The United States Department of Justice presented this Thursday (16) the first formal charges for terrorism linked to the Antifa movement. The targets are two men identified as Cameron Arnold and Zachary Evetts, identified by authorities for attacking, on July 4, an immigration detention center in Alvarado, Texas.
According to prosecutors, the group to which they belonged had used fireworks and graffiti to distract police officers before opening fire on officers with semi-automatic rifles.
The indictment, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, marks the first time the U.S. government has prosecuted members of Antifa for terrorism crimes, less than a month after President Donald Trump declared the movement a domestic terrorist organization.
FBI Director Kash Patel confirmed the measure through a post on the X network.
“The FBI arrested violent extremists and anarchists, aligned with Antifa, and prosecuted them for terrorism for the first time,” he wrote.
According to court documents cited by the broadcaster CNNArnold – who also uses the name Autumn Hill – and Evetts were believed to be part of an Antifa cell that planned the attack in Texas days earlier, through group conversations. The messages exchanged included maps of the area, surveillance points and the positioning of security cameras. In total, 14 people were charged with the attack.
The American government, however, only accuses Arnold and Evetts of federal terrorism.
They are accused of providing material support to terrorists, attempting to assassinate a federal agent and using a firearm during an act of violence – crimes that can result in life in prison.
Another 12 people involved in the attack were charged separately, but not for terrorism. Among them is former marine Benjamin Hanil Song, accused of attempted murder of a federal agent, illegal possession of weapons and obstruction of justice. According to the investigation, Song would have purchased four of the ten rifles used in the attack, one of them with a binary trigger, which fires two shots per trigger press.
The formal indictment states that the group’s objective was “to destroy United States government property and commit acts dangerous to human life with the intent to influence national policy.”
In September, Trump signed a presidential decree designating the Antifa movement as a terrorist organization. According to the Congressional Research Service, Antifa is “a decentralized movement, made up of individuals and small autonomous groups that share anarchist, socialist or communist ideologies.”
