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This week, Minnesota federal prosecutors handed down a blockbuster indictment of 15 activists involved in efforts to resist Operation Metro Surge, part of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown that flooded 2,700 federal agents into the Twin Cities to target Somali communities. Eleven of the 15 activists are charged only with conspiracy to impede or injure a federal officer. The indictment spans 94 pages, much of it cataloging Signal messages in group chats. While the indictment mostly focuses on protests involving more confrontational tactics — using U-Haul trailers and shields to block roadways to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) buildings — it also covers conduct common to ICE resistance across the country, such as tracking the license plates and locations of ICE vehicles. At every opportunity, the indictment underscores the anarchist affiliations of the activists, citing out-of-state Anarchist Speaking Tour engagements and articles written for the anarchist website CrimethInc.
From the 1919-1920 Palmer Raids deporting anarchists to the more recent Stop Cop City and DisruptJ20 mass prosecutions, the government has long directed investigative and prosecutorial firepower toward disrupting anarchist movements. Two new indictments in the past two weeks now signal a new era of protest-related prosecutions. In addition to the indictment of ICE protesters, federal prosecutors unsealed an indictment of two Stop Cop City protesters alleged to have set fires outside of the office building of Brasfield & Gorrie, the general contractor for the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center, in 2022. Troublingly, both indictments were credited as part of the National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7) initiative, an effort to investigate and prosecute civil disobedience and protest-related petty offenses as domestic terrorism. This week, the Trump administration also officially claimed the prosecution of protesters over events that transpired at a July 4, 2025, noise demonstration at the Prairieland ICE detention facility as part of the NSPM-7 initiative. One protester received a 100-year sentence for nonfatally shooting a police officer; another received 30 years for moving a box of antifascist zines.
NSPM-7Last year, 12 days after the Charlie Kirk assassin engraved bullet casings with “Hey fascist, catch!”, President Donald Trump signed an executive order designating antifa as a domestic terrorist organization — never mind the fact that antifa is not an organization, and no federal law provides for the designation of domestic terror groups.
Days later, on September 25, 2025, Trump issued the National Security Presidential Memorandum/NSPM-7, titled “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence.” As examples of domestic terrorism and political violence, the memo cites the assassination of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, the attempted assassinations of Trump and Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and “anti-police and ‘criminal justice’ riots.”
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These sentences are far longer than any of the prison sentences given to the 1,500 January 6 rioters.
Formerly, the FBI and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) investigated anarchists under the banner of “Anti-Government or Anti-Authority Violent Extremism,” a category that also included “sovereign citizens” and right-wing militias. In contrast, NSPM-7 focuses exclusively on the anti-fascist left, or by its terms, movements that “portray foundational American principles (e.g., support for law enforcement and border control) as ‘fascist’ … Common threads animating this violent conduct include anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity.” NSPM-7 directs the FBI, Department of Justice (DOJ), and other federal agencies to investigate, prosecute, and “disrupt” anti-fascist groups engaged in domestic terrorism — which it defines as including trespassing.
From the outset, it was clear that ICE protests would be in NSPM-7’s crosshairs…. The memo characterizes protests blocking roadways to ICE facilities as riots, a loaded term aimed at delegitimizing civil disobedience.
From the outset, it was clear that ICE protests would be in NSPM-7’s crosshairs. The same day, then-Attorney General Pam Bondi issued a memo entitled “Ending Political Violence Against ICE.” In back-to-back sentences, the memo lumped comments from politicians criticizing ICE together with a Dallas incident in which a sniper targeting ICE agents accidentally hit detainees. The memo characterizes protests blocking roadways to ICE facilities as riots, a loaded term aimed at delegitimizing civil disobedience. In a subsequent memo, Bondi directed U.S. Attorneys to prosecute crimes on a list of the “most serious, readily provable offenses.” The list includes conspiracy to impede or injure a federal officer. While this charge hardly rises to the level of seriousness implied by the domestic terrorism header, leaning on conspiracy charges eases prosecutors’ burden. Prosecutors need not prove that alleged conspirators committed any crime themselves; merely that they undertook an overt act in furtherance of an overall unlawful objective. With the Minnesota indictment, prosecutors seem poised to argue that Signal messages coordinating logistics for a protest blockading ICE facilities qualify as requisite overt acts.
