THE ANTIFA SCARE

I’ve been through a couple of these cycles now — the anarchist scare after Seattle, the Green Scare of the early 2000s — and I want to offer a clear-eyed read on what’s happening right now, because the past two weeks have been significant enough that I think people need to sit with the full picture rather than just the headlines.

We are in a new wave of political repression. I’m going to call it the Antifa Scare — because that’s the floating label the government is using this time, and like all the scares before it, the label is the point. “Antifa” isn’t an organization. It never has been. It’s a political tendency, a loose set of anti-fascist beliefs, and it’s been around in various forms since people started punching fascists in Weimar Germany. The Trump administration knows this. They don’t care. The designation isn’t meant to be legally coherent — it’s meant to be a bucket you can put anyone in.

Here’s what’s happened in the last two weeks.

PRAIRIELAND, TEXAS

On June 23, a federal judge in Fort Worth sentenced eight people to a combined 450 years in prison for their participation in a July 4, 2025 noise demonstration outside the Prairieland ICE Detention Center in Alvarado. The sentences range from 30 to 100 years.

Let that sink in. The longest sentence handed down to any January 6 participant — including Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, for his role in an actual attack on the U.S. Capitol — was 22 years. Trump commuted it. The Prairieland defendants got more than double that, for a protest where the “explosives” were fireworks.

The facts matter here. One person, Benjamin Song, fired a gun during the protest and wounded a police officer. He got 100 years and was convicted of attempted murder. Whatever you think about that, it’s at least a coherent charge. What happened to the other eight is something different. Daniel Sanchez-Estrada was not at the protest at all. He moved a box of his wife’s political zines after her arrest. He got 30 years. Another defendant sat in a van. Others arrived, were told to leave by guards, and left. All of them were convicted of “providing material support to terrorists” — the same statute used to prosecute people who wire money to al-Qaeda.

The prosecution introduced as evidence: their membership in a left-wing book club. Their ownership of legally purchased firearms. Their use of Signal. The content of the zines. The judge, in sentencing, said explicitly that he intended to “send a message to anyone who shares a similar ideology.”

Former federal prosecutor Barbara McQuade said the sentences were far outside the normal range — she’d have expected 15 to 25 years even for the most serious offenders — and that the judge had stacked consecutive sentences in an unusually punitive way.

The DOJ press release described these as the first convictions under Trump’s designation of antifa as a domestic terrorist organization. That designation, for the record, has no legal basis — the president has no statutory authority to designate domestic groups as terrorist organizations, and the Brennan Center and ACLU have both said so in detail. But it doesn’t need to be legally coherent to be operationally useful.

MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA

Ten days earlier, on June 16, the U.S. Attorney for Minnesota indicted 15 people affiliated with “Direct Action Minnesota” on charges of conspiracy to impede or injure federal officers. The charges stem from activism during “Operation Metro Surge” — roughly 3,000 federal immigration agents deployed to the Twin Cities between December 2025 and March 2026, the largest such deployment in U.S. history.

The defendants are a special ed teacher, a union carpenter, a Buddhism professor at Macalester College, an in-home care aide, mutual aid workers. The 94-page indictment is built largely on Signal messages from group chats where activists coordinated ICE monitoring, shield trainings, and blockades. Specific charges include: interstate stalking, for following an ICE vehicle from Minneapolis to Hudson, Wisconsin; assault on a federal officer, for knocking notes out of an agent’s hand; and destruction of federal property, for kicking a vehicle twice.

Here is the context the government has not addressed: during Operation Metro Surge, federal agents killed two U.S. citizens. Renee Good was shot on January 7, 2026. Alex Pretti, a VA nurse, was shot on January 24. No federal agents have been charged. The U.S. Attorney’s office has actively obstructed state investigations into both deaths.

The indictment is built on Signal messages. Signal’s encryption means the company can’t provide content — the most likely explanation, per The Intercept’s analysis, is physical device access through arrests or a cooperating informant inside the groups. The FBI has been infiltrating activist Signal groups in Minneapolis since at least November 2025. Kash Patel confirmed in a podcast that the agency opened investigations specifically because activists were using Signal groups.

Defense attorney Bruce Nestor, past president of the National Lawyers Guild, said it plainly: “The point of this is to spread fear to try to divide us.”

AND ELSEWHERE

In Spokane, three protesters — including a military veteran — were convicted of conspiracy to impede officers for a June 2025 protest at an ICE facility. They face up to six years.

