1 of 3 | Attorney General Pam Bondi, center, speaks on Monday in the Oval Office before President Trump signed a Presidential Memorandum designating Antifa as a terrorist organization. Also present for the signing were Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, right, FBI Director Kash Patel and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, among others. Photo by Samuel Corum/UPI | License Photo
Attorney General Pam Bondi ordered Department of Justice agents to guard U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention sites and directed a counterintelligence task force to investigate previous attacks against federal authorities.
The DOJ includes the FBI, Drug and Enforcement Agency, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and the U.S. Marshals Service but Bondi did not specify which federal law enforcement agents will be deployed.
Bondi’s announcement on Friday came two days after a gunman shot at an ICE detention site in Dallas, killing one detainee and wounding two others. The shooter, who allegedly wrote “ANTI-ICE” on an unused round found at the scene, died of a self-inflicted gunshot as law enforcement approached him.
“At my direction, I am deploying DOJ agents to ICE facilities — and wherever ICE comes under siege — to safeguard federal agents, protect federal property, and immediately arrest all individuals engaged in any federal crime,” Bondi wrote on X.
“Pursuant to President Trump’s recent executive action, I am also instructing the Joint Terrorism Task Forces across the country to disrupt and investigate all entities and individuals engaged in acts of domestic terrorism, including the repeated acts of violence and obstruction against federal agents,” she wrote.
In July, there were shootings at another detention center in Alvarado and at a border patrol site in McAllen.
Federal officials told The New York Times that they represent a pattern of violence against federal immigration officials, and Bondi said that DOJ will pursue the most serious charges for “criminal mobs, including conspiracy offenses, assault offenses, civil disorder offenses and terrorism offenses.”
She also reiterated efforts to assist other DOJ agencies as well as Homeland Security, “to locate, apprehend, detain, prosecute and remove all illegal aliens present in our country. The rule of law will prevail.”
The White House on Friday posted on X that “while brave ICE agents work to make America safe, the radical left has called to abolish ICE. Compared officers to Nazis. Demonized law enforcement at every turn. And now? ICE faces record-breaking threats and violence. Cause. And. Effect. LISTEN”
The Trump administration has been increasing arrests and deportations of undocumented immigrants nationwide, including large scale operations in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York City. In each of the cities, protesters have clashed with agents in an effort to prevent the administration’s stepped up deportation efforts.
On Thursday, Trump signed a memorandum order his administration to stem alleged “domestic terrorism” and “organized political violence,” which followed signing one on Monday that designated Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization.
Antifa, which is short for “anti-fascist,” is not an organization and rather has previously been called an ideology by U.S. law enforcement officials, but rather a loosely-knit movement of left-wing activists, according to the independent, non-profit Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project.
The government has a formal list of foreign terrorist groups but not domestically, CBS News reported, noting domestic terrorism is not a chargeable offense.
ICE has pushed for a “number of law enforcement officers needed to arrest a criminal alien.”
“When a local jail or prison honors an ICE immigration detainer, removable aliens go from local custody to federal custody — with no chance to harm the public,” the agency said Saturday on X.
