On December 15, 2025, the Department of Justice announced the arrest of four individuals—Audrey Illeene Carroll, Zachary Aaron Page, Dante Gaffield, and Tina Lai—accused of plotting coordinated bombing attacks across Southern California on New Year’s Eve. Prosecutors allege the defendants are affiliated with the Turtle Island Liberation Front (TILF), which the DOJ describes as far-left, anti-capitalist, anti-government, and pro-Palestinian. The group’s apparent Instagram account content is rife with anti-capitalist, pro-Palestinian content.
The group’s name itself attempts to justify violence as a means of liberation. This was explained in a recent Capital Research Center report, When Charities Betray America:
Terms such as “Turtle Island” and “So-Called United States” are used to deny the legitimacy of the existence of the United States by invoking classic anti-colonial rhetoric.
The narrative is used to equate Israel’s alleged illegitimacy as an occupier of indigenous land with the United States as an alleged occupier of North American land. Both countries are criticized as unworthy of existence, and therefore if violence against Israel to “liberate” Palestine is justified, then so is violence against the United States to “liberate” Turtle Island.
Anti-Israel extremists use the same framing and terminology employed by Hamas to legitimize its terrorism to issue identical calls for violent action in the United States. Terms like “flood” (a reference to the October 7 attacks that Hamas named “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood”), “Intifada,” and “sumud” (steadfastness) are used to invoke the need for radical action to achieve their goal.
The merging of these agendas against both Israel and the United States can be seen in formally organized groups such as the Pueblo Action Alliance, a far-left Native American activist group. In recent testimony to Congress, Capital Research Center president Scott Walter explained their agenda:
Likewise, another radical group, Pueblo Action Alliance (PAA), seamlessly connects radical environmental views with radical foreign policy views and shows a fondness for revolutionary violence—all obvious just from the front page of PAA’s website. That landing page currently shows a PAA flyer for the COP28 climate conference that includes radical environmentalism (denouncing carbon capture, hydrogen, water and nuclear power; demanding a complete phase-out of fossil fuels), radical feminism (calling for “feminist regenerative economies”), and radical anti-Israel policies (“solidarity with our Palestine relatives”).
But while the ideology is similar to the Turtle Island Liberation Front, there is a key difference. Pueblo Action is a sponsored project of the left-wing Southwest Organizing Project (SWOP), a legally created 501(c)(3) tax-exempt nonprofit. SWOP files reports with the IRS, which become public documents that allow for researching their behavior and spending.
None of this applies to the Turtle Island Liberation Front. What it is alleged to have planned would require organization. But TILF does not appear to have been organized in any legal sense.
The non-organized TILF
Violent plots require funding, procurement, communications, and operational coordination, a reality reflected in the Department of Justice’s charging documents against the Turtle Island Liberation Front.
The DOJ claims TILF is an informal group rather than a formal organization. Thus far, public records searches reveal that no 501(c)(3), 501(c)(4), or other tax-exempt nonprofit operates under the Turtle Island Liberation Front name. There are no identifiable ties to major foundations or institutional grantmakers, according to IRS nonprofit registries.
But the DOJ does claim that a great deal of organization went into the alleged terror plot.
The DOJ alleges that Audrey Illeene Carroll authored an eight-page handwritten plan titled “Operation Midnight Sun,” that detailed the construction and deployment of “complex pipe bombs,” including lists of components, prices, and assigned purchasers.
Investigators further allege that the defendants discussed acquiring cash-only burner phones, coordinated via encrypted messaging applications, and sourced materials through retail pickup locations, including Amazon facilities. Federal authorities cited these steps as evidence of efforts to evade detection.
According to reporting based on court records, an undercover FBI informant and FBI agent played a central role in infiltrating the group before the arrests. The defendants allegedly communicated directly with the informant as they discussed plans and logistics, underscoring the group’s reliance on informal internal communications. In one exchange cited in court filings, Carroll allegedly referred to a notebook of plans as her “terrorist diary.”
To date, the government has not alleged financial backing from any charity, advocacy organization, or organized funding network. Based on the affidavit’s descriptions of personal purchases, assigned procurement responsibilities, and pooled materials, the alleged plot appears to have relied on self-financing and informal coordination, rather than structured fundraising as described by federal investigators.
Court filings and media reporting characterize TILF as a loosely organized, nascent network, rather than a formalized entity with standing fundraising mechanisms or fiscal sponsors, a conclusion consistent with DOJ’s public description of the group.
Closely monitoring
Capital Research Center has documented how activist ecosystems—particularly those built around “direct action”—can blur the line between lawful protest and illegal conduct. Recently in Robert Stilson’s report, Greenpeace, nonprofits, and illegal protests, CRC examined how tax-exempt organizations in unrelated contexts have supported or endorsed activities that crossed legal boundaries.
None of the organizations examined in that report (nor the aforementioned Pueblo Action Alliance) have been accused of having any connection to the Turtle Island defendants and their alleged New Year’s Eve plot. The relevance here is structural: Stilson’s analysis demonstrates how nonprofit funding, logistical support, and activist infrastructure have intersected with unlawful conduct in other documented cases.
As the Turtle Island case moves through the federal court system, Capital Research Center and InfluenceWatch will keep a close eye on any new documents or trial evidence that could reveal important financial information, payment methods, prepaid cards, or cryptocurrency use, which often come up during federal investigations and court cases.
CRC will also watch for any allegations of material support beyond shared ideology, including third-party provision of training, equipment, travel, or logistical assistance furnished to TILF, should such claims appear in subsequent DOJ filings.
Finally, InfluenceWatch will examine whether the suspects involved had official or unofficial links to known activist groups, financial backers, or protest networks that are already being tracked by InfluenceWatch or have been the subject of ongoing CRC reports.
Whether the Turtle Island plot represents an isolated case of self-funded extremism or part of a broader, harder-to-trace support environment remains an open question based on the current public record. But the Capital Research Center will continue to monitor the situation closely.