This reframing — of civil disobedience as rioting and solidarity as conspiracy — is aided considerably by NSPM-7’s explicit directive to categorize protest as terrorism. Renee Good and Alex Pretti resisted ICE operations in ways reminiscent of the conduct alleged in the Minnesota indictment handed down this week. Despite widely circulated video showing the circumstances of the killings, the Trump administration stands by its characterization of Good and Pretti as domestic terrorists. All of the protest activity covered by the indictment took place in the days and months after Good’s killing; federal investigative agencies had either an informant, flipped alleged coconspirator, or undercover officer ready and able to infiltrate closed-door activist debriefs. (The indictment contains information from in-person meetings in which participants were told to turn over their phones.)
But anti-ICE protests are not the only target of NSPM-7. In a memo about the implementation of NSPM-7, Bondi directed all federal law enforcement agencies to peruse five years of past files for “Antifa-related intelligence and information.” Cue the new indictment of Stop Cop City protesters, even after most state-level prosecutions had been dropped. In September 2025, a Fulton County judge dismissed the largest prosecution of Stop Cop City protesters on procedural grounds.
The case was being pursued under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), a law that gives prosecutors enormous latitude against what they deem “organized crime.” (Other targets of RICO prosecutions have included cheating schoolteachers and corrupt FIFA officials.) Similar to the Minnesota indictment, the RICO case was a sprawling indictment alleging an anarchist conspiracy. After years of intense scrutiny and heated political controversy, the RICO case fell apart.
This reframing — of civil disobedience as rioting and solidarity as conspiracy — is aided considerably by NSPM-7’s explicit directive to categorize protest as terrorism.
But, in April of this year, after nearly two years of dormancy, the Georgia Attorney General’s office indicted three activists accused of setting fires outside of the office building for Cop City general contractor Brasfield & Gorrie in 2022. In the press release, Attorney General Chris Carr is quoted as saying, “When it comes to fighting Antifa and keeping people safe, we won’t back down.” The press release indicates that state officials worked alongside federal partners to build the case. Less than two months later, a federal grand jury indicted two of the three activists. Arrest warrants were issued for the two activists named. One of the defendants, Katie Kloth, was processed through a Colorado jail and told to appear in Georgia under threat of a $10,000 bond.
More NSPM-7 operations may be brewing in the shadows. Per Atlanta Community Press Collective reporting, protest defense lawyer Xavier T. de Janon indicated that a recently unsealed indictment of Palestine protesters was also related to NSPM-7, even if it wasn’t publicly credited as such. Like the Cop City federal case, the Palestine protest case dredges up old conduct, this time from 2023. Among other charges, the protesters are accused of making threats after they delivered fake corpses covered in blood to a University of Michigan regent’s home. The charge carries up to five years of prison time. Protesters are also charged with conspiracy to tamper with a witness and destruction of property to prevent seizure.
Will the Federal Indictments Fall?While the existing indictments are troubling, and more are likely to come down the pike, the fate of state-level cases provides reason for optimism. As reported by ProPublica and FRONTLINE, prosecutors dismissed or refused to file charges for over a third of the protesters and bystanders arrested by federal agents during the immigration crackdown. Like those cases, the Minnesota indictment might fall apart.
In Georgia, early signs signal trouble for the Cop City NSPM-7 prosecutions. Already, the state-level charges have collapsed. Defense attorney de Janon brought a successful motion to dismiss, arguing that by waiting until 19 days before the statute of limitations expired to prosecute them, the state violated the three defendants’ due process rights. In the bench ruling, the judge criticized the charges as “political.”
Federal prosecutions often take years. While, on the one hand, this means that a new president may be in power by the time cases resolve, the slow progress means that charges carrying significant prison time hang over the heads of activists. Even if the cases are eventually dropped, the wait takes a toll. Hannah Kass, one of the three Cop City defendants named in the state-level Brasfield & Gorrie and RICO indictments, told Mainline Atlanta about her difficulty in finding employment after graduating from her Ph.D. program while the prosecution was pending. But when it comes to trying to free other targets of political prosecutions, she notes, “Now we have the precedent.”
