Portland man Robert Jacob Hoopes was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison for his role in leading a violent assault on an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility last summer, the U.S. Department of Justice announced Thursday. As part of a plea deal, Hoopes pled guilty in February to “aggravated assault on a federal employee with a dangerous weapon” after he threw a large rock that struck an ICE officer in the head.

Hoopes’s crimes occurred on a particularly violent day during a summer of continual harassment. On June 14, 2025, a sizable crowd of agitators surrounded the building housing ICE offices in Portland, Ore.

“While federal law enforcement officers were within the building, numerous individuals attempted to breach the front door of the facility,” a federal affidavit averred. “One of these individuals, Subject 1 (S1) … threw multiple rocks towards the door. Subjects, including S1, also attempted to barricade the front doors from the outside to prevent officers from opening the door.”

“Subject 1” obscured his face with a large gas mask, but federal investigators later identified him as Hoopes.

 “As officers opened the door attempting to clear obstructions from the doorway, S1 approached the door and threw a rock into the opening, striking an ICE ERO officer in the face from close range causing significant injury,” the affidavit continued.

The officer received “an approximately 2-inch gash on his right eyebrow,” which “bled profusely, to the point of obstructing his vision.” He received immediate first-aid, “including glue, adhesive sutures, and bandages to hold the wound closed,” but the “the first attempt to close the wound failed,” and the officer “needed additional medical attention.”

The act of striking a man’s eyebrow with a thrown rock apparently did nothing to prick Hoopes’s conscience. “Shortly after the assault, S1 was observed with two as-yet unidentified people carrying a stop sign toward the front door of the ICE building. S1 led the individuals with the stop-sign, using the metal pole of the sign as a makeshift battering ram, striking the front door to the ICE facility four times,” the affidavit added. “The three individuals worked in concert, but it appeared that S1 was leading the charge.”

“The metal pole striking the door caused significant structural damage to the door, requiring replacement by the United States government,” it informed the court. “An official quote to replace the door was requested from the General Services Administration. The replacement cost totaled $7,747.72.”

On August 5, 2025, Hoopes was indicted on one count of “aggravated assault on a federal employee with a dangerous weapon” and one count of “depredation of federal property.” Although Hoopes only pled guilty to the first count, the $8,000 in restitution he was required to pay roughly covers the cost of repairing the door he damaged in the second count.

Jacob Hoopes’s father, Tom, flew in from the East Coast to advocate for his son. “Jacob is a lifelong Quaker who is deeply committed to pacifism,” Tom Hoopes protested. “He’s an organic gardener and the soul of kindness.” Jacob Hoopes’s girlfriend, Fable Sorenson, described him in similar terms: “Jacob is a pacifist Quaker who is the most compassionate, loving, gentle person I have ever met.”

Unfortunately for Jacob Hoopes, four years at the uber-liberal Reed College had filled him with enough animosity for immigration enforcement to overcome whatever Quaker pacifism he still retained. Gary Granger, the longtime director of Community Safety at Reed College, recognized Hoopes from law enforcement photographs and informed the FBI — an act for which Granger was fired. Federal investigators also matched Hoopes to “Subject 1” using facial recognition software, an elaborate tattoo on his left forearm, and a distinctive gas mask with bright pink filters.

Thus, all of Hoopes’s violent actions were captured on video. “He used violence multiple times, postured and threatened,” a U.S. assistant attorney said. “He struck an officer at point-blank range.”

“Violence is not a protest,” responded U.S. Attorney Scott Bradford. “When you cross the line and assault a federal officer, you will be prosecuted.”

Following his guilty plea, Hoopes was sentenced to 30 months in prison and three years of supervised release, and also ordered to pay $8,000 in restitution, which covered the cost of a door repair he caused. Prosecutors had asked for 46 months in prison and $250,000 in restitution for “the most aggravated form of conduct that occurred at this ICE facility,” but the judge imposed a lesser sentence.

The incident serves as a reminder that left-wing agitation against immigration enforcement has been more or less sustained for the past 17 months. If Hoopes was guilty of “the most aggravated form of conduct” of the ICE facility in Portland, that is only because lesser agitation is so commonplace and routine that no one even bothers to prosecute it.

