(LOS ANGELES) -- Attorney General Pam Bondi announced Monday that the FBI disrupted a "massive and horrific terror plot" by an anti-government extremist group allegedly planning a series of bombings against multiple targets in Orange County and Los Angeles, California, beginning on New Years Eve.
Bondi said the plot by the so-called "Turtle Island Liberation Front," which she described in the announcement as a "far-left, pro-Palestine, anti-government and anti-capitalist group," also "planned to target ICE agents and vehicles."
At a Los Angeles press conference Monday morning, Bill Essayli, assistant U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, and Akil Davis, assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles field office, said that four people -- identified as Audrey Illeene Carroll, 30, Zachary Aaron Page, 32, Dante Gaffield, 24, and Tina Lai, 41 -- were arrested and each charged with conspiracy and possession of an unregistered destructive device.
The FBI on Friday “intercepted a scheme by members of a violent extremist group we believe determined to detonate explosives at multiple businesses on New Year's Eve," according to Davis.
The four people arrested, whom Davis said were "members of a radical faction of the Turtle Island Liberation Front, a violent homegrown anti-government group," allegedly planned to plant backpacks containing improvised explosive devices "to be detonated at multiple locations in Southern California targeting U.S. companies."
The IEDs were coordinated to detonate at midnight on New Year's Eve, Davis said, adding that the suspects were arrested Friday by the FBI while they were allegedly assembling the devices in the desert.
All four will appear in federal court Monday afternoon, according to officials.
Though he declined to name the companies that were allegedly targeted, Essayli described them as "logistics centers." He added that there were "at least five" locations that the suspects allegedly planned to target in Orange and Los Angeles counties.
FBI Director Kash Patel also posted Monday that a fifth person "believed to be linked" to the Turtle Island Liberation Front had been arrested by the FBI in New Orleans for "allegedly planning a separate violent attack."