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Last week, two of the 18 people arrested in connection with a shooting at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Alvaredo were indicted in a Fort Worth federal court on new charges, including providing supporting material to terrorists.
The new charges come as the Trump administration classified antifa, an abbreviation for anti-fascism, as a terrorist organization in an executive order released in September.
“Individuals associated with and acting on behalf of Antifa further coordinate with other organizations and entities for the purpose of spreading, fomenting, and advancing political violence and suppressing lawful political speech,” read the order penned from the White House. “This organized effort designed to achieve policy objectives by coercion and intimidation is domestic terrorism.”
The two charges in Texas are likely only the beginning, and many of President Donald Trump’s cabinet members have echoed praise for the crackdown on antifa.
“First time ever: the FBI arrested Antifa-aligned anarchist violent extremists and terrorism charges have been brought for the July 4 Prairieland ICE attack in Texas,” FBI Director Kash Patel wrote on X. “Under President Trump’s new authorities we’ve made 20+ arrests. No one gets to harm law enforcement. Not on my watch.”
Federal prosecutors claim the Prarieland Detention Center attack was perpetrated by members of an “antifa cell,” but international relations experts disagree that antifa can even be qualified as a terrorist organization, and worry about the future implications of doing so.
“Antifa is an empty shell of an umbrella ‘group’ for left-wing organizations that are anti-racist and anti-fascist,” Dr. Todd Sandler, an economist and expert on terrorism at the University of Texas at Dallas, noted in an emailed statement. “… Calling antifa a terrorist organization is akin to saying that holding anti-fascist and anti-racist [views] makes you a terrorist, which is against free speech.”
Prarieland Attack Was Terrorism, But Antifa Is Not
Cameron Arnold and Zachary Evetts are the first people to be charged with antifa-related terrorism in American history. The two men were a part of a non-fatal shooting at Prairieland Detention Center, south of Fort Worth, on July 4. In total, a group of 11 masked individuals, many of whom were armed with militaristic gear, automatic weapons and ammunition reloads, planned an ambush at the facility directed at officers. One officer was shot in the neck. He survived his injuries.
The attack, strategically orchestrated, was an act of terrorism, said Sandler. The economist uses a “well-accepted definition of terrorism” to qualify the Prairieland attack:
“Terrorism is the premeditated use or threat to use violence by individuals or subnational groups to obtain a political or social objective through the intimidation of a large audience beyond that of the immediate victims.”
Walter Enders and Todd Sandler, The Political Economy of Terrorism
“By this definition, the ambush of the ICE facility in Dallas is a terrorist act since it was premeditated with the political goal of limiting ICE actions,” Sandler said.
But even so, basing any charges of terrorism on the classification of antifa as a terrorist organization is incorrect, he added, and there are key differences between the ideology and an organized and violent extremist group.
“[Antifa] has no centralized structure,” he said. “Most leftist groups are not terrorists, nor are they part of antifa.”
True terrorist organizations, like Al-Qaeda or Hamas, have organized and structured systems with defined roles and regulations. However, antifa is a political movement; groups may adopt its beliefs, but there are no established guidelines to adhere to, as none exist.
An example of this would be neo-Nazism. There are many extremist and violent groups, like the Ku Klux Klan or the Proud Boys, who are neo-Nazis, but the movement as a whole can not be classified as a terrorist organization because it is simply not an organization at all.
“If antifa were a terrorist organization (it is not), then one could also say that anyone holding right-wing fascist or racist views are necessarily terrorists,” said Sandler.
The broadness of antifa is what is especially concerning. According to Sandler, theoretically, there is no limitation to what the government could then decide is a terrorist organization.
“If the logic of calling antifa a terrorist organization were to hold, then a government can brand any view that it disagrees with a terrorist group,” he said.
