Just days after a gunman killed conservative activist Charlie Kirk, it became clear that President Donald Trump would use the assassination to fuel a crackdown on free speech. To avenge Kirk’s death, the administration vowed to go after so-called “antifa” (otherwise known as antifascist) terrorists. Now that promise is bearing fruit. This week, eight Texas activists were sentenced to between 30 and 100 years in prison — one for attempted murder, but most for supposedly belonging to an insurrectionary “Antifa cell,” including one sentenced to 30 years in part for moving a box of zines.
These unusually harsh sentences are a major victory for the Trump administration, one that will likely serve as a blueprint for targeting activists across the US. The emboldened administration has quickly celebrated them. In a statement, acting attorney general Todd Blanche said that the sentences show that the law will come down hard on “Antifa terrorists who attack law enforcement and federal facilities.” But many of those sentenced did no such thing.
The Texas cases concern a July 4th, 2025 protest outside the Prairieland Detention Facility in Alvarado, Texas. Roughly a dozen protesters set off fireworks and shouted messages in Spanish through a bullhorn. Then it escalated: a few people slashed an ICE van’s tires, broke a security camera, and vandalized a guard shack. When guards came out of the building and told the group to leave, some complied, but others stayed. After a police officer arrived on the scene and drew his gun, one person shouted “Get to the rifles” and fired a rifle he’d brought with him, according to charging documents. The officer, who was shot in the neck, testified that he “knew” his life was in danger and spent three to four hours in the hospital after being shot.
Benjamin Song, the shooter, said he fired because he thought the officer was going to fire on a protester, and was convicted of attempted murder. But in addition to the shooting charge, prosecutors dubbed Song the “leader of the antifa cell.” Alongside rioting and discharging a firearm during a violent crime, a conviction for providing material support to terrorists was also included — and he was sentenced to 100 years in prison.
Other defendants were convicted of lesser crimes ranging from rioting to providing material support to terrorists, catch-all charges the government has applied to acts as disparate as distributing anarchist literature and “dressing in black bloc.” But their sentences, too, spanned decades.
Two people — Savanna Batten and Elizabeth Soto — weren’t involved in planning the protest, arrived separately from the others, and left when guards told them to, before the shooting. They were each sentenced to 50 years in prison. Among other accusations, the government declared they “were part of a group that created and distributed insurrectionary materials called ‘zines.’” Daniel Sanchez-Estrada, who didn’t attend the protest at all, was sentenced to thirty years in prison for moving a box of zines — an act prosecutors claimed was “corruptly concealing a document or record.” Ines Soto, Elizabeth Soto’s husband, was granted a continuance and will be sentenced on July 1st, according to the Department of Justice. (So will seven others who pleaded guilty to one count of providing material support to terrorists, some of whom testified as witnesses in the trial.) The other sentences handed down suggest that his will be similarly harsh.
The Department of Justice reportedly conceded that the zines weren’t even illegal — they were made for a book club named after anarchist organizer Emma Goldman, which read about topics including feminism and “the eradication of artificial intelligence from the face of the earth.” But it claimed that the Sotos had, by tabling at a zine fair, provided “material support to terrorists.”
“The defendants’ violence and terrorism is an assault on Democracy,” said Reed O’Connor, a Republican-friendly judge who among others handed down the sentences. O’Connor argued that the government needs to “deter this type of conduct.” In a statement to The Guardian, Song called it “collective punishment.”
In a statement, FBI director Kash Patel said the agency “remains committed to identifying, locating, and dismantling Antifa and its funding networks across the country,” and more cases are coming. Last week, prosecutors indicted 15 people in Minnesota on a raft of charges including conspiracy to impede or injure a federal officer, solicitation to commit a crime of violence, assault on a federal officer, and the destruction of federal property. Like the Prairieland defendants, the DOJ claims the 15 people charged in Minnesota are connected to “antifa.”
The DOJ is trying to punish people for trailing ICE officers — and if it succeeds, other activists could be next.
The indictment notes that the defendants are involved with the Black Cat Workers Collective and claims they “infiltrated and exploited lawful protests” in the Twin Cities, where thousands of people resisted Operation Metro Surge, a months-long DHS operation that resulted in the arrests of thousands of immigrants and the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, which the federal government has suppressed efforts to investigate and prosecute. It accuses some — but not all — of the defendants of using homemade shields, using debris to obstruct traffic, and obstructing DHS vehicles with wood, leafblowers, and other items as they left the Whipple Federal Building to make arrests.
The indictment cites communications on Signal, which was used widely to coordinate mutual aid distributions and patrols of neighborhoods for ICE vehicles in Minnesota. Patel said during the protests that the FBI had opened an investigation into activists’ groupchats. Here, the indictment says defendants coordinated “anti-law enforcement action,” practiced operational security — or OPSEC — techniques, and engaged in “counter-surveillance tactics.” One defendant is accused of kicking a government vehicle and “causing dents.” Two are accused of traveling across state lines “with the intent to kill, injure, harass, intimidate, or place under surveillance another person.” In plain English, the DOJ is trying to punish people for trailing ICE officers — and if it succeeds, other activists could be next.
Though the indictment distinguishes between legal and allegedly illegal actions, its language is slippery. Erik Davis, a religious studies professor at Macalester College in St. Paul and one of the arrested activists, expressed disbelief at the charges at a court hearing last week. “I seem to be indicted for holding meetings,” Davis reportedly told the judge. Indeed, the 94-page indictment claims that Davis moderated an “Emergency Meeting on Resistance to ICE Operation” in January and sent messages about other meetings in Signal groupchats. The indictment notes that another defendant, Isaac Auman Sant, wrote an article for an “anarchist blog.” In his article, Sant allegedly mentioned watching someone break into an ICE vehicle. Notably, the indictment does not say that Sant vandalized the car, just that he was in the presence of someone who did.
The strategy here is guilt by association. Just as White House officials justified Alex Pretti’s death by smearing him as a domestic terrorist and “would-be assassin,” any of the thousands of regular people who resisted ICE’s siege of the Twin Cities could be called an antifa terrorist — and be condemned to a lifetime in prison as a result.
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