FBI announces dismantling of terrorist attack planned for New Year’s Eve in Los Angeles

The US Department of Justice announced Monday that it had dismantled an operation to carry out a terrorist attack in Los Angeles, the second most populous city in the United States, at midnight on December 31, during New Year’s celebrations. Four individuals were arrested and face criminal charges in connection with what Attorney General Pam Bondi said “would have been a massive and horrific terrorist plot.”

The detainees are members of a “far left” group called The Turtle Island Liberation Front (The Turtle Island Liberation Front), according to the Ministry of Justice. “The Turtle Island Liberation Front, a far-left pro-Palestinian, anti-government and anti-capitalist group, was preparing to carry out a series of bombings against multiple targets in California starting on New Year’s Eve,” Bondi said in a statement posted to the social network X.

According to the attorney general, the suspects also planned to attack agents and property of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service (ICE), the office responsible for the immigration offensive undertaken by the Donald Trump administration.

Those arrested, charged with conspiracy and possession of destructive devices, are Audrey Illeene Carroll, 30; Zachary Aaron Page, 32; Dante Gaffield, 24; and Tina Lai, 41. The first two, authorities said, were those who planned the attack and recruited the other two. According to the agents, “they acquired bomb-making materials and traveled to a remote location to construct and detonate test explosive devices on December 12, 2025.”

The defendants intended to carry out attacks in five different locations in Los Angeles on December 31. However, they were arrested last Friday the 12th in the Mojave Desert while assembling the devices, according to the federal criminal complaint filed Saturday. “Specifically, the plan called for placing backpacks containing IEDs, or improvised explosive devices, that would detonate simultaneously in five locations, aimed at two U.S. companies, at midnight on New Year’s Eve 2025, in the Central District of California,” the letter states.

The FBI, police departments in Los Angeles and neighboring San Bernardino County, and even authorities in cities like New Orleans, Louisiana, and Buffalo, New York, participated in the scheme. FBI Director Kash Patel announced via X that a fifth individual had been arrested in New Orleans. This person, still unidentified, also belongs to the Turtle Island Liberation Front and was planning another separate attack, according to Patel.

The news comes against the backdrop of the shooting at the prestigious Brown University in Rhode Island and the attack this weekend at a Jewish holiday in Bondi Beach, Australia. At the same time, the Trump administration is stepping up its investigations into left-wing groups it considers extremist.

Last September, Trump signed an executive order designating Antifa, or anti-fascist, groups in the United States as a “terrorist organization.” The Republican signed the executive order after the assassination of conservative activist and ally of the President Charlie Kirk. In November, his administration also designated four European Antifa groups as terrorists, and earlier this month, Bondi ordered federal agencies to step up investigations into the Antifa movement and other similar “extremist groups.”

Although the complaint about the Los Angeles plot does not specifically mention Antifa, Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli said in a news conference Monday that “this case is another reminder of the dangers that radicalized Antifa-type groups pose to public safety.”