo designed to exist outside the law, further militarized immigration enforcement, and otherwise brutalized, terrorized, abducted, imprisoned, and surveilled countless people – all under the guise of combating an amorphous, ever-expanding enemy. 

The U.S. officials responsible for this post-9/11 human rights crisis have not been held accountable; on the contrary, these war criminals live lives of luxury, or they died with their reputations as statesmen intact. The lack of accountability across every U.S. administration of the last quarter century – Bush, Obama, and Biden – has contributed to a culture of impunity that infects every aspect of public life, and we are all paying the price with the Trump presidency. 

The “war on terror” was and is horrifically racist. Its leaders have directed their violence and venom at predominantly Muslim countries in Asia and Africa. They have treated Muslim, Arab, and South Asian communities as inherently suspect. You cannot see the “war on terror” clearly if you do not see it in the context of this country’s history of white supremacy, patriarchy, colonialism, and Christian nationalism.   

The late Michael Ratner, people’s lawyer and our former board chair, was the rare public figure to oppose the “war on terror” from its outset. Since then, we have stood with people harmed by all aspects of this “war”: Iraqi survivors of torture, those injured or killed by U.S. contractor Blackwater, and those suffering the long-term harms of the U.S.’s unlawful invasion; people imprisoned at Guantánamo, including our client Guled Hassan Duran, who continues to be held despite being cleared for release since 2021; victims of rendition-to-torture and the U.S. global torture program; victims of drone strikes; Muslim, Arab, and South Asian immigrants rounded up because of their identities; Afghan and Afghan-American civil society organizations; Palestinian rights activists; Black activists; and environmental justice activists smeared as “terrorists” because they challenged injustice. 

Much of our early post-9/11 work continues. Today, because of the lack of accountability for these gross abuses of human rights, Trump can use “counterterrorism” to pursue his authoritarian program. The state has constructed a framework – a structure of institutions, laws, policies, practices, and directives, all bolstered by propaganda – that it is able to use against virtually anyone it decides to call a “terrorist” or supportive of “terrorism.” Trump and his aides have pinned the vague terrorist label on everyone who goes against their regressive political agenda – from immigrants to Palestinian rights activists to trans people to Black Lives Matter to Renee Good and Alex Pretti. The administration has murdered hundreds of people in the name of combating “narcoterrorism” and prosecuted anti-ICE protesters as “domestic terrorists.” Trump recently launched a global campaign against “FLT,” or “far-left terrorism” and unveiled a counterterrorism strategy that calls human rights defenders “anti-American, radically pro-transgender, and anarchist.” Clearly, “counterterrorism” is a primary means by which the administration seeks to suspend human rights, destroy political opposition, criminalize anyone committed to dignity, equality, and universal rights, and build an authoritarian regime. 

Trump and his administration must be stopped. We are challenging Trump’s “counterterrorism” abuses in court, as well as at the UN and other regional or international human rights bodies, and we are working with organizers around the country – and around the world – to support emerging strategies because we know that solidarity and resistance across movements can build power to break through. We must all work together to dismantle the “counterterrorism” regime and restructure the state so that it is geared not to wage endless war but to protect rights, provide genuine security, and meet people’s material needs. The only force that can finally end the “war on terror” is a collective struggle for justice.