Rakem Balogun and his son were asleep in their apartment early one December morning about two years ago when they woke up to the sound of a crash.

Balogun, a North Texas activist, got out of bed and walked into his living room. From where he was standing, he couldn't see his front door, but he could tell it was open, and he heard people talking outside. Suddenly, a male voice started yelling from the doorway. Whoever the voice was coming from, Balogun says, he couldn’t see them and they couldn’t see him.

It turned out to be the FBI, ATF and Dallas Police Department.

“I pretty much let them know that I would not be resisting and that there was a minor within the house,” says Balogun, 35. “I asked them to be patient and let us surrender in a peaceful manner.”

They did just that. An officer directed Balogun to walk out of his apartment with his hands up. Once he was out of the apartment, an officer told him to turn around and walk backward toward the officers. They put Balogun and his son in handcuffs and in the backs of separate cars.

Confiscated from his home were a .38-caliber handgun, a rifle and his copy of the 1962 book Negroes with Guns by civil rights leader Robert F. Williams. According to court documents, the handgun, which was loaded, and the Norinco AK-style assault rifle were both found in "unsecured locations" within feet of Balogun's bed. Agents also found and seized body armor, a fully loaded magazine and dozens of 7.62-mm rounds.

Balogun was being charged in a one-count indictment with possession of a firearm by a prohibited person, citing a 2007 domestic assault charge in Tennessee. Immediately, he was taken to a federal building in downtown Dallas for a bond hearing, he says, but he never got one. He also wasn’t allowed to make any phone calls. The government quickly moved for pretrial detention, saying Balogun was a flight risk and a danger to any other person in the community.

Two days later, a magistrate judge held a detention hearing and received testimony from FBI Special Agent Aaron Keighley. The government cited Balogun's social media activity, involvement in protests and what they called "a history of assaultive behavior." The magistrate judge agreed with the government's assessment of Balogun and allowed him to be detained without bail. For about five months, Balogun argued in court that the actions cited in the government's case against him were protected by the First Amendment.

“I asked them to be patient and let us surrender in a peaceful manner.” – Rakem Balogun Facebook

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In May 2018, all charges were dropped against Balogun, and he was released.

Today, the ACLU and Media Justice are trying to find out if Balogun was the first to be monitored under a government program that aims to identify "black identity extremists." Reports suggest the language used by the prosecution in Balogun's case resembles language used in a 2017 FBI assessment called "Black Identity Extremists likely motivated to target law enforcement officers."

In this document, the term "black identity extremist" is vaguely described. Basically, a black identity extremist is someone who is likely influenced by a mixture of black nationalist "sovereign citizen" ideology, anti-authoritarianism and "BIE ideology." Such a person might commit premeditated, retaliatory lethal violence against law enforcement, motivated by "perceptions of police brutality against African Americans," according to the assessment.

Nusrat Choudhury, deputy director of the ACLU's Racial Justice Program, says there is a significant public concern that Balogun is the first black activist who was surveilled and arrested thanks to the FBI's creation of the black identity extremist threat label. While the ACLU doesn't know all the reasons for the FBI's investigation of Balogun, the language used in his case resembles language found in the FBI's assessment, Choudhury says.

"... That language suggests that the prosecution of him stems from the FBI's labeling of him as a so-called black identity extremist," she says.

Rakem Balogun Allison V. Smith

The assessment states that "perceptions of police brutality against African Americans spurred an increase in premeditated, retaliatory lethal violence against law enforcement and will very likely serve as justification for such violence." The FBI cited six unrelated instances of violence against police in its assessment, including Micah Johnson's July 7, 2016, ambush in Dallas that left five officers dead. It mentions social media surveillance, the use of certain online search terms, the content a person creates and their associations.

"Part of what Media Justice and the ACLU is seeking to learn from the litigation we filed against the FBI under the Freedom of Information Act is the genesis of this term 'black identity extremist,' how it's being used and how state, local and federal law enforcement are being trained on it," Choudhury says. "That's the kind of information that will help us figure out if the prosecution of Mr. Balogun was the result of the creation of a 'black identity extremist' threat label."

Choudhury says the assessment was disseminated to at least 18,000 law enforcement agencies nationwide. She says it's a flawed assessment that isn't based on evidence.

"It asserts without evidence that there is a so-called group of black identity extremists who are likely motivated to target law enforcement officers," Choudhury says. "So, it uses circular reasoning, and what that does is it draws attention and focus on black activists, like activists involved in Black Lives Matter."