Feds charge alleged 'Boogaloo Bois' member with rioting in Floyd protests
Updated: 3:57 p.m.
Federal authorities have charged a Texas man with alleged ties to the violent “Boogaloo Bois” anti-government extremist movement in connection with violence in Minneapolis following the killing of George Floyd.
A federal criminal complaint alleges Ivan Harrison Hunter, 26, of Boerne, Texas, was identified as the person in a May 28 video shooting 13 rounds from an “AK-47 style semiautomatic rifle” into the Minneapolis Police Department’s 3rd Precinct building.
Authorities say the shooter walked toward the camera, high-fived another person and yelled "Justice for Floyd!" Investigators say he was wearing a distinctive skull mask they later saw in a photo on Hunter's Facebook page.
The precinct had been overrun at that point by protesters after police officers withdrew from the building.
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Hunter faces one count of participating in a riot. He made an initial appearance Thursday before a judge in Texas.
According to the complaint, after returning to Texas, Hunter posted statements on social media describing the violence he allegedly took part in while in Minneapolis.
Authorities say on June 3, Hunter attended a George Floyd protest near Austin, Texas. At 2 a.m., he was riding in the front seat of a pick-up truck when police pulled them over. Officers allegedly found “six loaded magazines for an AK-47 style assault rifle affixed to a tactical vest he was wearing” along with three semi-automatic rifles and loaded pistols, authorities said.
After police seized the weapons, ammunition and marijuana, they released Hunter and the two other men from the scene.
After the traffic stop, the U.S. Justice Department said agents became aware of Hunter’s “online affiliation with Boogaloo Bois member Steven Carrillo,” who was charged with the May 29 killing of a Federal Protective Service Officer in Oakland, Calif.
A confidential informant help provide information to the FBI about Hunter. The informant said Hunter admitted to shooting at the precinct and help set it on fire. He also confirmed his affiliation with Carrillo, according to the complaint.
In September, federal prosecutors charged two alleged “Boogaloo Bois” members, including a Minnesotan, for trying to conspire with an international terror group as part of a plan to “use violence against the police, other government officials and government property as part of their desire to overthrow the government,” according to the Justice Department.
Those men were allegedly on the scene during the civil unrest in the Twin Cities after Floyd was killed with witnesses telling the FBI the pair were heavily armed.
During the first week of unrest in Minneapolis, Gov. Tim Walz and other state officials warned about outsiders and extremists who might be coming to Minnesota and using the protests as cover to foment violence.
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Boogaloo Bois movement started in antigovernment racist online chat rooms early in the last decade. The term “boogaloo” is associated with a race war or second civil war.
Alex Newhouse, who studies the movement at the Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism at Middlebury College in Vermont, wrote that administrators of Boogaloo social media forums actively supported the anti-racist and Black Lives Matter protests.
But Newhouse also says this support is solely opportunistic, and that the Boogaloo Bois see Black Lives Matter a “temporary ally or even a useful tool for sparking violence against the state.”