A Minnesota activist was arrested Thursday on charges of cyberstalking and threatening to assault and kill Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, the Justice Department announced.
In photos of the arrest, authorities can be seen escorting suspect Kyle Wagner from an apartment building in Minneapolis. He was wearing a black sweatshirt at the time reading “I’M ANTIFA!,” which is short for “anti-fascist.”
Prosecutors have alleged that 37-year-old Wagner took to social media and encouraged his Facebook and Instagram followers to attack ICE officers, at times referring to them as “gestapo” and “murderers.”
Wagner’s opposition to ICE seemed to escalate in early January, officials said, around the same time that federal agents started flooding into Minneapolis in a bid to carry out the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
Since the start of the New Year, there have been two officer-involved shootings in the Twin Cities, resulting in the deaths of Renee Good, a mother of three, and ICU nurse Alex Pretti. Both victims were 37.
In a video shared just days after Good was killed, Wagner allegedly issued a threat against federal agents, warning them that “we’re f—ing coming for you,” the Justice Department said. The clip was later deleted, but prosecutors said Wagner posted another video less than 24 hours later.
In that one, he called for the “constant harassment of ICE,” adding that “we need to continue that, but we also need to cripple them.” He further advocated for physical confrontations, the Justice Department claimed.
“Anywhere we have an opportunity to get our hands on them, we need to put our hands on them,” Wagner allegedly told his followers. He also urged others to “hunt” ICE, calling it a “kill or be killed” situation.
Then, in a post shared on Jan. 26, Wagner said he was “not talking about peaceful protests anymore.”
“Get your f—ing guns and stop these f—ing people,” he allegedly said.
The Justice Department further accused Wagner of publishing the personal information of an ICE supporter in Michigan and threatening that same person.
“This man allegedly doxxed and called for the murder of law enforcement officers, encouraged bloodshed in the streets, and proudly claimed affiliation with the terrorist organization Antifa before going on the run,” said Attorney General Pam Bondi. “Today’s arrest illustrates that you cannot run, you cannot hide, and you cannot evade our federal agents: If you come for law enforcement, the Trump administration will come for you.”
In an executive order issued in September, President Trump officially designated Antifa a domestic terrorist organization, claiming the group “uses illegal means to organize and execute a campaign of violence” to further an “anarchist enterprise that explicitly calls for the overthrow of the United States government.”
