US Attorney General Pam Bond in the Oval Office on Oct. 15. (Photo: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP)
A federal grand jury Thursday charged two men with terrorism-related offenses over their alleged involvement in an attack on an immigration detention center in Texas earlier this summer.
The charges mark the first time the Department of Justice (DOJ) sought and secured terrorism charges citing President Donald Trump’s recent executive order claiming to designate the anti-fascist antifa movement as a “domestic terrorist organization.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi announced the charges on social media, claiming that they prove “Antifa is a left-wing terrorist organization.”
“They will be prosecuted as such,” she added.
Cameron Arnold of Dallas and Zachary Evetts of Waxahachie, Texas, were among several people arrested over a July 4 shooting outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Alvarado, Texas, during which a police officer suffered a non-fatal shot in the neck.
For their alleged roles in the shooting, Arnold and Evetts were charged with providing material support to terrorists, attempted murder of federal officers and firearms offenses.
Under U.S. law, providing general support to terrorists is legally distinct from knowingly supporting a designated foreign terrorist organization. The two actions are prosecuted under different statutes that have separate conviction requirements.
The indictment against the two men alleged they were part of a “North Texas Antifa Cell.” The document also defined antifa as a “militant enterprise made up of networks of individuals and small groups, primarily ascribing (sic) to a revolutionary anarchist or autonomous Marxist ideology” that seeks the overthrow of the U.S. government.
Evetts’ defense attorney told Reuters that he has not seen evidence to support the terrorism charges and believes the DOJ brought them for political reasons.
Trump signed the antifa order earlier this year while vowing to crack down on left-leaning nonprofits and “the radical left,” which he and his allies claimed — without evidence — were responsible for the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
While Trump defined antifa as an “organization,” experts on anti-fascism movements have noted that the term, rather than referring to an organization, instead refers to a decentralized affiliation of far-left activists who oppose far-right politics through various methods, some more extreme and violent than others.
Legal experts have questioned the legality of Trump’s antifa order. No federal law, they note, allows the president to label domestic terrorist groups in the U.S., and antifa has no official leadership or organization structure.
They have also warned that by designating subscription to an ideology as terrorism, the order could be used as a cudgel against nonviolent left-wing protest activity protected by the First Amendment.
In addition to the antifa order, Trump signed a separate national security memorandum directing the federal government to investigate and dismantle “domestic terrorism networks.” Trump did so days after he and his allies said they would dismantle left-leaning progressive nonprofit groups that they falsely claimed fund and support political violence and terrorism in the U.S.
The Trump administration appears to be using the memo to investigate nonprofits and donors who hold political beliefs and support causes disfavored by the president, according to reports from Reuters and the Wall Street Journal.
