2 arrested in Texas immigration detention center shooting now face terrorism-related charges

DALLAS– DALLAS (AP) — Two people arrested in a July shooting outside a Texas immigration detention center face new charges that stem from President Donald Trump’s order last month to designate a decentralized movement known as antifa as a domestic terrorist organization.

Autumn Hill and Zachary Evetts were indicted Wednesday by a federal grand jury in Fort Worth on charges including providing material support to terrorists and attempting to assassinate U.S. government officers and employees. Federal prosecutors accuse them of being members of an antifa cell that planned the shootings.

Hill and Evetts were already among 11 people charged with attempted murder in connection with the July 4 shooting outside the Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, southwest of Dallas, that injured a police officer.

In an article on X Thursday about the new charges, Attorney General Pam Bondi called antifa a “left-wing terrorist organization” and said, “they will be prosecuted as such.”

Short for “antifascists,” antifa is not a single organization but rather an umbrella term for far-left militant groups that confront or resist neo-Nazis and white supremacists during protests.

The indictment says the attack began when a group of people dressed in black and wearing masks, some carrying firearms and body armor, fired fireworks toward the center and vandalized vehicles and a guard shed. Then, as officers responded, a person yelled “guns” and opened fire, hitting an officer, according to the indictment.

The indictment says the group brought 10 guns to the July 4 attack.

Cody Cofer, Hill’s attorney, said in an emailed statement that the new terrorism-related charge “could be understood by some as an attempt to appeal to a mob mentality rather than relying on the evidence and the law.”

Patrick McLain, an attorney for Evetts, said that so far he sees “no basis” for the charges against his client.

Initial charges filed over the summer say searches related to the attack turned up materials that included anti-government materials and flyers with political messages, but those materials did not mention Antifa.

Antifa is a domestic entity and, as such, is not a candidate for listing on the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations. There is no national equivalent to this list, in part because of the broad First Amendment protections enjoyed by organizations operating in the United States.

The July 4 shootings took place as the Trump administration has ramped up deportations. Days after that shooting, a man armed with an assault rifle fired dozens of bullets at federal agents and a U.S. Border Patrol facility in McAllen, near the Mexican border, wounding a police officer. Authorities shot and killed the attacker.