A 25-year-old South Los Angeles man, Dante Gaffield, is set to plead guilty on Thursday, October 29, in federal court in downtown Los Angeles to a single count of providing and attempting to provide material support to terrorists, in a case built around an alleged plot to bomb businesses across Southern California on New Year's Eve 2025. The count carries a possible sentence of up to 15 years in federal prison and a life term of supervised release, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office account carried in his plea agreement.
Source: MyNewsLA (City News Service)
Gaffield was one of four defendants charged in December 2025 over suspected roles in the alleged plot, which authorities say was derailed weeks before New Year's Eve. His plea agreement, filed in Los Angeles federal court, says the group had by then been infiltrated by undercover law enforcement. Court-records reporting on the filed plea agreement independently confirms that Gaffield agreed to plead to the single material-support count and faces up to 15 years.
Source: Permanent Record (court records reporting)
What prosecutors allege the plot was
Federal prosecutors contend the plan was to plant backpacks filled with explosive devices at multiple businesses so they would blow up simultaneously at midnight on December 31, 2025. First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli did not name the companies said to have been targeted, but described them as “Amazon-type” logistical centers. Prosecutors also allege the group planned, in the months after New Year's Eve, to target U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and vehicles with pipe bombs. Those wider plans remain allegations against the defendants.
The suspects were arrested on December 12, 2025, in the Mojave Desert near Twentynine Palms, as they unloaded bomb-making materials from their cars to construct and test explosives, Essayli said. Prosecutors say the materials procured through early December included potassium nitrate, sulfur, charcoal and pipes, and that the group was arrested before it finished building an actual destructive device. The complaint includes photos that prosecutors say show bomb-making materials spread across folding tables at a desert campsite.
The group and the encrypted chat, as alleged
The U.S. Attorney's Office contends the four were part of the Turtle Island Liberation Front, a group it describes as advocating and planning violence against U.S. businesses and people working for the federal government. Prosecutors allege they were also members of what defendant Audrey Carroll characterized as a “radical” faction of the group that communicated through an encrypted messaging group called Order of the Black Lotus.
Gaffield's plea agreement gives his own account of how he was drawn in. When he was first introduced to the group in the summer of 2025, he believed it was an advocacy group holding anti-government, anti-capitalist and pro-Palestinian ideology, the agreement says. Over time, he stated, he learned that alleged core members Carroll and Zachary Page were planning violent attacks. In October 2025, he allegedly met Carroll, Page and a co-conspirator at a park near Union Station in downtown Los Angeles, where, according to the plea agreement, Carroll said peaceful protests were ineffective and told the group she had experience building Molotov cocktails that could be used against law enforcement, specifically ICE officers.
In November 2025, Carroll allegedly drafted an eight-page handwritten document describing a bombing plot against U.S. businesses across Southern California on New Year's Eve. Prosecutors also allege that Page used an encrypted messaging application to send co-conspirators, including Carroll and Gaffield, a message proclaiming “death” to Israel, the United States and “colonizers,” and that Carroll responded, “Death to them all, burn it all down.” Those messages are cited in court papers as allegations.
The other defendants and what happens next
Audrey Carroll, 31, of South Los Angeles, and Zachary Page, 33, of Torrance, are charged with conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction, providing and attempting to provide material support to terrorists, and possession of unregistered firearms. A third defendant, Tina Lai, 42, of Glendale, is charged with the last two of those counts. A May 2027 trial date has been set for Carroll, Page and Lai, and the charges against them remain allegations to be tested at trial. Court-records reporting also notes that another member of the group, Micah James Legnon, was arrested a day after the desert arrests and has pleaded guilty.
“The charges … reflect the seriousness of the conduct: a planned terrorist attack on American soil on New Year's Eve,” First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli said in a statement. “If convicted, this group of self-professed left-wing radicals will face decades in federal prison. We will continue to investigate and prosecute any and all terror groups and bring them to justice.”
What happens next is procedural. Gaffield's guilty plea was set to be entered on Thursday, October 29; Thursday's reporting gave no sentencing date, and sentencing in federal court normally follows a plea by some weeks or months, with the judge free to impose any term up to the 15-year maximum on the count. For Southern California's logistics workforce — which includes many Punjabi truck drivers and warehouse workers across the Los Angeles basin and the Inland Empire — the case matters because the businesses prosecutors say were allegedly targeted were logistics centers of the kind that keep the region's freight economy moving, and because the further alleged plan named ICE agents and vehicles. Awaaz Punjab will follow the plea hearing outcome and any sentencing date as they are confirmed in court.