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”.

“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” is a broad label for a variety of “anti-fascist” movements, rather than a single organised entity. The Brennan Center for Justice, an advocacy organisation, called the order an effort to “criminalise opposition”.

But Tuesday’s indictment (PDF), which stretches across 94 pages, seeks to present the 15 defendants as “antifa” agents committed to inciting violence against federal agents.

It quotes one defendant, Cameron Kennedy, as posting on Facebook, “YOU WILL NEVER WIN WITH NON-VIOLENCE ALONE. Ever. No one has. No one will. You absolutely need militants to win.”

It also describes defendants as maintaining databases of federal vehicles, training protesters to use shields, and organising blockades around the Bishop Henry Whipple Building, where offices for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) are located.

Their aim, the indictment says, was to “forcibly challenge, block or stop immigration raids, detentions and deportations”.

“Today’s charges and arrests reflect a broad federal effort to address organised, lawless behaviour which seeks to disrupt the execution of federal law, endanger law enforcement and, importantly, endanger the very communities that these defendants falsely claim to be protecting,” Rosen said.

Tuesday’s indictment is not the first time the Trump administration has attempted to prosecute protesters who denounced Operation Metro Surge.

In late January, for instance, the Justice Department successfully sought a grand jury indictment against nine people, including journalist Don Lemon, after they attended a protest that took place at a church.

That came after a magistrate judge rejected the initial charges against them. By February, the Justice Department added 30 more people to the indictment, which accuses participants of abridging the right to religious freedom.

But the Trump administration has faced setbacks in its efforts to prosecute such cases.

One of the 39 people accused of participating in the church protest, for instance, saw her charges dismissed in March, after it was revealed she was not actually in attendance.

Other cases have likewise been dropped due to a lack of evidence, or after false statements from federal officials have been brought to light.