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Republish HTML code for copying <h1>Trump Designated Antifa “Domestic Terrorists” — New Prosecutions Follow His Lead</h1> <p><strong>By Cody Bloomfield</strong></p> <p><em>This article was originally published by </em> <a href src="https://truthout.org/articles/trump-designated-antifa-domestic-terrorists-new-prosecutions-follow-his-lead/">Truthout</a></p> <p><strong><p>With new conspiracy cases against activists — including the indictment of 15 Minnesotans — Trump’s NPSM-7 bears fruit.</p></strong></p> <p>This week, Minnesota federal prosecutors handed down a blockbuster <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/media/1446251/dl?inline">indictment</a> of 15 activists involved in efforts to resist Operation Metro Surge, part of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown that flooded 2,700 <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2026/02/05/us/dhs-pulls-700-officers-minneapolis-homan-hnk">federal agents</a> into the Twin Cities to <a href="https://minnesotareformer.com/2025/12/02/report-ice-headed-to-twin-cities-targeting-somali-immigrants/">target Somali communities</a>. <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/15-members-direct-action-minnesota-minneapolis-based-direct-action-group-antifa-ties">Eleven of the 15</a> activists are charged only with conspiracy to impede or injure a federal officer. The indictment spans 94 pages, much of it cataloging Signal messages in group chats. While the indictment mostly focuses on protests involving more confrontational tactics — using U-Haul trailers and shields to block roadways to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) buildings — it also covers conduct common to ICE resistance across the country, such as tracking the license plates and locations of ICE vehicles. At every opportunity, the indictment underscores the anarchist affiliations of the activists, citing out-of-state Anarchist Speaking Tour engagements and articles written for the anarchist website CrimethInc.</p> <p>From the 1919-1920 <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Palmer-Raids">Palmer Raids</a> deporting anarchists to the more recent <a href="https://jacobin.com/2023/09/stop-cop-city-movement-protest-rico-charges-law-atlanta-georgia-civil-rights">Stop Cop City </a>and <a href="https://therealnews.com/all-charges-dropped-against-j20-defendants-but-many-still-struggle-to-heal">DisruptJ20 mass prosecutions</a>, the government has long directed investigative and prosecutorial firepower toward disrupting anarchist movements. Two new indictments in the past two weeks now signal a new era of protest-related prosecutions. In addition to the indictment of ICE protesters, federal prosecutors unsealed <a href="https://weelauneethefree.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/6-9-2026-Federal-Indictment-Kloth-Norman.pdf">an indictment</a> of two Stop Cop City protesters alleged to have set fires outside of the office building of Brasfield & Gorrie, the general contractor for the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center, in 2022. Troublingly, <a href="https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndga/pr/out-state-duo-faces-federal-charges-attacking-cop-city-contractor-and-intimidating">both</a> <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/15-members-direct-action-minnesota-minneapolis-based-direct-action-group-antifa-ties">indictments</a> were credited as part of the National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7) initiative, an effort to investigate and prosecute civil disobedience and protest-related petty offenses as domestic terrorism. This week, the Trump administration also officially <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/leader-antifa-cell-members-north-texas-sentenced-100-years-prison-terrorist-attack-ice">claimed</a> the prosecution of protesters over events that transpired at a July 4, 2025, noise demonstration at the Prairieland ICE detention facility as part of the NSPM-7 initiative. One protester <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/leader-antifa-cell-members-north-texas-sentenced-100-years-prison-terrorist-attack-ice">received a 100-year sentence</a> for nonfatally shooting a police officer; another received 30 years for <a href="https://theintercept.com/2026/06/23/prairieland-texas-ice-protest-prison-sentences/">moving a box of antifascist zines</a>.</p> <h2 class="wp-block-heading">NSPM-7</h2> <p>Last year, 12 days after the Charlie Kirk assassin <a href="https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/hey-fascist-catch-messages-written-on-bullet-casings-in-charlie-kirk-shooting/3823256/">engraved bullet casings</a> with “Hey fascist, catch!”, President Donald Trump signed <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/designating-antifa-as-a-domestic-terrorist-organization/">an executive order</a> designating antifa as a domestic terrorist organization — never mind the fact that antifa is not an organization, and <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-domestic-terrorism-groups-ice-antifa-b2833762.html">no federal law</a> provides for the designation of domestic terror groups.