Eight people who joined a July 4 protest outside a Texas immigrant detention center were just handed sentences that could mean they spend most of their lives in prison, the Guardian reports. A federal judge on Tuesday handed down sentences of 50 to 100 years in a case that has become a flashpoint over how far the government can go in branding left-wing activists as terrorists. The so-called Prairieland defendants planned to set off fireworks to show solidarity with those detained at the Prairieland Detention Center, NBC DFW reports.
Prosecutors said members of what they called a "North Texas antifa cell" plotted violence at the ICE facility in Alvarado, where vandalism escalated into an AR-15 round fired from nearby woods that wounded a police lieutenant. The shooter, Benjamin Song, who said he fired as he feared the officer was about to shoot a protester, received 100 years; six others got 50 to 70 years on riot, explosives, and terrorism charges, and another defendant, who wasn't at the protest, got 30 years for concealing documents. He was accused of moving leftwing materials at the request of his wife after she was arrested; his attorney says he simply moved a box of his own artwork, zines, poetry, and journals, none of which were illegal, the AP reports.
A former US attorney called the stacked sentences unusually long, far exceeding those for leaders of the January 6 Capitol riot. The Trump administration praised the outcome as a warning to "Antifa terrorists," while defense lawyers and families denounced the case as criminalizing freedom of speech, association, and lawful gun ownership. Antifa is not an organization, but an umbrella term for left-wing anti-fascists. Appeals are planned.
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