Last summer, Portland ICE Office Director Cammila Wamsley complained that the building faced violence for 100 consecutive nights. “Towards the evening and around dark, there are a lot of folks that come up dressed in all black,” she said. “They are here to wreak havoc. They’ll block our cars, throw paint, damage property, and even try to follow our folks home.” The agitators could converge with the sophisticated coordination of a flash mob, with a crowd swelling in size from “a crowd of 50 to a crowd of 1,000 in 30 minutes.”

In another extreme incident, Trenten Edward Barker threw a lit flare into debris piled against the gate of the ICE building, causing thousands of dollars in damage and creating a potentially life-threatening situation for the officers trapped inside. Barker pled guilty in March to arson of a federal building and was sentenced to 18 months in prison.

A remarkable feature of these incidents is the level of coordination. Barker did not build a bonfire of debris on his own. Nor did Hoopes dare to assault federal officers without “an impromptu shield wall” behind which to hide, or without co-operators in his “makeshift battering ram” scheme.

This level of coordination is remarkable because some voices still argue that Antifa is merely an idea, not a group.

During a recent House Judiciary Committee hearing, Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) asked SPLC interim President Bryan Fair to explain “the reasoning behind targeting groups like Turning Point USA, the Family Research Council. Traditional Catholic groups as hate groups, but not groups like Antifa. Jane’s revenge, Youth Liberation Front.”

Fair responded that the SPLC only lists “groups that demonize or vilify people based on immutable characteristics or that express anti-government conspiracy theories.”

McClintock followed up, “Do you believe that Antifa, and Jane’s Revenge, and Youth Liberation Front have committed violent acts?” This prompted Fair to reply, “It’s my understanding that the FBI has said Antifa is an ideology, not a group. So, if it’s not a group, it wouldn’t be identified on our list.”

This excuse is pedantic. The “anti-fascist” ideology puts a premium on what its adherents like to call “direct action,” which is usually a euphemism for lawbreaking with a political agenda. But disorganized, individual acts of lawbreaking will hardly suffice to achieve radical political change, and they usually carry a high risk of consequences for the perpetrators. So, those who espouse an “anti-fascist” ideology have learned from long practice to cooperate with other individuals who share their same goals. When a collection of individuals associate together over a period of time and agree to coordinate their actions to achieve shared purposes, that collection of individuals can fairly be called a “group.”

The incidents that led to Hoopes’s sentencing in Portland demonstrate that there are groups of agitators who commit acts of anti-government extremism according to their shared “anti-fascist” ideology. These groups are often labelled “Antifa cells” even if they do not bear that exact title. Whatever they are properly called, such groups do exist, and Fair’s response attempted to elide this point.

The point is, the SPLC seems to maintain a double standard for extremism. When it comes to left-wing groups, it turns a blind eye to real and frequent acts of violence, denying that any such groups exist even when they are obviously acting as a group. What would it take for the SPLC to recognize Antifa cells as groups — 501(c)3 status?

Extremism doesn’t work that way, and the SPLC knows that. Indeed, many (perhaps all) of the KKK chapters, neo-Nazi groups, and white nationalist groups it monitors lack official, incorporated status. Such organizations survive by staying off the grid, and they would usually fail to obtain official status even if they requested it. Left-wing extremists use the same sort of tactics because they have the same sort of violent objectives.

The clearest example of “anti-fascist” organization came last year in Texas, when a group of agitators in identical “dark clothing with head and face coverings that concealed their identities” set up an ambush at the Prairieland ICE Detention Center on July 4, 2025. The group “brought eleven firearms, body armor, and eleven military-grade first aid kits with tourniquets and other items for gunshot wounds to the scene of the attack,” according to a DOJ press release.

The group’s strategy was complex. They began with shooting fireworks and vandalizing property to induce a police response. They then opened fire on responding officers with their rifles, shooting one officer in the neck and forcing others to take cover. On March 13, 2026, nine participants in the attack were convicted by a federal jury for “rioting, using weapons and explosives, providing material support to terrorists, obstruction, and attempted murder of an Alvarado police officer and unarmed correctional officers.”

Did the SPLC celebrate how federal law enforcement had eradicated an extremist group that expressed anti-government conspiracy theories? On the contrary, they will not acknowledge that the nine defendants who acted together and were convicted together even constituted a group.