</p> <p>Days later, on September 25, 2025, Trump issued the National Security Presidential Memorandum/<a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/countering-domestic-terrorism-and-organized-political-violence/">NSPM-7</a>, titled “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence.” As examples of domestic terrorism and political violence, the memo cites the assassination of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, the attempted assassinations of Trump and Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and “anti-police and ‘criminal justice’ riots.”</p> <p>Formerly, the FBI and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) <a href="https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/2023-07/23_0724_opa_strategic-intelligence-assessment-data-domestic-terrorism.pdf">investigated anarchists</a> under the banner of “Anti-Government or Anti-Authority Violent Extremism,” a category that also included “sovereign citizens” and right-wing militias. In contrast, NSPM-7 focuses exclusively on the anti-fascist left, or by its terms, movements that “portray foundational American principles (e.g., support for law enforcement and border control) as ‘fascist’ … Common threads animating this violent conduct include anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity.” NSPM-7 directs the FBI, Department of Justice (DOJ), and other federal agencies to investigate, prosecute, and “disrupt” anti-fascist groups engaged in domestic terrorism — which it defines as including trespassing.</p> <p>From the outset, it was clear that ICE protests would be in NSPM-7’s crosshairs. The same day, then-Attorney General Pam Bondi issued a <a href="https://www.justice.gov/ag/media/1415691/dl">memo</a> entitled “Ending Political Violence Against ICE.” In back-to-back sentences, the memo lumped comments from politicians criticizing ICE together with a Dallas incident in which a sniper targeting ICE agents accidentally <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/live/dallas-ice-shooting-latest-sniper-identified-as-joshua-jahn-29-fbi-says-handwritten-notes-show-he-sought-to-harm-ice-agents-142106619.html">hit detainees</a>. The memo characterizes protests blocking roadways to ICE facilities as riots, a loaded term aimed at delegitimizing civil disobedience. In a <a href="https://charityandsecurity.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Bondi_Memo_On_Countering_Domestic_Terrorism_And_Organized_Political_Violence-1.pdf">subsequent memo</a>, Bondi directed U.S. Attorneys to prosecute crimes on a list of the “most serious, readily provable offenses.” The list includes conspiracy to impede or injure a federal officer. While this charge hardly rises to the level of seriousness implied by the domestic terrorism header, leaning on conspiracy charges eases prosecutors’ burden. Prosecutors need not prove that alleged conspirators committed any crime themselves; merely that they undertook an overt act in furtherance of an overall unlawful objective. With the Minnesota indictment, prosecutors seem poised to argue that Signal messages coordinating logistics for a protest blockading ICE facilities qualify as requisite overt acts.</p> <p>This reframing — of civil disobedience as rioting and solidarity as conspiracy — is aided considerably by NSPM-7’s explicit directive to categorize protest as terrorism. Renee Good and Alex Pretti resisted ICE operations in ways reminiscent of the conduct alleged in the Minnesota indictment handed down this week. Despite widely circulated video showing the circumstances of the killings, the Trump administration <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/kristi-noem-ice-deaths-minnesota-congress-hearing-b2931882.html">stands by</a> its characterization of Good and Pretti as domestic terrorists. All of the protest activity covered by the indictment took place in the days and months after Good’s killing; federal investigative agencies had either an informant, flipped alleged coconspirator, or undercover officer ready and able to infiltrate closed-door activist debriefs. (The indictment contains information from in-person meetings in which participants were told to turn over their phones.)</p> <p>But anti-ICE protests are not the only target of NSPM-7. In a <a href="https://charityandsecurity.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Bondi_Memo_On_Countering_Domestic_Terrorism_And_Organized_Political_Violence-1.pdf">memo</a> about the implementation of NSPM-7, Bondi directed all federal law enforcement agencies to peruse five years of past files for “Antifa-related intelligence and information.” Cue the new indictment of Stop Cop City protesters, even after most state-level prosecutions had been dropped. In September 2025, a Fulton County judge <a href="https://truthout.org/articles/fulton-county-judge-says-he-will-drop-racketeering-charges-in-61-cop-city-cases/">dismissed</a> the largest prosecution of Stop Cop City protesters on procedural grounds.