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Fort Worth, TX – Federal judges Mark Pittman and Reed O’Connor have handed down the final sentences for activists connected to a July 2025 protest outside the Prairieland Detention Center. According to the defendants, the Prairieland 9 intended to hold an ordinary noise demonstration and shoot off July 4th fireworks in solidarity with immigration detainees, until a police officer drew his gun on a fleeing protester. According to the federal prosecutors, the defendants were the members of a murderous “North Texas Antifa Cell.” All together, the Prairieland defendants received over 562 years in federal prison — the longest sentence a U.S. court has ever given to a group of political anarchist defendants.
On June 23, 2026, Daniel “Des” Sanchez Estrada, received 30 years for moving a box of zines from his parents’ house despite not even attending the July 4th protest. His wife, Maricela Rueda, was sentenced to 70 years. Autumn Hill, Savanna Batten, Zachary Evetts, Meagan Morris, and Elizabeth Soto received 50 year prison terms each. On July 1, Elizabeth’s spouse Ines was sentenced to 50 years, as well.
On July 1, 2026, Rowan Gibson and Rebecca Morgan received 15 year sentences after non-cooperating guilty pleas. In exchange for testifying against their former friends, Lynette Sharp, Seth Sikes, Nathan Baumann and John Thomas received prison terms of between 22 and 110 months. The only defendant to admit to committing acts of vandalism at Prairieland, Nathan Baumann, received the lightest sentence of just under two years after cooperating with the federal prosecution. Susan Kent was sentenced to six years on Monday, July 6, after cooperating and pleading guilty to one count of providing material support to terrorism.
Additionally, the State of Texas intends to hold their own trials in connection with this protest.
“These convictions for what was intended to be a noise demonstration in solidarity with people detained at the facility send a message that anyone exercising their right to protest and more broadly, anyone critical of the government, will face the full wrath of the state,” said Muslims for Just Futures in a statement, decrying “the federal government’s willingness to stretch national security and terrorism frameworks to their maximum, terrifying edges.”
Benjamin “Champagne” Song received a century-long sentence for the attempted murder of a police officer who – while facing Song – was injured in his back. According to the DFW Support Committee, which organized to advocate for the Prairieland defendants, neither a ballistic report nor medical evidence were submitted at trial.
On their Instagram, the Committee shared a podcast, which includes video footage, where they suggest that Alvarado Police Lt. Thomas Gross was injured by his own bullet ricocheting off Song’s rifle. The podcast details their analysis, that Song may have been firing away from Gross, laying down suppressive fire after the police officer drew his weapon on another protester.
“Suppressive fire that had no intention to harm anyone, that may or may not have accidentally harmed someone, is not a reason to withhold support from people whose ultimate principles are good,” said Ana Maria Thorne, Social Justice Liaison at Fort Worth’s All Peoples Church Unitarian Universalist.
Only Song’s sentence, however, depended on the usage of firearms at the demonstration. Many of the defendants who received decades of prison time had actually left the protest before shots were even fired. That didn’t save them from being branded as “terrorists,” in what supporters describe as a blatantly “political prosecution” rife with irregularities.
All of those sentenced, save for Song, Sanchez, Estrada and those who pleaded guilty, were convicted of four federal crimes: Conspiracy to Use and Carry an Explosive, Using and Carrying an Explosive, Providing Material Support to Terrorists, and Riot. None of these charges required the presence of firearms at the protest. The guilty pleas were solely for Providing Material Support to Terrorists.
The first two explosives charges relate to the discharge of commercial fireworks at the July 4th action, despite the fact that no people or buildings were injured by the fireworks fired into the air, an unexceptional activity for U.S. residents on Independence Day.
<figcaption>The U.S. Attorney’s Office, Northern District of Texas, described this as “Exploding fireworks (explosives) thrown at the Prairieland facility by Antifa Cell members, captured by surveillance cameras,” on a July 1 press release.</figcaption>The supposed Material Support to Terrorists involved, per the prosecution, providing “training,” transportation, and personnel (i.e. the protesters themselves) for the commission of the federal crime of Riot, which consisted of such actions as setting off the aforementioned fireworks, Baumann’s vandalism, and forming a “black bloc.” Black bloc is the tactic, commonly associated with anarchism, of wearing all-black clothing at protests to demonstrate political solidarity and evade police surveillance. But wearing black clothing or lighting off Fourth of July fireworks are not usually considered terroristic acts.
