In August 2017 the FBI's counterterrorism division circulated an intelligence assessment inventing a new threat category: "Black Identity Extremists," defined as people likely to commit violence against police in response to perceived racism. Civil-liberties groups and members of Congress immediately recognized the echo of COINTELPRO's "Black Nationalist Hate Groups" program — a designation built around ideology and race rather than conduct, used to justify surveillance of activists who had committed no crime.

Its best-known casualty was Rakem Balogun of Dallas, arrested in a pre-dawn raid in December 2017 after FBI agents monitored his Facebook posts criticizing police. Held five months without bail on a firearms count that collapsed in court, Balogun was released in May 2018 with no conviction — widely described as the first person jailed under the BIE designation. The FBI formally retired the term in 2019 after congressional pressure, folding it into a broader "racially motivated violent extremism" category whose criteria remain classified.