If anyone is still clinging to the illusion that radical extremism in Southern California is limited to social media rants or fringe online forums, federal authorities just shattered that fantasy.
This week, the FBI confirmed it dismantled an active domestic terror cell allegedly planning a coordinated bombing campaign in Los Angeles timed for midnight on New Year’s Eve. Four suspects are now in federal custody, charged with conspiracy and possession of unregistered destructive devices. And one of them is not an anonymous radical hiding in the shadows, but a former college student government president who once operated in plain sight, under the banner of “sustainability,” “equity,” and institutional trust.
His name is Dante Anthony Gaffield.
Federal records identify Gaffield, 24, as a member of the Turtle Island Liberation Front (TILF), an extremist far-left collective described by prosecutors as anti-government, anti-capitalist, and violently pro-Palestine. Within that network, Gaffield allegedly operated under the alias “Nomad.”
And now, that identity has been formally confirmed.
Cerritos College confirmed via email to The Current Report that the student depicted in the campus image is the same individual identified by federal authorities as Dante Gaffield, the former Associated Students of Cerritos College (ASCC) president now charged in the alleged terror plot.
From Campus Leader to Federal Defendant
Before the bomb components, encrypted chats, and desert test runs, Gaffield was a familiar figure on the Cerritos College campus in Norwalk.
He rose through student government ranks as Director of Sustainability, promoting native plant coalitions, biodiversity initiatives, and environmental resolutions. In 2024, he was elected ASCC President, entrusted to represent the student body and liaise with administrators, trustees, and faculty on issues ranging from equity to campus policy.
That presidency unraveled quickly.
By September 2024, just months into his term, Cerritos College convened a special election following allegations against Gaffield and internal dysfunction within the ASCC executive branch. Elizabeth Miller, the Dean of Student Services and ASCC advisor, confirmed at the time that issues involving both Gaffield and the vice president prompted the vote. Gaffield was removed. His term ended abruptly. The specific allegations remain sealed under student privacy rules.
What did not end was his trajectory.
Federal investigators now say that by late 2025, Gaffield had fully immersed himself in TILF’s militant ecosystem.
Operation Midnight Sun
According to a 40-page DOJ affidavit, TILF developed a coordinated attack plan dubbed “Operation Midnight Sun,” designed to detonate at the exact moment Los Angeles rang in 2026.
The plan allegedly called for improvised explosive devices built from PVC pipe and homemade black powder derived from potassium nitrate, charcoal, and sulfur, packed with shrapnel and concealed in backpacks. Devices were to be planted simultaneously at facilities linked to two U.S. companies engaged in interstate commerce, exploiting New Year’s Eve fireworks and emergency response overload.
Targets would be marked with red inverted triangles, a symbol used by Hamas to designate strikes, with graffiti placed nearby. Each team would consist of four operatives, while a fifth monitored police scanners to coordinate escapes.
This was only phase one.
Federal filings state that phase two, scheduled for January 2026, involved pipe bomb attacks on ICE agents, with recorded conversations discussing plans to “take some of them out” to instill fear.
Gaffield’s Alleged Role
Prosecutors allege Gaffield formally joined the inner splinter faction, the Order of the Black Lotus, on December 7, 2025. During a clandestine meeting, he reviewed an eight-page handwritten bombing blueprint and was added to an encrypted Signal chat reserved for trusted members.
Within those chats, Gaffield allegedly discussed logistics, communications, and equipment, including boasting about storing burner phones for the New Year’s Eve operation.
On December 12, he traveled to Lucerne Valley in the Mojave Desert to participate in a dry-run explosives test. Unbeknownst to him, the vehicle he rode in belonged to the FBI. When he helped unload PVC pipes, primers, and bomb precursors beneath a pop-up tent, agents moved in.
No device detonated because law enforcement intervened in time.
How the FBI Penetrated the Cell
The case hinged on classic counterterrorism infiltration.
A confidential human source, vetted by the FBI since 2021, provided initial intelligence on November 26, 2025, after TILF leader Audrey Illeene Carroll allegedly handed over the Midnight Sun plan. An undercover FBI employee embedded in meetings, recording conversations and tracking movements.
Surveillance documented co-conspirators purchasing bomb components in disguise, photographing fuse materials, and attempting to evade detection. Amazon purchase records tied Carroll to potassium nitrate deliveries. Signal chats filled in the rest.
Arrests were made on December 12 in the desert. Carroll, Gaffield, Zachary Aaron Page, and Tina Lai were taken into custody. Searches of their homes uncovered extremist propaganda, bomb-making materials, stolen Tasers, and explicit calls for violence. A fifth suspect tied to a related plot was later arrested in New Orleans.
