Benjamin Song, who was convicted of shooting Alvarado Police Lt. Thomas Gross, was sentenced to 100 years in prison for attempted murder of a law enforcement officer and lesser crimes, including discharging a firearm during a violent crime, conspiracy to use and use explosives, and rioting. Song, a former US Marine, claims he shot Gross in self-defense after the officer drew his gun first.
The “explosives” in question were fireworks brought to the July 4 protest to show solidarity with people in ICE custody.
Savannah Patten, Zachary Evetts, Autumn Hill, Bradford Morris, and Elizabeth Soto each received 50-year prison sentences for rioting, providing material support to terrorists, and conspiracy to use and use explosives.
Marisela Rueda was sentenced to 70 years in prison for rioting, providing material support to terrorists, conspiracy to use and use explosives, and conspiracy to conceal documents. Those documents were left-wing publications protected by the First Amendment.
Rueda’s husband, Daniel “Des” Rolando Sanchez Estrada, was sentenced to 30 years in prison for conspiring to conceal documents to transport a box full of flyers after speaking with his wife. He did not attend the protest.
Judge Reed O’Connor, appointed by former President George W. Bush and A.J favorite A shopper of right-wing judges, he told the court that the lengthy sentences were intended to “send a message to anyone who shares a similar ideology” to the defendants, according to One of the observers of Tuesday’s events.
It was a prairieland camel More dangerous It is the longest prison sentence for the average American murderer or rapist, as well as for the Capitol insurrectionists on January 6, 2021 — all of whom President Donald Trump later pardoned — as well as for convicted child sex traffickers and Jeffrey Epstein co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell.
“What happened Tuesday was shocking to all of us, devastating to families, and a 50- to 100-year prison sentence,” said Sophia Khalid, deputy director of the National Security Criminal Defense Center at the American Islamic Legal Fund and an attorney for one of the defendants in Prairieland. He said Democracy Now! Thursday. “These are essentially life sentences for all of the youth in this case, most of whom participated in peaceful protests at an ICE detention facility.”
Khaled noted that the Ministry of Justice relied on the rarely used “Material Support for Terrorism” law, which “does not require any connection to a domestic terrorist organization or any type of terrorism.”
“Any American can be targeted in this way now,” she said. “It does not require ties to Antifa or any domestic terrorist organization.” “It is a dangerous precedent, which is what allowed them to raise these charges to this extent on Tuesday.”
The Justice Department praised the “first sentencing of Antifa-affiliated defendants after…Trump’s ruling.” Executive order The group was designated a domestic terrorist organization in September 2025” following the assassination of white supremacist influencer Charlie Kirk — which had no connection to Antifa, a leaderless, decentralized international ideology that opposes fascism and is more of a mentality than a movement.
Later that month, Trump also signed National Security Presidential Memorandum No. 7 (NSPM-7), a Guidance Titled “Combat Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence,” it focuses exclusively on left-wing activities and imposes “a national strategy to investigate and disrupt networks, entities, and organizations that foment political violence so that law enforcement can intervene in criminal conspiracies before they lead to violent political actions.”
Khaled pointed to the pardoned January 6 insurrectionists, who “were involved in riots, carrying massive arsenals of weapons, and a lot of discussions early on — which in this case did not exist — about targeting law enforcement, wanting to kill members of Congress, [and] “Actually storming the Capitol.”
“So, here we have a huge and unjustified disparity in sentencing,” she said. “What happened in court in Fort Worth was unconstitutional and should concern everyone in this country in the direction it takes us.”
Mark Osler, a law professor and sentencing expert at the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis, He said “Sentencing Estrada to 30 years in prison is probably the closest thing to a shock to the conscience for most people, simply because this is an activity that occurred after the harm was done,” The Guardian said on Friday.
“What happened in court in Fort Worth was unconstitutional and should concern everyone in this country in the direction it takes us.”
Seth Stern, head of advocacy at the Foundation for Freedom of the Press, confirmed on Friday interview In an episode of the Justice and Accuracy in Reporting program counter A podcast titled “Criminalizing Dissent” reported that Estrada “wasn’t even present at the protest.”
“It’s someone who allegedly moved a box of flyers because his wife was at the protest,” Stern said. “He believed, according to prosecutors, that the leaflet box might implicate his wife…so he hid the evidence.”
“Proof of what?” Continue. “This wasn’t an instruction manual… These were magazines. They didn’t say anything about this protest, or about the Prairieland Detention Center, or about the shooting of a police officer… So when they say he hid evidence by moving these magazines, it’s evidence of what? It’s evidence of an ideology. It’s evidence of someone’s reading habits.”
“And now they are on the same level with terrorists, as well [Islamic State]“According to this administration,” Stern added. “It’s all very ridiculous. But at the end of the day, we have a constitution that prohibits locking people up for what they think, write, or read, as long as they don’t incite imminent violence. So we hope the appellate courts will overturn these convictions. But the law is only as good as the people who enforce it.”
Jeremy BusbyAn imprisoned journalist books On the eve of Estrada’s trial, “the house jams in question contained no plans to fire and, under normal circumstances, would clearly be considered constitutionally protected speech under the First Amendment.”
He added, “But the theory of concealment adopted by the government does not make sense unless it considers the mere presence of literature to be a crime.” “Criminalizing the possession of literature is a miscarriage of justice, whether in prison or in the home of a protester’s parents-in-law. If the Trump administration is allowed to send Estrada to prison on a possession charge, members of society as a whole could be subjected to the same harmful rules as those incarcerated.”
Amber Lowry, sister of Prairieland defendant Savannah Patten – who was sentenced to 50 years in prison for material support of terrorism and conspiracy to use and use “explosives” (fireworks) –He said The Guardian said before Patten’s trial that the Trump administration only wanted to “make an example of people and silence anyone… who opposes the government.”
She added: “They want to silence the opposition and criminalize the opposition.”
Trump administration prosecutors also used the NSPM-7 in the case of 15 organizers from the groups Direct Action Minnesota and Black Cat Workers, who are accused of obstructing the Department of Homeland Security’s crackdown on immigrants in Minneapolis, where U.S. citizens Renee Judd and Alex Peretti were killed separately earlier this year by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol agents.
“We live under a fascist state where ICE agents can kill us with impunity, yet we can go to prison for 50 years for protesting,” said socialist commentator and journalist Ryan Knight. He said Thursday on
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