US Justice Department accuses 15 Minnesota activists of ‘antifa’ activities

The administration of United States President Donald Trump has announced criminal charges against 15 Minnesota activists described as members of antifa, the loose-knit “anti-fascist” organisation.At a news conference on Tuesday, US Attorney Daniel Rosen tied the charges to Trump’s directive last year to “counter domestic terrorism and organised political violence”.Recommended Stories list of 3 itemslist 1 of 3Justice Department admits grand jury did not review final Comey indictmentlist 2 of 3Trump administration charges 30 more people for Minnesota church protestlist 3 of 3Journalist Don Lemon arrested in connection to Minnesota ICE protestend of list“Political violence is a national scourge in our times,” Rosen said, before outlining the charges.They include conspiracy to impede or injure federal officers, solicitation to commit violence, interstate threats, interstate stalking, assaulting federal officers and the destruction of government property.Twelve of the 15 defendants, Rosen added, were taken into custody on Tuesday morning. Two remain at large, and a third had already been detained.According to Rosen, they were all connected to the activist group Direct Action Minnesota, formerly known as Twin Cities Direct Action.That group protested the hardline immigration crackdown that Trump authorised in Minnesota from December through February.The crackdown, known as Operation Metro Surge, was widely criticised for excessive violence and legally dubious tactics, including a policy of not seeking judicial warrants before entering private homes.In January, two US citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, were shot dead as part of the operation, prompting nationwide outrage. Democrats have framed the operation as a whole as a politically motivated action against left-leaning jurisdictions.“Operation Metro Surge was nothing but a show of force to intimidate states that voted against Trump,” Minnesota Governor Tim Walz wrote on Tuesday.“Thankfully, Minnesotans showed the country what standing up to authoritarianism looks like.”Despite the backlash, the Trump administration has continued to seek indictments against protesters accused of impeding federal law enforcement efforts during Operation Metro Surge.At Tuesday’s news briefing, Rosen also sought to brush aside concerns that the latest charges could be seen as an attack against the free-speech rights of demonstrators.“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,” Rosen said.“That’s a crime, and it will not be tolerated in the United States.”Reporters, however, pressed Rosen to answer if any federal officers were injured as a result of the actions attributed to the 15 defendants.One questioned if Rosen was describing “thought crimes” as opposed to real crimes, borrowing a term from George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984.Rosen responded by saying the numbers of officers injured will “roll out in the course of the prosecution”. He also dismissed the question as irrelevant.“Whether or not they actually, at the end of the day, caused bodily harm is not the measure of whether or not they committed a serious federal crime,” Rosen said.“And I would dare say, we just cannot have in this country all of all people getting together, engaging in all of these violent acts and then simply saying, ‘Well, you know, nobody got hurt, so how bad could it have been?'”Since returning to the presidency in 2025, Trump has faced ongoing questions about whether he has used the Department of Justice to suppress free speech during his second term.In September, for instance, he issued an executive order designating antifa as a “domestic terrorist organisation”, accusing it of seeking the overthrow of the US.Analysts, however, have questioned the accuracy of his characterisation, noting that “antifa”