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10+ arrested after a rifle ambush of security at Prairieland Detention Center near Alvarado, TX on 4th july.
Shortly before 2300, some of the arrested fired fireworks at center to draw out a response, when it arrived at least two of them started shooting at the responding officers from a distance of 100-150m. Soon after, a driver (trans, seems the only one) with a van that had 2 ARs was stopped by a responding cop (map & times)
The shooters fired about 30 shots at responding cops, hitting one in the neck, suffered a jam, probably faced return fire and then started running. Shortly after cops arrested 9 of them in a field 300 m away, armed and in body armor in addition the driver in the van. At least one got away. $25k reward.
Total equipment recovered so far on the spot: 4 AR rifles, pistols, 12 sets of body armor and several helmets.
NYT article: https://archive.is/CBvms Unusually big ambush, usually it's just one guy.
Here's a twitter thread with more details. Can't vouch for the veracity of it. It seems logical - we've been hearing for years how antifa can organise and has people. These people look too clean though, antifa protesters usually look much scruffier.
This looks very.. amateurish. Sure there was a plan but it seems they underestimated the difficulty of hitting anything at night. Or just chickened out.
If I were to try and make a fancy title for my opinion on the Texas anti-ICE attack, I'd call it 'How I Had To Figure My Way Out Of A False Flag Suspicion.'
I was hoping to do a writeup on this incident, since the Antifa attack has some ties to a post last month on how the Democratic civil war will give the Trump administration a lawful basis to go after parts of the background Democratic coalition. Antifa is a fringe part of that coalition, but still a part, and this certainly counts as a basis to go after a network. I was holding off because Ngo's article- while informative- had several 'weird flag' indicators that had me raising an eyebrow and waiting for information to dispel a possible false flag / misattribution.
One of the weird things was the mix of preparation and self-affiliation. Preparation is usually a sign of competence, but self-incrimination is usually incompetent, unless it's intended for a false-attribution, in which case incompetence can be explained by even greater competence.
On the preparation side, there was clear material preparation for first, second, and even third order consequences. From the Ngo article, the plan was to use fireworks and graffitti as a flashy / damaging, but low danger, way to bring out the ICE agents. Then the responders would be ambushed by the gunmen with, well, lethal guns, even as the team had personal radios for their own communication. At least a limited firefight was prepared for with body armor. An electromagnetic blocking device, i.e. a jammer, could then be used to frustrate the secondary response units, any ICE-Police coordinations, and otherwise help with the escape. The assailants appear to have fallen back and retreated through the immediately adjacent woods. They had a getaway car plan as well.
This is a multi-step plan that supports a level of sophistication and prior thought. This is competent, dangerous, and effective small-unit tactics that comes from training and deliberate preparation.
But then you have some of the incompetent aspects that suggest the planners were going for tacti-cool rather than tactical advantage. At least seven of the militants dressed in all black, as opposed to useful camouflage or even clothes to help blending in with normal people on the escape. Pure-black 'looks good,' but it's more a uniform for official police teams to distinguish or play to light contrasts in overt contexts- it makes as much sense in a guerilla force as thinking that historical ninjas actually dressed in all black, as opposed to the black uniform being the stage-show theater dress to make it obvious. They used AR-15s, which are not, despite years of anti-gun campaigning, particularly good rifles for waging war (or insurgency). They discarded their AR-15s, leaving evidence behind in literal walking distance of the target. Some of the discarded AR-15s were found jammed, suggesting poor weapon handling... or, reported later, weapon modification attempts to increase rate of fire. This theory of 'more bullets = better' is not actually better in general, since a good part of the value of a semi-automatic rifle for small teams is that the slower rate forces better shooting fundamentals for reliability per shot, rather than wasting ammo faster for less gain.
And then there's the backpack with antifa literature. Just... why?
This, more than anything, got my 'is this a trick?' allergy going, because this is the sort of thing someone could do to try an inflame political tensions for its own sake as a false-flag action.
Leave behind left-coded Antifa literature to feed the initial view of a blue tribe attack. The right-coded AR-15s as a symbol of red tribe means. The mix of high-competence (a group who knew what they were doing) and low-competence (a group who were making incredibly basic mistakes) that could in and of itself be used to dismiss / deflect initial attributions. 'Of course it's Antifa- the literature matches the motive matches the target in attacking ICE!' could be deflected with 'Of course it's not Antifa- Antifa would be more competent, it's obviously a fake by a red tribe domestic extremist. Right wing extremists are obviously military competent, and look- they used the scary AR-15!'
This is the sort of narrative motivation that could support a broader variety of 'true' actors. Anyone with a 'maximize for heat, not light' could want that sort of recrimination spiral. It could be right-wing accelerationists. It could be the Antifa actors seeking to maximize (in)famy while invoking a circle-the-wagons effect of their left-tribe brethren. It could even be foreign agitators. If you want to accelerate a conflict in another country, the ideal false flag is to do something that elements in the target country would plausible want to or even try to do. It's not like this would be the first Antifa attack on a ICE facility.
To be clear, a false flag is not the assessment I would make from the initial information. But it's not a scenario I would rule out either. One of the most effective ways to do a false flag attack is to do something that non-trivial parts of an existing political coalition's fringes wishes (someone else) would do. And with the recent Democratic politician accounts in the (increasingly visible) Axios "Democrats told to "get shot" for the anti-Trump resistance" article, there are certainly people who think fighting ICE and Trump is the good fight.
Which is why another of the really weird things about Ngo's initial big post was how it didn't support that this was an actual Antifa cell in the first place, particularly when the initial government accounts didn't make that claim.