The Campus Question Cerritos Won’t Answer
And this is where the story circles back to Cerritos College.
During Gaffield’s tenure as ASCC President, the college actively sanctioned and hosted pro-Palestinian activism that closely mirrored TILF’s ideological framing. ASCC Senate minutes from April 10, 2024, document student leaders openly advocating for Gaza ceasefire resolutions at Cerritos City Hall. Days later, the Humanitarian Club staged an on-campus protest near the library, waving Palestinian flags and chanting liberation slogans, with no institutional pushback.
This was not underground activity. It occurred in official forums, on college property, with administrative awareness.
Yet when confronted with Gaffield’s arrest, Cerritos College moved swiftly to distance itself.
In a December 16, 2025 email to The Current Report, Chelsea Van Doornum, Director of Public Relations & Communications, stated: “There is no known threat to the Cerritos College campus, and there is no information indicating that any alleged activity was connected to the College or occurred on College property.” She declined further comment, citing an active legal matter, and redirected inquiries to the Department of Justice.
What the college did confirm, however, is critical: the former student leader depicted in campus materials is the same individual now charged in the federal case.
Silence, Scrubbing, and Accountability
What Cerritos has not done is hold town halls, issue counseling alerts, review student government oversight, or explain how a campus leader could transition into an alleged domestic terror plot without institutional red flags.
Where’s the accountability?
Cerritos College didn’t lift a finger to investigate potential radicalization on its watch, nor did it offer reassurance to students now left wondering whether their campus was ever truly safe.
That isn’t protection, it’s negligence.
Students who sat beside this suspect in senate meetings, collaborated with him on campus initiatives, or marched under the same banners deserve more than a curt email dismissing the threat as “unrelated.” And the questions only deepen when you follow the paper trail, or what’s left of it – and what we’ve discovered is that public records appear to be disappearing.
The Current Report’s investigation into BoardDocs, the platform hosting ASCC meeting records, reveals troubling gaps: the April 16, 2025 Senate Meeting lists “Minutes” and an “Audio Player,” yet contains no accessible content, just metadata and emptiness. Looking back to 2024, when Dante Gaffield served as Director and then President, some meeting minutes remain publicly archived while others, particularly those touching on controversial issues like pro-Palestinian advocacy, are conspicuously harder to access or appear selectively preserved. Is this routine housekeeping, or a quiet erasure of records that might expose how extremist ideology was normalized in plain sight?
Sources on campus whisper about a post-arrest purge, but Cerritos won’t comment, a silence that only amplifies suspicion that damage control has taken priority over student safety. Free speech is sacred, but when rhetoric crosses into calls for violence, institutions have a duty to intervene. By sanctioning protests without meaningful oversight, Cerritos may have inadvertently platformed the very extremism that culminated in this alleged plot. Gaffield’s story isn’t an anomaly, it’s a warning, and parents, students, and taxpayers should be demanding answers now. How many more “Nomads” are out there, groomed in plain sight?
Whispers from multiple inside sources point to a far more unsettling possibility: Dante Gaffield, the disgraced former ASCC president now charged in a federal terror conspiracy, may have been quietly circling back to Cerritos College itself. According to sources with direct knowledge of campus activity, Gaffield had re-enrolled just weeks before his arrest in the Mojave Desert, raising urgent questions about whether the institution he once led had re-entered his orbit as a potential focal point of “Operation Midnight Sun.”
Rather than confront those concerns head-on, Cerritos College has retreated behind a wall of institutional silence. Public Relations Director Chelsea Van Doornum has offered only boilerplate assurances that there is “no known threat” and no confirmed connection between the alleged plot and the campus, declining to address whether administrators were aware of Gaffield’s return or whether any internal review was triggered once his name surfaced in federal filings.
For students and parents, that silence speaks volumes. If a former student body president accused of planning mass-casualty bombings was back on campus weeks before his arrest, the question isn’t whether Cerritos is technically liable. The question is whether the college ever meaningfully assessed the risk—or whether protecting the institution’s image once again took precedence over protecting the people inside it.
Freedom of speech is non-negotiable. But when rhetoric escalates into operational violence, institutions have a duty to intervene.
Gaffield’s trajectory, now confirmed from campus corridors to federal custody, is not an anomaly. It is a warning.
Parents, students, and taxpayers deserve answers. How many more student leaders are being radicalized in plain sight while institutions hide behind boilerplate statements and legal shields?
Follow Us