ICE, ANTIFA, AND THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY. Yesterday, this newsletter included the violent anti-ICE ambush in Texas as an example of the anger building on the left under the presidency of Donald Trump. Much of that anger is over illegal immigration, with big groups on the left seeking to defend illegal entry into the United States against the Trump administration’s efforts to enforce immigration law. In that cause, radical forces on the left, like antifa — they were the attackers in Texas — are fundamentally aligned with more conventional activist groups on the left, as well as with the Democratic Party, from its progressive to its more moderate wings.
If you want to read a description of the ICE attack, go to the Justice Department’s criminal complaint outlining attempted murder charges against the 10 radicals accused of attacking the ICE Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas, on the 4th of July. It’s quite a narrative.
It started at 10:37 p.m. A group of 10 to 12 “individuals wearing all black” shot fireworks at the detention building, which was staffed with Department of Homeland Security contract employees who were not armed. A few minutes later, a couple of attackers broke off from the main group and “began to graffiti and damage vehicles and a guard structure in the parking lot.” On one car, they spray-painted “ICE PIG” — they were not the most creative sort of vandals.
At 10:56, the unarmed correctional officers called 911. But before police arrived, two of the officers walked outside and tried to talk to the attackers. At the same time, according to surveillance videos of the event, a person wearing a green mask was standing not too far away, “signaling to the vandals with a flashlight.”
At 10:59, an Alvarado Police Department car pulled up. According to court documents, “Immediately after the APD officer got out of his vehicle, an assailant in the woods opened fire, shooting the APD officer in the neck area.” At that moment, the person in the green mask started firing, too, at the unarmed correctional officers standing near the police car. Officials say the two shooters fired somewhere between 20 and 30 rounds at the group — it was very lucky that, other than the police officer, they did not hit anyone.
Investigators later found spent 5.56 caliber shell casings at the two spots where the shooters had been standing. They also found a Franklin Armory AR-15-style rifle that had a bullet jammed in the chamber, which was a fortunate break for the correctional officers who were the target. Another AR-15-style rifle was found, along with two body armor plate carriers — bulletproof vests, essentially — along with loaded AR-15 magazines. The group came to kill.
A few moments later, a detective from the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office was driving to the center when he got a radio message to stop a red Hyundai van. He made the stop less than a mile from the shooting scene. According to court documents, the driver was suspect Bradford Morris, and inside the car was “a black pistol in plain view” and two AR-15 rifles, along with two Kevlar ballistic vests and a ballistic helmet. Morris “had a loaded magazine in his pocket that matched the pistol, and a hand-held radio in his possession,” according to the court documents. Morris was arrested on the spot.
Bradford Morris, by the way, goes by the name Meagan Morris. Another suspect was Cameron Arnold, who goes by the name Autumn Hill. As Tablet‘s Park MacDougald observed: “In what has become something of a pattern in violent far-left extremism, at least two of the 10 people arrested are transgender women” — that is, men who say they are women.
A few minutes later, sheriff’s deputies found a group of seven suspects about 300 yards from the shooting scene. “They were dressed in black, military-style clothing, some had on body armor, some were covered in mud, some where armed, and some had radios,” according to the court documents. Searching more vehicles, police found “additional firearms, magazines containing ammunition, and a total of twelve sets of body armor.”
One suspect had two cellphones, kept in a Faraday bag inside the suspect’s backpack. Faraday bags “are used to block certain electromagnetic signals, including phone signals, and are commonly used by criminal actors to try to prevent law enforcement from tracking location information through cell phones,” the documents say.
By midnight, officers had picked up almost everybody. But at 2:00 a.m., they got another suspect, Zachary Evetts, as he walked along Highway 67 near Venus, Texas. Evetts still had his black paramilitary outfit on, and also had a black balaclava mask, a pair of tactical gloves, and a pair of safety goggles. When officers asked him where he was coming from, Evetts said, “I don’t know,” according to the documents.
A few hours later, authorities got a court warrant to search Bradford Morris, aka Meagan Morris’s, residence. “Police recovered approximately nine additional firearms, three body-armor vests, cans of spray paint, and fireworks,” according to the documents. In addition, police searched cellphone location data and found that everyone had gathered at Morris’s house before going to the Prairieland Detention Center.
Police also collected a lot of antifa literature and signage, dutifully reproduced in the court documents. There is the “FIGHT ICE TERROR WITH CLASS WAR!” flyer, the “FREE ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS” flyer, and pamphlets like “Organizing for Attack! INSURRECTIONARY ANARCHY.”
There’s no doubt that antifa is a fringe, extremist group. Not isolated — there are cells of radicals throughout the country — but extremist. Now, the issue of opposition to Trump’s immigration enforcement has brought the fanatics of antifa more closely than ever in line with the beliefs of progressive Democrats, and perhaps those in the party’s mainstream, too. Would it be fair to call antifa the militant wing of the Democratic Party? Maybe so. And if it is not fair, it is closer to true than many Democrats would ever want to acknowledge.