Under the 2006 Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, prosecutions reached ever further from the raid itself: the AETA 4 were indicted for chalking slogans and leafleting (case dismissed), while Kevin Johnson and Tyler Lang drew federal terrorism charges for freeing mink from a fur farm — sentenced in 2017 to time served and three years, having been branded terrorists for opening cages. Fur-farm raiders, Walter Bond among them, served AETA terms through the 2010s as the movement's prisoners.
Alongside the underground, activists revived open rescue — unmasked removal of sick animals from factory farms, daring the industry to prosecute. In 2023 DxE's Wayne Hsiung was jailed in Sonoma County over duck- and chicken-farm rescues, while jury acquittals in Utah and California piglet cases suggested the public, at last, might refuse to convict rescue as theft — the ALF's oldest argument, returned to open court.