Yes, obviously. We interned Japanese-Americans during WWII. During the Civil War, habeas corpus was suspended.
There's the PATRIOT Act for GWOT, but a lot of people don't seem to realize it didn't actually give law enforcement new powers. It extended powers they already had for drug and organized crime cases and let them apply to terrorism cases. We had already accepted an erosion of due process and civil liberties in order to defeat the Mafia and fight the War on Drugs.
This absolutely happens as a response to the perception of threat.
In fairness, it's not always clear this is universally wrong. The only reason the US has a federal government and a permanent standing military at all, which were not always givens, is in response to the threat that European colonial powers would have retaken all the land if we didn't, and this was probably a correct assessment.
There's the PATRIOT Act for GWOT, but a lot of people don't seem to realize it didn't actually give law enforcement new powers. It extended powers they already had for drug and organized crime cases and let them apply to terrorism cases. We had already accepted an erosion of due process and civil liberties in order to defeat the Mafia and fight the War on Drugs.
This absolutely happens as a response to the perception of threat.
In fairness, it's not always clear this is universally wrong. The only reason the US has a federal government and a permanent standing military at all, which were not always givens, is in response to the threat that European colonial powers would have retaken all the land if we didn't, and this was probably a correct assessment.