In Michigan, eight pro-Palestinian activists linked to the University of Michigan were indicted on conspiracy and intimidation charges for running a divestment campaign. State charges related to their 2024 encampment had already been dropped for lack of evidence.

In Ohio, over 100 FBI agents simultaneously raided the offices of the Ohio Organizing Collaborative — the state’s leading voter registration group — in Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, Dayton, and Youngstown. Agents showed up at staff members’ homes, pressed them about “voter fraud,” and seized phones and laptops. The OOC primarily registers Black and brown voters.

There is a critical Senate race in Ohio in November.

THE LEGAL MACHINERY

In September 2025, Trump signed National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, which directs Joint Terrorism Task Forces to investigate individuals and organizations associated with a list of ideological positions that includes “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity,” “extremism on migration, race, and gender,” and “hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.”

That list covers, without exaggeration, virtually every progressive organization in the country.

The most dangerous legal innovation in the Prairieland case is the domestic use of the “material support for terrorism” statutes — 18 U.S.C. § 2339A and § 2339B. These were written to stop people from wiring money to al-Qaeda. They require no proof of intent to further terrorism, only that you “knowingly” provided support. The Brennan Center warned last year that under this logic, buying a sandwich for an activist, printing pamphlets, or letting a protester sleep on your couch could constitute material support. Prairieland proved that wasn’t hypothetical. A man who moved a box of zines got 30 years.

Conspiracy charges work the same way. You don’t have to have committed the underlying act — you just have to have agreed to participate in a scheme and taken some step toward it. In Minnesota, that meant 15 people were charged for the alleged actions of a handful, with the rest swept in for blowing whistles and posting on Facebook.

WE HAVE BEEN HERE BEFORE

The Palmer Raids of 1919–1920 arrested between 4,000 and 10,000 people on suspicion of anarchist or communist sympathies, deported hundreds including Emma Goldman, and used immigration law as a political weapon. The parallels to Operation Metro Surge — mass federal deployment targeting a specific community, followed by prosecution of those who organized resistance — are not subtle.

COINTELPRO ran from 1956 to 1971 and systematically infiltrated, surveilled, and worked to destroy civil rights groups, anti-war organizations, and socialist movements. It targeted King, the Panthers, AIM, the SWP. It planted evidence, forged documents, and coordinated with local police in violent actions. The lesson isn’t just that the government surveils activists — it’s that the government actively works to destroy the social fabric of movements through infiltration and manufactured conflict. The use of informants to access Signal groups is a direct descendant.

The Green Scare of the early 2000s is the closest analog. The FBI designated ELF and ALF as the top domestic terrorist threats despite neither having killed anyone. Operation Backfire swept up dozens of environmental and animal rights activists under the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, using the same playbook now being used against anti-ICE organizers: conspiracy charges, political beliefs as evidence, informants, and terrorism enhancements for property crimes. The SHAC7 case prosecuted activists for running a legal protest campaign; the government called it terrorism.

And then there’s Judi Bari. In 1990, Bari — an Earth First! organizer and IWW member — had a pipe bomb explode under her car seat. The FBI and Oakland Police immediately accused her of transporting it herself and arrested her in her hospital bed. She and Darryl Cherney were never charged, but the arrest was used to discredit Earth First! and chill the Redwood Summer campaign. In 2002, a jury found that six of seven FBI and police defendants had framed them and awarded $4.4 million in damages. Bari had died of cancer five years earlier and never saw the verdict.

The state is not always competent. But it is willing to physically target effective organizers. Keep that in mind.

WHERE THIS IS GOING

The most likely scenario for the next two years is escalation and consolidation. Prairieland becomes the template. Conspiracy and material support charges spread to anti-ICE activists in other cities. The “antifa” label gets applied with increasing breadth — to mutual aid networks, bail funds, legal observer organizations. The FBI expands its surveillance of voter registration groups, especially in swing states. Digital repression intensifies: more apps pulled, more device seizures at protests, more pressure on tech companies. The chilling effect is real but not total — movements adapt, security practices improve, some prosecutions collapse from their own overreach (as the Broadview Six case did in Chicago, where prosecutorial misconduct before the grand jury caused the whole thing to fall apart).

There’s also a scenario where the administration’s overreach generates enough backlash — from legal experts, labor unions, faith communities, cross-partisan concern about precedent — that the political costs mount and some of this gets rolled back. The Prairieland sentences are genuinely shocking to a lot of people who are not leftists. That matters.

