The federal government has indicted 15 members of Antifa for violently opposing enforcement of the nation’s popular immigration laws.
“Today, a federal indictment was unsealed charging 15 defendants with conspiracy to impede or injure federal officers and other charges related to efforts of two Minneapolis-based Antifa groups that violently opposed the enforcement of federal law in our state,” U.S. Attorney Dan Rosen told a midday press conference in Minnesota.
The indictments are for action, not speech, Rosen emphasized:
The Department of Justice and my U.S. Attorney’s Office has and will distinguish between lawful protest and criminal conduct. These defendants have been charged not for what they said, but for what they did. They all joined an agreement, a conspiracy, to interfere with lawful immigration enforcement operations, the conspiracy was not to interfere by their voice, but to do it by force. That’s a crime, and it will not be tolerated in the United States
It may be difficult to get guilty verdicts from Democrat-leaning juries in Minnesota.
But the federal government has quietly dropped or sidelined charges against 29 of 36 people charged in December or January, according to Minnesota Public Radio.
Federal officials are “attacking the political opponents of a budding fascist government,” claimed Bruce Nestor, a lawyer who defends anti-enforcement protesters.
Federal officials did not release detailed evidence at the press conference, but showed the aggressive speech by one of the Antifa leaders:
Antifa’s strategy is built on a passive-aggressive strategy where extended blockades and jeers by masked participants are combined with controlled violence — such as throwing objects — to cause violence by exhausted and frustrated officers. This strategy allows Antifa’s various media allies to present the rioters as non-violent civil disobedience supposedly victimized by aggressive and dangerous federal officers.
The deceptive strategy was used by Antifa in Minnesota and eventually resulted in the shooting death of two protesters by frustrated ICE officers. The media-magnified public reaction then led to a shift in ICE tactics and a lower arrest rate.
But in early June, better-trained ICE worked with local police in New Jersey to defeat a similar passive-aggressive Antifa-like blockade of a detention center in Newark.
Amid the Antifa obstruction, ICE is arresting and deporting hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants, including many criminal migants.
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