Ngo didn't actually provide evidence that these people were Antifa in the original article. Ngo makes the claim, but his supporting evidence in his post is that there was Antifa literature in a backpack of one of the caught shooters- aka, the sort of very easy thing to do if one wanted to insinuate Antifa. Ngo also cites fundraising by Antifa-linked people in support of the shooters... but the political tribal sympathy nature of tribal fundraising is also well established, and doesn't rely on prior association. Ngo does not actually cite any Antifa organization / social media / group that claimed the shooters as their own, or cite any of the shooters self-identifying as Antifa.
One reason I'd been holding off posting on this was hoping that follow-on media reporting would clarify the affiliation. It largely did not. The Washington Examiner released an article repeating the claim, but they did not really justify it either. The WE article did include a reachout to the FBI, but didn't attribute any Antifa attribution to the FBI. Then again, the FBI is often mum with ongoing investigations. The New York Times article does not make the antifa attribution... but this could be explained on partisan grounds of omitting politically unfavorable context. (Another weird(?) thing of the NYT article- no comment section. Not all NYT online articles get to have comment sections, but enough do that sometimes it can be seen as a choice not to.)
So I was waiting for yesterday's Department of Justice charging statement. I would imagine that at least some in the Trump DOJ would like to emphasize an antifa connection if they could. But there is no mention of Antifa in the DOJ statement.
So, not Antifa?
Well, not quite. Not only has there not been the sort of firm denunciation/separation that would be expected if a group was not affiliated with the broader political spectrum (as with other politically-sympathetic but unaffiliated political violence attempts over the years), but there's also Benjamin Song.
If you don't recognize his name from the OP article, that's because he was not one of the ten identified in Ngo's initial article, or the NYT article of the incident, or in the initial DOJ statement of charges.
The Dallas Express has published a much more extensive look at a specific (but still at large) suspect, which gives more compelling evidence of a specific connection via one (still wanted) suspect: Benjamin Song.
The Dallas Express writer is not entirely neutral- the left-skeptical political bias of which was probably why they got the presumably FBI-supported information for the article- but it provides a bit more specific claims that are contestable by others. So far none seriously have been, but these are at least falsifiable. To quote-
This, at least, is falsifiable. And elaborated upon, with a history that suggests a clear pattern of 'helping others with violence.'
And, of course, where he got his skill set-
For those unfamiliar, 'other than honorable discharge' is the 'you are being kicked out for causes that don't necessarily raise to the level of a felony' that typically accompanies the dishonorable discharge. 'Up to 60 marines' in turn scales to between a larger-than-normal platoon or a smaller-than-normal company. 'Managed' insinuates, but does not imply, a platoon leadership position- rather, when mixed with the inventory metric, suggests an administrative role. This does not imply he was not also tactically proficient, but would explain additional skill sets in organization.
And with this, some of the earlier discrepancy falls into place. We are not talking about a group of an average consistent quality that must be competent or incompetent. We can be looking at a cell with a more-competent organizer, a former Marine who taught tactical skills, and less-competent line members.
Which also helps explain another weird flag in the initial report, of how 10 suspects were arrested... but 12 sets of body armor were recovered.
And why Song is still at large.
From the Dallas Express-
This, if true, could be a result of a particularly competent technique. Two, possibly. One way to hide something valuable is to hide it in relation to something extremely visible and attention-grabbing, so that to observer's attention is drawn away. Another is to use a sacrifice play, so that the person who searches finds a first, and expendable, asset, but doesn't know to keep looking for the more valuable, and better hidden, asset.
If immediate police response finds 10 suspects fleeing a scene... what are the odds there is another still hiding for the attention to drift further away, to depart under better conditions once the initial surge of attention starts drifting and looking further away?
Of course, there are limits to this level of competence- limits that are explainable by the limits of Song and of chance. If he was a small-unit-tactics focused Marine for only 6 years, that would suggest limited exposure to the sort of investigation/exploitation awareness that might have led him to plan better on the evidence disposal. He didn't know what he didn't know, and thus didn't prepare for them, which is how investigators could unravel things relatively quickly afterwards. He might have typically-minded his Antifa cell members and not overseen them.
And, of course, the rapid capture of specific members- especially the get-away driver- allowed a rapid exploitation of evidence / safe house / etc. while he was still in his hide-and-escape phase. This was not part of the plan, and was an issue of chance, probably. If that getaway driver hadn't been caught, then the members might not have been captured, the staging base might not have been identified, and so on until Song could get back, clear out, and cover his tracks before the police found it.
Or maybe those preparations wouldn't have been enough either. Point is- the police response that found the getaway driver, something that might have been pre-empted by the jammer or if the police car had taken a different route or any number of things, created a vulnerability in the getaway plan. That's not necessarily incompetence on his part.
Song specifically has since appeared in more reputable, mainstream, and Democratic-Party-respected media like ABC, Newsweek, and CBS. This is consistent with standard media industry practice to support government requests to publicize criminals to increase their profile and make it easier to solicit tips to lead to their capture.
None of the above media sources mention Song's antifa affiliation.
I have friends who were assaulted by Song at a protest in ft worth in 2023.
The use of AR-15’s doesn’t tell us anything; it’s the most common rifle in America and you can buy them over the counter at probably a dozen locations within two miles of the facility, and hundreds of not over a thousand in DFW. For an operation like that you want something semi-consistent and obtainable, even if you’d rather get some bespoke battle rifle. Likewise, black is just the antifa uniform, and any street trash is going to pick up on radios and getaway cars. All the ‘markers of competency’ mean is someone planned this, not that the planner was competent.
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