Of course the difference between search for economic (tax evasion) control vs search for security (written/recorded "thought crime") control is the important difference here.
Regardless of how the subtleties of politics shift over time, someone who enters a country seeking to kill and destroy should not be a allowed inside regardless of what they're called.
"Terrorist" is a just word governments use to scare their citizens into giving up their civil liberties in exchange for security theater and authoritarianism.
If you believe that these actions are necessary to meaningfully reduce harm from terrorists, then the government's claim about life and death holds up.
The concern is that these actions do not meet those conditions (necessary, meaningful reduction), and that the government is using the argument to cover for actions it wants to take for other reasons, including political ones.
Also, even those conditions are not sufficient to justify it. The actions must be lawful, of course, and the loss of liberty must be worth the gains in security; the U.S. (generally) has valued liberty very highly.