President Donald Trump’s administration announced criminal charges against 15 Minnesota activists believed to be members of the closely-knit anti-fascist group Antifa.
At a news conference Tuesday, U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosen tied the charges to President Trump’s directive last year to “counter domestic terrorism and organized political violence.”
Recommended stories
list of 3 itemsend of list
“Political violence is the national scourge of our time,” Rosen said before outlining the charges.
These include conspiracy to impede or injure a federal officer, solicitation to commit violence, interstate threats, interstate stalking, assault on a federal officer, and destruction of government property.
Rosen added that 12 of the 15 defendants were taken into custody as of Tuesday morning. Two are still on the run, and a third is already in custody.
Rosen said they all had ties to Direct Action Minnesota, an activist group formerly known as Twin Cities Direct Action.
The group protested the harsh immigration crackdown that President Trump authorized in Minnesota from December to February.
The crackdown, known as Operation Metro Surge, was widely criticized for excessive force and legally questionable tactics, including a policy of not seeking judicial warrants before entering homes.
In January, two Americans, Renee Good and Alex Preti, were shot dead as part of the operation, sparking national outrage. Democrats are framing the entire operation as a politically motivated action against left-leaning jurisdictions.
“Operation Metro Surge was nothing more than a show of force to intimidate states that voted against Trump,” Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz wrote on Tuesday.
“Thankfully, Minnesotans have shown the country what it’s like to stand up to authoritarianism.”
Despite the backlash, the Trump administration continues to seek charges against protesters accused of obstructing federal law enforcement efforts during Operation Metro Surge.
At Tuesday’s news conference, Rosen also sought to dispel concerns that the charges could be seen as an attack on protesters’ free speech rights.
“These defendants were indicted for their actions, not their words. They all participated in an agreement, a conspiracy, to disrupt lawful immigration enforcement operations. The conspiracy was not to disrupt with their voices, but to disrupt by force,” Rosen said.
“It is a crime and will not be tolerated in the United States.”
But reporters pressed Rosen to say whether any federal employees were injured as a result of the actions of the 15 defendants.
Some questioned whether Rosen was describing a “thought crime” rather than an actual crime, borrowing a term from George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984.
Rosen responded by saying the number of injured officers “will likely increase as the prosecution progresses.” He also dismissed the question as irrelevant.
“Ultimately, whether they caused actual bodily harm is not the measure of whether they committed a serious federal crime,” Rosen said.
“And, dare I say it, in this country you can’t just get all these people together, engage in all these acts of violence, and just say, ‘Well, no one got hurt, so how bad was it?’
Since returning to office in 2025, Trump has faced ongoing questions about whether he used the Justice Department to suppress free speech during his second term.
For example, in September, he issued an executive order designating Antifa as a “domestic terrorist organization” and accusing it of seeking to overthrow the United States.
But analysts have questioned the accuracy of his characterization, pointing out that “antifa” is a broad term for a variety of “anti-fascist” movements, rather than a single entity. The Brennan Center for Justice, an advocacy group, called the order an effort to “criminalize dissent.”
But Tuesday’s 94-page indictment (PDF) seeks to identify 15 defendants as “Antifa” agents inciting violence against federal officers.
The paper quotes one of the defendants, Cameron Kennedy, as posting on Facebook: “Nonviolence alone will never win. Forever. No one has won. No one will. We absolutely need extremists to win.”
The defendants also say they maintained a database of federal vehicles, trained protesters to use shields and organized a blockade around the Bishop Henry Whipple Building, which houses Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) offices.
Their purpose was to “forcibly challenge, prevent, or halt immigration raids, detentions, and deportations,” according to the indictment.
“Today’s indictments and arrests reflect a broader federal effort to address systematic and unlawful conduct that seeks to obstruct federal law enforcement, endanger law enforcement, and, importantly, endanger the very communities these defendants falsely claim to protect,” Rosen said.
Tuesday’s indictment is not the first time the Trump administration has sought to prosecute protesters who have denounced Operation Metro Surge.
For example, in late January, the Justice Department successfully filed a grand jury indictment against nine people who participated in the church protest, including journalist Don Lemon.
This happened after a magistrate dismissed the initial charges against them. By February, the Justice Department had added 30 more people to its list of charges accusing participants of depriving them of their right to religious freedom.
But the Trump administration has faced setbacks in its efforts to prosecute these cases.
For example, one of the 39 people accused of participating in a church protest had his charges dropped in March after it was revealed that he had not actually participated.
Other cases have similarly been dropped due to lack of evidence or revelations of false statements by federal authorities.
