In a new indictment, two men charged in the shooting outside the ICE detention center in Alvarado, where a police officer was shot in the neck, are being labeled members of “a North Texas antifa cell.”
The Department of Justice filed an indictment Wednesday in the Northern District of Texas alleging Cameron Arnold and Zachary Evetts are two “of at least 11 operatives” in a North Texas antifa cell who attacked the Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado on July 4.
According to a criminal complaint previously obtained by NBC 5, four of the defendants dressed in black military-style clothing, some wearing body armor, and began shooting fireworks at the facility. When an Alvarado police officer responded, someone in the group shot the officer in the neck. Dozens of other shots were fired at unarmed correctional officers who had stepped outside.
The injured police officer has since returned to work and no other injuries were reported.
During a hearing at a federal courthouse on Sept. 30, an FBI investigator told the court the shooting outside the detention center was a “planned attack” and that some of the defendants identified with the anarchist ideology of antifa.
The indictment filed this week said “antifa is a militant enterprise made up of networks of individuals and small groups primarily ascribing to a revolutionary anarchist or autonomous Marxist ideology, which explicitly calls for the overthrow of the United States government, law enforcement authorities, and the system of law.”
“Antifa” is not an actual organization with a hierarchy of leaders. It is a broad term that can be applied to some decentralized left-leaning groups, some of which have been known to engage in confrontations against protesters on the right and law enforcement. The name originated from the term anti-fascist.