What legal mechanisms would be required to give domestic terrorist designations the same powers as foreign terrorist organization listings?

1. Change the statutory definition that limits FTO tools to “foreign” groups

Most powerful legal effects—designation by the Secretary of State under Section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act and the associated criminal and immigration consequences—flow from statutory language that requires an organization be “foreign,” so Congress would have to amend the INA (8 U.S.C. §1189/Section 219) to authorize designation of domestic organizations or create a parallel statutory scheme for domestic groups; the FTO criteria (terrorist activity, capacity/intent, threat to U.S. security) would need to be adapted to domestic contexts to avoid a textual mismatch ^{[1] [4] [5]}.

2. Extend material‑support and criminal prohibitions to designated domestic organizations

Key criminal tools such as 18 U.S.C. §2339B criminalize material support to designated foreign terrorist organizations and hinge on a designation; either Congress would need to rewrite §2339B to cover domestically designated organizations or enact a new statute criminalizing material support to designated domestic terrorist organizations with appropriate mens rea and venue rules ^{[2] [6]}.

3. Give Treasury/OFAC and the Executive comparable sanction and asset‑freezing powers

The Executive Order framework (e.g., E.O. 13224) and OFAC designation authorities under IEEPA and other statutes enable asset‑blocking, transaction bans, and secondary sanctions for foreign targets; to apply those tools domestically would require either statutory authorization expanding OFAC’s remit to U.S. persons/entities or a tailored sanction regime administered domestically—both options implicate limits on using emergency economic powers against U.S. persons and would likely need express congressional authorization ^{[7] [8] [3] [9]}.

4. Design procedural protections and judicial review parallel to FTO law

The FTO process builds in notice, administrative procedures, and a petition/appeal route to the D.C. Circuit that derives from statute and regulation; a domestic counterpart would need to prescribe who designates, what evidentiary standard applies, how subjects are notified, and how courts review designations to meet constitutional due‑process and First Amendment constraints—without clear procedural safeguards, domestic labeling risks successful court challenges ^{[10] [4] [5]}.

5. Balance enforcement authorities with civil‑liberties and federalism concerns

Legal scholars argue many international‑terrorism tools could be adapted to domestic contexts, but also warn against executive overreach and the chilling of political activity; opponents emphasize existing criminal statutes and investigative authorities could be used more aggressively without new domestic‑designation statutes, while advocates argue statutory designation would centralize and normalize counter‑terror tools—Congress would therefore face a fraught policy choice with embedded political agendas on both sides ^{[6] [11] [12]}.

6. Political and administrative realities: legislation, executive orders, or agency rulemaking

Practically, the route most consistent with constitutional constraints is congressional legislation creating a domestic‑designation authority with precise definitions, statutory limitations on use of economic emergency powers against U.S. persons, criminal‑law extensions, and mandatory judicial review; the alternative—relying on executive orders, OFAC rulemaking, or reinterpreting existing statutes—would be faster but legally vulnerable and politically contentious, as warnings from academic and NGO analyses suggest ^{[3] [13] [9]}.

Sources do not prescribe exact legislative text; the maps above are drawn from existing statutory frameworks for foreign designations, criminal‑support statutes, executive‑order sanctions practice, administrative regulations, and scholarly critiques of adapting foreign‑terrorism tools to domestic actors ^{[1] [2] [7] [10] [6]}.