“Those charges are ridiculous and insane, but they do not add up to a conspiracy to an armed ambush,” said Albert of the DFW Support Committee, organized on behalf of the Prairieland defendants.
“And Material Support to Terrorists charge is very sophisticated and dangerous as a legal tool because it’s able to launder in the word ‘terrorism’ to something that a reasonable person would not describe as terrorism.”
<cite>Albert, DFW Support Committee</cite>
In fact, police bodycam footage introduced at trial clearly showed that arrestees were not even covered with black clothing. Defendant Savanna Batten was arrested wearing a tank top; Ines Soto was wearing blue work pants. They were part of a group of protesters arrested walking down a public street, blocks away from the detention center just minutes after the shooting — meaning, they had likely left the demonstration by the time shots were fired. Making no attempt to conceal themselves from arresting officers while walking down a public road, these arrestees offered no resistance save for verbal proclamations that they didn’t consent to searches of their property. Song was wearing a neon green mask at the time that shots were fired.
<figcaption>Prosecutors alleged government exhibit 47 was Song’s green face mask on July 4. From “Physical Government Exhibits” slides.</figcaption>“A black bloc did not occur at the demonstration,” said Albert, of the DFW Support Committee. “And so what’s even crazier is that they have now successfully used black bloc to get a conspiracy conviction without people wearing black bloc.”
Supporters emphasize that the vast majority of Prairieland defendants received effective life sentences not for attempted murder, but for normal protest activity: using Signal, making noise at a noise demonstration, wearing (partially) dark clothing.
“This was a regular noise demonstration using fireworks on the Fourth of July, which is a regular thing across this country,” said Xavier de Janon, Director of Mass Defense for the National Lawyers Guild (NLG). De Janon refrained from mincing words when characterizing the government’s successful prosecutions: “It is a criminalization of protest.”
<hr>According to court observers, Judge Reed O’Connor said at sentencing that he “wants to send a message to anyone else with similar ideology.” This ideology, in the words of FBI Director Kash Patel, is “Antifa-aligned anarchis[m].” Last year, Patel described the Prairieland case as being the first time that “the FBI has arrested anarchist violent extremists and charged these Antifa-aligned individuals with material support of terrorism.”
As previously reported by Unicorn Riot, the Prairieland case represents the first prosecutions of “antifa” following the release of National Security Presidential Memorandum-7, which inaugurated what Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller described as an “all-of-government effort to dismantle” anti-fascist organizing.
In January, the Federal Bureau of Investigation released a report warning law enforcement partners of the risks posed by “anarchist violent extremists (AVEs),” citing anarchist and anti-fascist graffiti as evidence of “AVE mobilization to violence.”
“This is a decision on ideology, and that is very troubling,” Xavier de Janon told Unicorn Riot. “None of the charges required proving that they were part of a ‘terror cell,’ that was just added after NSPM-7. In fact, the whole case could have been prosecuted without even mentioning any group, alleged ‘cell,’ alleged ideology. That was what the government brought in as part of its political prosecution.”
During the trial, the government called Kyle Shideler of the Center for Security Policy (CSP)to testify as an expert witness on antifa. “Antifa members,” Shideler told the court, typically espouse “strong anarchist ideology or some of these other non-authoritarian socialist ideologies.” In a piece published earlier this year, Shideler suggested that fears of an impending “anarcho-communist insurgency” could only be dismissed by those who “have yet to take seriously the extent of the revolutionary fervor now underway.”
CSP, led by right-wing gadfly Frank Gaffney, is a “conspiracy-oriented mouthpiece for the anti-Muslim movement” according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which itself is under attack, charged by the DOJ in April. [Ed: In January, Shideler also claimed “The Revolution Is On in Minnesota” in a piece for the Claremont Institute and called for creating a task force to target leftists.]
<figcaption>The Center for Security Policy has branched out from maligning Muslims to covering “Antifa & Extremism” in recent years.</figcaption>“The Trump administration is attempting to use the far left, especially the anarchist and anti-fascist left, as a kind of fantasy villain,” Albert from the defendants’ support committee told Unicorn Riot.
“The fantasy that there is a militant underground left-wing violent movement in the United States has no basis in reality, but it’s being used by the right wing to justify their authoritarianism and to build the legitimacy of their power.”
<cite>Albert, DFW Support Committee</cite>
During the trial, the prosecution focused on some defendants’ participation in the Emma Goldman Book Club, a reading group named after the immigrant anarchist labor organizer who was herself persecuted by the federal government in the early twentieth century.
