Federal agents descended on an apartment building on East Franklin Avenue in Minneapolis early Thursday morning and arrested a 37-year-old self-identified Antifa member accused of threatening to kill Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers. Kyle Wagner now faces federal charges of cyberstalking and making threatening communications.

The Department of Justice says Wagner spent the month of January using social media to encourage followers to confront and attack ICE agents — and at times called for armed violence against them. A neighbor received a text just before 6 a.m. about agents storming the building. By the time the sun was up, Wagner was in federal custody.

This is what happens when online radicalism meets federal resolve.

What Wagner Allegedly Said

The criminal complaint paints a picture of escalating menace. According to prosecutors, Wagner used Facebook and Instagram throughout January to post content urging violence against federal law enforcement. He referred to ICE agents as "murderers" and the "gestapo" — and then went further.

We want to know who they are. We will identify every single one of them and we will prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law. If it has to be done at the barrel of a gun, then let us have a little f------ fun.

On January 29, prosecutors allege he used Instagram to dox a pro-ICE individual — publishing a phone number, birth month and year, and an address in Oak Park, Michigan. Wagner later admitted the address belonged to the victim's parents.

That's not political speech. That's targeted intimidation backed by explicit threats of lethal violence.

The DOJ Responds

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche did not mince words:

It's no surprise that an Antifa terrorist is allegedly threatening to kill and assault federal law enforcement officers as they dutifully remove criminal threats from neighborhoods.

He continued:

After all, this is what Antifa is about, lawlessness and violence. But under the leadership of President Trump and Attorney General Bondi, there is no safe haven for terrorists and no protection from the full weight of justice.

U.S. Attorney Jerome F. Gorgon Jr., who announced the charges, framed the stakes in unmistakable terms:

We know that a 'worthless man plots evil, and his speech is like a scorching fire.' And Wagner's alleged actions were an attempt to spread fire into our peaceful community. That is not going to happen.

The case was investigated by agents of ICE Homeland Security Investigations and is part of Operation Take Back America, a nationwide DOJ initiative. Wagner is expected to have made his initial appearance in federal court on Thursday, Fox News reported. The charges were filed in U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Michigan — a jurisdictional detail likely tied to the Oak Park address Wagner allegedly published.

A Pattern That Demands a Name

There is a certain kind of person who spends years calling law enforcement fascists, who compares immigration agents to Nazis, and who then acts shocked when someone in their orbit takes the next logical step. Wagner didn't emerge from nowhere. He emerged from a political culture that has spent years telling its foot soldiers that ICE agents are moral criminals deserving of whatever comes to them.

Consider the trajectory. Wagner didn't start with "barrel of a gun." He started with the same rhetoric that circulates freely in progressive spaces — ICE as gestapo, enforcement as murder, agents as targets. Each post ratcheted the temperature higher. By late January, he had abandoned even the pretense of peaceful protest and moved to publishing the personal information of someone who supported immigration enforcement.

The escalation ladder is predictable because we've seen it before. Dehumanize the agents. Frame enforcement as violence. Cast lawbreakers as victims. Then treat anyone who dissents as a legitimate target. Wagner allegedly walked every rung.

When Ideology Becomes Infrastructure

Wagner proudly self-identified as Antifa. That detail matters — not because Antifa operates as a traditional organization with membership cards, but because it functions as an ideological permission structure. It tells individuals like Wagner that political violence isn't just tolerable; it's righteous. That framing has consequences.

When someone calls for armed confrontation with federal officers, publishes personal identifying information of civilians online, and tells followers the time for peaceful protest is over, that isn't activism. It's a threat matrix. And the federal government treated it accordingly.

Wagner apparently understood this, too, at least on some level. Fox News Digital previously reported he had been "on the run," and by Monday, he had removed his remaining social media accounts. A linked Venmo account was no longer accessible. The digital retreat came too late.

What Comes Next

The DOJ noted that a criminal complaint is only a charge, not evidence of guilt, and that Wagner is presumed innocent until proven otherwise. A decision to seek an indictment will be made in the near future. It was not immediately clear whether Wagner had hired an attorney.

But the arrest itself sends an unmistakable signal. For years, the line between radical online rhetoric and real-world violence against law enforcement has blurred. Threats against ICE agents have been treated as a kind of progressive folk art — edgy but ultimately tolerated. That era is closing.

Operation Take Back America exists because the federal government has decided that threats against its officers will be met with handcuffs, not hand-wringing. Wagner is a case study in what that looks like in practice: weeks of documented escalation, an early-morning raid, and a defendant sitting in federal custody before most of Minneapolis had finished breakfast.

The people who spend their time threatening federal agents from behind a screen have operated for too long under the assumption that anonymity equals immunity. Kyle Wagner found out Thursday morning, just before 6 a.m., that it doesn't.