Last month, Colleen Fagan was observing an immigration enforcement operation at an apartment complex in Portland, Maine, when federal agents scanned her face with a smartphone and appeared to record her car license plate number.
In a social media video she recorded, Fagan can be heard asking why the agent was taking her information. What the agent said next made the video go viral.
"Cause we have a nice little database," the masked agent said. "And now you're considered a domestic terrorist."
Fagan, who is a social worker, has now joined a federal class action lawsuit that argues the Department of Homeland Security and a number of its sub-agencies are violating the First Amendment and are taking actions "designed to chill, suppress, and control speech that they do not like."
"A federal agent called me a domestic terrorist just because I recorded agents operating in public in my community. But I have a right to do that, and so do others," Fagan said in a statement. "I want people to know how important it is to use our First Amendment rights to observe and document what is happening. Peaceful dissent is not a crime."
Though Fagan's video went viral, her full name had not been widely publicized until this lawsuit.