<figcaption>In a July 1 press release, the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Northern District of Texas, claimed “Ines Soto, was the cell head of ANTIFA DFW, which operated under the front: ‘Emma Goldman Book Club’.” Government exhibit 163 featured hundreds of images from the book club’s activities, including making and distributing radical literature and plant seeds.</figcaption>AJ, a member of the Emma Goldman Book Club and longtime friend of several defendants, said the book club met once a month to discuss articles on topics ranging from feminism to afropessimism to environmental issues.
<figcaption>Empty chairs with zines included with government exhibit 163.</figcaption>The government has described the club’s monthly readings as “insurrectionary materials called ‘zines.’” During the trial, prosecutors emphasized the political content of what they characterized as “anarchist, insurrectionist, hating-the-government material.”
<figcaption>Section of federal prosecutor’s exhibit 187 photo, purportedly seized from Benjamin Song, features a horror movie analysis zine by Sophie Lewis. From “Physical Government Exhibits” slides.</figcaption>“They definitely tried to use the scariest looking covers and the scariest titles” from the book club to scare the jury during the “incredibly irregular” trial, said AJ. Among these titles was a zine called The Satanic Death-Cult is Real, which was in actuality nothing more than a feminist analysis of two horror movies by theorist Sophie Lewis. It is “painfully, cringe-makingly obvious that the FBI read only the title,” Lewis told Unicorn Riot, “and decided that it was some kind of confession of demonic intent on the defendants’ part.”
That being said, Lewis warned of “a far more advanced level of fascism than ever before” should the Prairieland convictions stand and the case becomes “a turning-point for today’s neo-’Red Scare’ prosecutors.”
“The prosecution during the trial was very clear that they did not have evidence of people’s violent, or even illegal, intent at the demonstration. So they used people’s political ideas and speech and – not even their ideas – the ideas they were engaging with to justify their evidence of guilt,” said Albert. “All of us should understand the risk these sentences pose to us. It demonstrates that the government is prepared to use novel legal means to suppress dissent.”
<hr>Almost two dozen Prairieland defendants have upcoming trials on state charges, with those who received federal sentences planning to appeal these convictions. Supporters are buckling down for a years-long support and appeals campaign.
“We’re still in a pretrial scenario on the state side, but I think long-term support of political prisoners is going to have to be a part of our movement going forward,” said Albert.
With state trials still forthcoming and federal appeals estimated to take several years at the least, supporters describe being “steeled for the long term.” “Family, supporters, everybody has said over and over again that they’re not going anywhere and that they’re ready to support the defendants for as long as they can,” Albert told UR.
Ana Maria Thorne’s Unitarian congregation is likewise planning to support the Prairieland defendants indefinitely. “This is something that may last decades, and we want to have a robust system of support,” she said to Unicorn Riot.
National groups including the Freedom of the Press Foundation, Muslims for Just Futures, and the National Lawyers Guild have released statements in support of the Prairieland defendants post-sentencing, as have local chapters of the Democratic Socialists of America, the Sunrise Movement, and the Black Alliance for Peace.
The DFW Support Committee continues to provide updates on defendants and fundraise on their behalf.
Supporters are rallying as the state pursues the most significant anti-anarchist political prosecutions since the Palmer raids a century ago, and dramatically expands the criminalization of dissent. Also federally indicted: fifteen alleged rapid response organizers said to be members of Direct Action Minnesota, the conviction of the Spokane 3 on similar conspiracy charges, the indictment of University of Michigan protesters, the sentencing of pro-Palestine activist Casey Goonan to 19 years behind bars, and the guilty plea of community organizer Jakhi McCray – all in the past year alone.
NLG’s Xavier T. de Janon still cautions against panic. “I don’t think that people should be afraid,” he said.
“People should remember that this country went through the McCarthy era but eventually the truth came out, people were no longer blacklisted, and society remembered what actually happened.”
<cite>Xavier T. de Janon, National Lawyers Guild</cite>
Supporters emphasize that political self-censorship only aids attempts at state repression, while building resistance to ICE brutality could pave the way for freeing movement participants like the Prairieland and Minnesota defendants.
“Using this case to help build the movement against authoritarianism and against ICE in this country is helping the defendants,” said Albert of the DFW Support Committee. “And as people continue to organize and build political power against these forces in our country, we want them to be using this case as an example and as something that helps them to build that power.”
Graphics prepared by Dan Feidt. Cover image outdoor photo via the DFW Support Committee.
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