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President Donald Trump has announced that the United States will designate Antifa as a terrorist organization, according to a tweet he sent Sunday.Current and former government officials say it would be unconstitutional for the U.S. government to proscribe First Amendment-protected activity. U.S. law allows terrorist designations for foreign groups since belonging to those groups doesn't enjoy the same protections. Antifa, short for anti-fascists, describes a broad group of people whose positions can be hard to define, but many members support oppressed populations and protest the amassing of wealth by corporations and elites. Some employ radical or militant tactics to get their message across. Typically, groups who identify as Antifa are amorphous and don't have a central leadership, though some local activists are highly organized, according to federal law enforcement officials. That has made it difficult for U.S. law enforcement to deal with violence from members of groups that label themselves as Antifa. Federal law enforcement officials told CNN they are aware of outside groups who are behind some of the property destruction and violence, using the cover of the legitimate protests in Minneapolis and elsewhere. Those domestic extremist groups include anarchists, white supremacists and far-left extremists, some of whom have overlapping affiliations.An announcement by the Justice Department on Sunday to use Joint Terrorism Task Forces around the country to investigate some of the violence in major cities singles out leftist Antifa activity, though U.S. law enforcement officials say there are groups from both the extremist left and right involved in the riots and attacks on police. In response to the president's tweet, ACLU National Security Project Director Hina Shamsi said there is "no legal authority for designating a domestic group" as a terrorist organization."As this tweet demonstrates, terrorism is an inherently political label, easily abused and misused. There is no legal authority for designating a domestic group. Any such designation would raise significant due process and First Amendment concerns."The Justice Department has studied the issue of creating a domestic terrorism law to apply to people involved in violence and who belong to domestic extremist groups, but the constitutional issues have been a hurdle to that effort.