</p> <p>The case was being pursued under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), a law that gives prosecutors enormous latitude against what they deem “organized crime.” (Other targets of RICO prosecutions have included <a href="https://www.thedriftmag.com/an-offer-you-cant-refuse/">cheating schoolteachers</a> and <a href="https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/nine-fifa-officials-and-five-corporate-executives-indicted-racketeering-conspiracy-and">corrupt FIFA officials</a>.) Similar to the Minnesota indictment, the RICO case was a <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23940338-cop-city-rico-indictment/?q=kloth&mode=document#document/p66">sprawling indictment</a> alleging an anarchist conspiracy. After years of intense scrutiny and heated political controversy, the RICO case fell apart.</p> <p>But, in April of this year, after nearly two years of dormancy, the Georgia Attorney General’s office <a href="https://law.georgia.gov/press-releases/2026-04-23/carr-indicts-three-targeting-training-center-contractor-cobb-county">indicted</a> three activists accused of setting fires outside of the office building for Cop City general contractor Brasfield & Gorrie in 2022. In the <a href="https://law.georgia.gov/press-releases/2026-04-23/carr-indicts-three-targeting-training-center-contractor-cobb-county">press release</a>, Attorney General Chris Carr is quoted as saying, “When it comes to fighting Antifa and keeping people safe, we won’t back down.” The press release indicates that state officials worked alongside federal partners to build the case. Less than two months later, a federal grand jury <a href="https://weelauneethefree.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/6-9-2026-Federal-Indictment-Kloth-Norman.pdf">indicted</a> two of the three activists. Arrest warrants were issued for the two activists named. One of the defendants, Katie Kloth, was processed through a Colorado jail and told to appear in Georgia under threat of a $10,000 bond.</p> <p>More NSPM-7 operations may be brewing in the shadows. Per <a href="https://atlpresscollective.com/2026/06/12/federal-prosecutors-charge-two-cop-city-protestors-as-part-of-nspm-7-initiative/"><em>Atlanta Community Press Collective</em> reporting</a>, protest defense lawyer Xavier T. de Janon indicated that a recently unsealed indictment of Palestine protesters was also related to NSPM-7, even if it wasn’t publicly credited as such. Like the Cop City federal case, the <a href="https://www.justice.gov/usao-edmi/pr/department-justice-indicts-eight-conspirators-who-threatened-university-michigan">Palestine protest case</a> dredges up old conduct, this time from 2023. Among other charges, the protesters are accused of making threats after they delivered fake corpses covered in blood to a University of Michigan regent’s home. The charge carries up to five years of prison time. Protesters are also charged with conspiracy to tamper with a witness and destruction of property to prevent seizure.</p> <h2 class="wp-block-heading">Will the Federal Indictments Fall?</h2> <p>While the existing indictments are troubling, and more are likely to come down the pike, the fate of state-level cases provides reason for optimism. <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/caught-in-crackdown-ice-cbp-doj-trump-arrests-convictions">As reported by <em>ProPublica</em> and <em>FRONTLINE</em></a>, prosecutors dismissed or refused to file charges for over a third of the protesters and bystanders arrested by federal agents during the immigration crackdown. Like those cases, the Minnesota indictment might fall apart.</p> <p>In Georgia, early signs signal trouble for the Cop City NSPM-7 prosecutions. Already, the state-level charges have collapsed. Defense attorney de Janon <a href="https://www.removepaywall.com/search?url=https://www.ajc.com/news/2026/06/georgia-ags-case-against-training-center-protesters-political-judge-rules/">brought a successful motion to dismiss</a>, arguing that by waiting until 19 days before the statute of limitations expired to prosecute them, the state violated the three defendants’ due process rights. In the bench ruling, the judge <a href="https://www.removepaywall.com/search?url=https://www.ajc.com/news/2026/06/georgia-ags-case-against-training-center-protesters-political-judge-rules/">criticized the charges</a> as “political.”</p> <p>Federal prosecutions often take years. While, on the one hand, this means that a new president may be in power by the time cases resolve, the slow progress means that charges carrying significant prison time hang over the heads of activists. Even if the cases are eventually dropped, the wait takes a toll. Hannah Kass, one of the three Cop City defendants named in the state-level Brasfield & Gorrie and RICO indictments, <a href="https://www.mainlineatl.com/judge-dismisses-charges-cobb-county-3-cop-city-rico/">told <em>Mainline Atlanta</em></a> about her difficulty in finding employment after graduating from her Ph.D. program while the prosecution was pending. But when it comes to trying to free other targets of political prosecutions, she notes, “Now we have the precedent.”</p> <hr> <p><em>This <a href="https://truthout.org/articles/trump-designated-antifa-domestic-terrorists-new-prosecutions-follow-his-lead/">article</a> was originally published by <a href="https://truthout.org">Truthout</a> and is licensed under <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/" rel="license">Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)</a>. 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