Four arrested in LA NYE terror plot are members Turtle Island Liberation Front, call for ‘death to America’

An Instagram account associated with the Los Angeles chapter of the Turtle Island Liberation Front (TILF) states, "Liberation through decolonization and tribal sovereignty." The account features numerous posts calling for violence, as well as posts in support of Gaza.

In one series of posts from September, the group states, "peaceful protest will never be enough. We are up against fascist colonizers. There are no morals for us to appeal to, no sense of justice or what’s right. We cannot vote ourselves our of a mass colonizer occupation. The only way out is through resistance. Stop marching in parades, fight back. Free occupied Turtle Island from the illegal American Empire. Free Palestine. Free Hawaii. Free Puerto Rico."

Turtle Island is a name used by some American Indigenous peoples, as well as Indigenous rights activists, for North America. "Freeing the world from American imperialism is the only way to a safe and peaceful future."

Another series of posts stated, "Death to America. When we say 'death to America' and call for an end to colonization, it doesn’t mean the displacement or harm of non Indigenous citizens. 'Death to America' means death to an empire. Death to imperialism. Death to a societal structure that occupies Indigenous nations and allows the wealthy to rule through greed and oligarch while the working class become priced out of basic human needs such as food and shelter.

The series of posts later added, "when colonizers call us violent for saying 'death to America' they are doing so because they can only imagine the world through their own violent lens. They cannot imagine or fathom the idea that people of any background would be welcome to stay because they themselves do not embrace diversity."

In another post from November, the group wrote, "Keep fighting every day. None of us are free until all of us are free." The post included a photo of two people with their faces covered by scarves, with one holding a sign in Arabic and the other holding a sign that read "death to ICE." The sign appears the same as one photographed in the residence of Audrey Carroll, one of four people arrested and charged.

Carroll, 30; Zachary Page, 32; Dante Garfield, 24; and Tina Lai, 41, all from the Los Angeles area, have been charged with conspiracy and possession of an unregistered destructive device, and authorities said more charges are expected. The four have been described a being part of TILF's "Order of the Black Lotus," an "even more radical faction of the group." The four were arrested on December 12 in the Mojave Desert as they were allegedly setting up to test explosive devices.

"As part of the plan, the four defendants planned to build test bombs in the Mojave Desert," said Assistant US Attorney for the Central District of California Bill Essayli. In preparation for the plan, he said, "the co-conspirators purchased multiple pieces of bomb-making materials and discussed their travel plans to the desert. Last Friday, December 12, the defendants took a significant step to carry out their plans. They traveled to the remote campsite… and they began unloading their bomb-making materials to assemble and test the bombs. They had everything they needed to make an operational bomb at that location, and they were subsequently arrested by the FBI before they could build a functional device."