And there’s a third scenario, the one that requires a triggering event: a significant act of political violence, real or falsely attributed, that the administration uses to justify formal domestic terrorism legislation, attacks on civil liberties organizations’ nonprofit status, and a qualitative escalation. This is the post-9/11 scenario. It’s possible. It’s not inevitable.

WHAT TO DO WITH THIS

The paranoia is the punishment — but the Prairieland sentences are also real. People are going to prison for decades. This is not only a chilling effect; it is a direct attack on the movement’s capacity, and we should be honest about that.

Security culture is not paranoia; it is infrastructure. The Minnesota indictment demonstrates that Signal is not a magic bullet. Physical device security, careful management of group membership, regular deletion of messages and groups — these are basics that should be standard. Read The Intercept’s reporting on how the feds got those Signal messages.

Legal support is not optional. The National Lawyers Guild, the ACLU, the Center for Constitutional Rights, local legal collectives, bail funds, legal defense funds — this is essential infrastructure. Build it before you need it. The Broadview Six case collapsed because of sustained legal pressure.

And: the state is not omnipotent, and these cycles end. The Palmer Raids ended. COINTELPRO was exposed. The Green Scare produced mixed results and significant backlash. The Judi Bari case ended with a jury verdict against the FBI. When the Minneapolis 15 found themselves in the Hennepin County jail, they started singing — Irish rebel songs, labor songs, “Solidarity Forever,” “Bella Ciao” — and found each other through the walls. When the Ohio Organizing Collaborative’s offices were raided by a hundred federal agents, they held expanded public voter registration drives across the state the following week.

The state’s ferocity is a measure of the threat it perceives from collective action. That is not a reason for despair. It is information about the terrain we are struggling on.

Keep organizing. Stay safe. Use need to know protocols. Don’t succumb to paranoia. Have each other’s back. Talking in person is more safe than signal.

xoxoxo and ACAB

*e

Sources:

[1] The Guardian, “Texas anti-ICE protesters convicted of terrorism charges sentenced to at least 50 years in prison” (June 23, 2026) — https://www.theguardian.com/.../prairieland-ice...

[2] The Intercept, “Prairieland Defendant Sentenced to 30 Years in Prison for Moving a Box of Antifascist Zines” (June 23, 2026) — https://theintercept.com/.../prairieland-texas-ice.../

[3] NationofChange, “Anti-ICE protesters sentenced to decades as Trump turns ‘antifa’ label into prosecution tool” (June 25, 2026) — https://www.nationofchange.org/.../anti-ice-protesters.../

[4] Democracy Now!, “‘The Point Is to Spread Fear’: DOJ Charges 15 with Conspiracy for Anti-ICE Protests in Minnesota” (June 17, 2026) — https://www.democracynow.org/.../15_minneapolis...

[5] The Intercept, “How Did the Feds Get Into Anti-ICE Activists’ Signal Messages?” (June 17, 2026) — https://theintercept.com/.../signal-messages-minneapolis.../

[6] The Spokesman-Review, “3 Spokane ICE protesters found guilty in conspiracy case” (May 28, 2026) — https://www.spokesman.com/.../3-spokane-ice-protesters.../

[7] Truthout, “DOJ Targets Michigan Palestine Solidarity Activists With Federal Charges” (June 12, 2026) — https://truthout.org/.../doj-targets-michigan-palestine.../

[8] Signal Cleveland, “What to Know About the Ohio Organizing Collaborative After FBI Searches” (June 12, 2026) — https://signalcleveland.org/ohio-organizing.../

[9] Human Rights Watch, “‘A Manufactured Crisis’: Minnesota Communities Terrorized by the Federal Government” (June 18, 2026) — https://www.hrw.org/.../minnesota-communities-terrorized...

[10] Brennan Center for Justice, “Trump’s Orders Targeting Anti-Fascism Aim to Criminalize Opposition” (October 2025) — https://www.brennancenter.org/.../trumps-orders-targeting...

[11] ProPublica, “Two CBP Agents Identified in Alex Pretti Shooting” — https://www.propublica.org/.../alex-pretti-shooting-cbp...

[12] Zinn Education Project, “May 24, 1990: Judi Bari’s Car Bombed” — https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/judi-bari/

[13] Fox News / NBC News, “FBI Investigating Minnesota Anti-ICE Signal Group Chats, Patel Says” — https://www.foxnews.com/.../fbi-investigating-minnesota... / https://www.nbcnews.com/.../fbi-investigating-minnesota...

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