WASHINGTON, Dec 15 (Reuters) – Four people are facing criminal charges in connection with what Attorney General Pam Bondi described on Monday as a foiled bomb plot that contemplated multiple targets, including U.S. immigration agents and their vehicles.
The four individuals have been charged with conspiracy and possession of an unregistered destructive device, according to the complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.
“The Turtle Island Liberation Front — a far-left, pro-Palestine, anti-government, and anti-capitalist group — was preparing to conduct a series of bombings against multiple targets in California beginning on New Year’s Eve. The group also planned to target ICE agents and vehicles,” Bondi said in a statement.
The bombing plot called for planting explosive devices at five locations targeting two U.S. companies at midnight on New Year’s Eve in the Los Angeles area, the complaint said.
The case comes not long after Bondi issued a memo to law enforcement agents and prosecutors, ordering them to ramp up investigations into “extremist” groups with leftist-leaning agendas.
The four defendants named in the complaint are Audrey Illeene Carroll, 30, Zachary Aaron Page, 32, Dante Gaffield, 24, and 41-year-old Tina Lai.
According to a sworn statement in support of the complaint, Carroll in November presented an eight-page handwritten document to a paid confidential source titled “Operation Midnight Sun” which described a bomb plot.
Carroll and Page later allegedly recruited the other two defendants to help carry out the plan, which included them “acquiring bomb-making materials and traveling to a remote location in the Mojave Desert to construct and detonate test explosive devices on December 12, 2025,” the sworn statement alleges.
FBI agents intervened before they could complete their work to assemble a functional explosive device.
The “Turtle Island Liberation Front – LA Chapter” is described on its social media page as being devoted to “Liberation through decolonization and tribal sovereignty,” according to the complaint, which alleges the group is “an anti-capitalist, anti-government movement.”
The complaint said the four defendants were all part of a Signal group chat called “Order of the Black Lotus,” which one of them described as being “radical.”
In addition to allegedly plotting to set bombs on New Year’s Eve, the group also discussed going after Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and vehicles with pipe bombs in January or February, the complaint said, with Carroll allegedly saying: “That would take some of them out and scare the rest of them.”
(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch, Katharine Jackson and Doina Chiacu; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Bill Berkrot)
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