The Turtle Island Liberation Front (TILF) is described in court filings as a far‑left, pro‑Palestine, anti‑government and anti‑capitalist group. Its own social‑media page says it advocates “liberation through decolonization and tribal sovereignty” and urges the working class to “rise up and fight back against capitalism.” The name “Turtle Island” comes from a term some Native Americans use for the North American continent. Reporting on the group’s online footprint indicates that the Los Angeles chapter, apparently the founding chapter, is small (around hundreds of followers) and only dates back to mid‑2025, suggesting a relatively new, loosely organized movement. Prosecutors say a more radical inner circle called the Order of the Black Lotus used encrypted Signal chats to plan the alleged New Year’s Eve bomb plot, and that TILF’s public posts have at times advocated violence against U.S. officials and promoted protests (including one outside a Koreatown temple that ended in arrests and allegations of property damage), but there is no public record of it having previously carried out bomb attacks.
Under the federal National Firearms Act, a destructive device includes weapons such as bombs, grenades, mines, Molotov cocktails and similar devices, as well as combinations of parts that can be readily assembled into such a weapon (26 U.S.C. § 5845(f)). Federal law then makes it a crime to possess any such destructive device that is not registered in the National Firearms Registration and Transfer Record (26 U.S.C. § 5861(d)). Courts have held that someone can violate this law by possessing key bomb components that can quickly be turned into a functioning device, even if the bomb is not yet fully assembled. Prosecutors are using the unregistered destructive device charge here because they allege the defendants had pipe sections, chemical precursors and other bomb‑making materials in the Mojave Desert, with the intent to build improvised explosive devices, and none of this was lawfully registered.
The FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs) are locally based, FBI‑led partnerships that bring together federal, state and local law‑enforcement agencies to investigate terrorism and terrorism‑related crimes. Nationwide, JTTFs draw personnel from more than 600 state and local agencies and about 50 federal agencies, and there are roughly 200 such task forces in operation, coordinated through the National Joint Terrorism Task Force at FBI headquarters. In the New Year’s Eve plot case, the Los Angeles‑area JTTF included the FBI along with the Los Angeles Police Department, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department and Palm Springs Police Department, with assistance from FBI field offices in Boston, Buffalo and New Orleans.
The government has not publicly identified the two U.S. companies; officials have only described them in general terms (for example, as large logistics‑center type businesses), so their specific names are currently unknown.
Beyond the eight‑page handwritten plan titled Operation Midnight Sun, the affidavit and news reports describe several main types of evidence. First, an undercover FBI agent and a confidential informant infiltrated the defendants’ encrypted Signal subgroup, Order of the Black Lotus, and obtained messages in which members allegedly discussed making pipe bombs, future attacks and weapons training; prosecutors say Carroll also sent messages calling herself a terrorist and a “Hamas fangirl” and referred to a notebook as her “terrorist diary.” Second, investigators cite TILF social‑media posts that advocate violence against U.S. officials and urge people to “rise up and fight back,” which they say show extremist ideology and intent. Third, physical evidence was recovered from the Dec. 12 Mojave Desert meeting: agents watched the group unload bomb‑making materials, set up a work area, begin preparing pipes and discuss grinding explosive precursors; after the arrests, an FBI bomb technician reported that the PVC pipes, glass bottles and chemical ingredients found there could be used to build improvised explosive devices and Molotov cocktails. Finally, in a related arrest in Louisiana, agents recovered assault rifles, ammunition and sniper and SWAT training manuals from a man alleged to be part of the same encrypted chat group, which the government argues illustrates the broader network and seriousness of the plot.
After the initial appearance in federal court, where the judge informs defendants of the charges, ensures they have a lawyer and decides whether they will be held or released, a case that starts with a criminal complaint must either be presented to a grand jury or dismissed. If the grand jury finds probable cause and returns an indictment, the defendants are arraigned on that indictment, the parties exchange discovery and litigate any pre‑trial motions, and the case then usually ends either in a guilty plea agreement or in a trial. At trial, prosecutors must prove every element of each charge beyond a reasonable doubt. The standard language that “a criminal complaint is merely an allegation” and that defendants are “presumed innocent until proven guilty” means that, in law, they are treated as not guilty unless and until a jury (or judge in a bench trial) unanimously finds them guilty beyond a reasonable doubt; they have no obligation to prove their innocence, and jurors are explicitly instructed to begin with this presumption when weighing the evidence.
In this case, investigators appear to have accessed the defendants’ encrypted communications not by breaking the encryption itself but by infiltrating the chat groups. According to court filings described in press reports, an undercover FBI agent and a confidential informant were admitted into the defendants’ encrypted Signal subgroup, Order of the Black Lotus, so agents could read and preserve the messages even though Signal uses end‑to‑end encryption. More generally, law‑enforcement agencies gain access to encrypted communications in several ways: by obtaining content or backups from service providers that retain decryption keys when served with a warrant or similar legal process; by seizing suspects’ devices and using passcodes, biometrics or forensic tools to unlock them; and by obtaining copies of messages from cooperators or informants who were participants in the conversations. The FBI’s own guidance states that it supports “responsibly managed encryption” that providers can decrypt and turn over under lawful process, while warning that strong, end‑to‑end encryption can create “warrant‑proof” communications that are difficult to access without such cooperation.