{"id":2647,"date":"2026-06-24T21:54:58","date_gmt":"2026-06-24T21:54:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/silvybrand.com\/?p=2647"},"modified":"2026-06-24T21:54:58","modified_gmt":"2026-06-24T21:54:58","slug":"prairieland-sentencing-zines-trump-antifa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/silvybrand.com\/?p=2647","title":{"rendered":"The decades-long Prairieland sentences should alarm every American"},"content":{"rendered":"


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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<\/a>. To avenge Kirk\u2019s death, the administration vowed to go after so-called \u201cantifa\u201d<\/a> (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 \u2014 one for attempted murder, but most for supposedly belonging to an insurrectionary \u201cAntifa cell,\u201d including one sentenced to 30 years in part for moving a box of zines.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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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 \u201cAntifa terrorists who attack law enforcement and federal facilities.\u201d But many of those sentenced did no such thing.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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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\u2019s 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 \u201cGet to the rifles\u201d and fired a rifle he\u2019d brought with him, according to charging documents. The officer, who was shot in the neck, testified that he \u201cknew\u201d his life was in danger and spent three to four hours in the hospital after being shot.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Benjamin Song, the shooter, said he fired<\/a> 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 \u201cleader of the antifa cell.\u201d Alongside rioting and discharging a firearm during a violent crime, a conviction for providing material support to terrorists was also included \u2014 and he was sentenced to 100 years in prison.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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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 \u201cdressing in black bloc.\u201d But their sentences, too, spanned decades.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Two people \u2014 Savanna Batten and Elizabeth Soto \u2014 weren\u2019t 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 \u201cwere part of a group that created and distributed insurrectionary materials called \u2018zines.\u2019\u201d Daniel Sanchez-Estrada, who didn\u2019t attend the protest at all, was sentenced to thirty years in prison for moving a box of zines \u2014 an act prosecutors claimed was \u201ccorruptly concealing a document or record.\u201d Ines Soto, Elizabeth Soto\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The Department of Justice reportedly conceded that the zines weren\u2019t even illegal \u2014 they were made for a book club named after anarchist organizer Emma Goldman, which read about topics including feminism and \u201cthe eradication of artificial intelligence from the face of the earth.\u201d But it claimed that the Sotos had, by tabling at a zine fair, provided \u201cmaterial support to terrorists.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThe defendants\u2019 violence and terrorism is an assault on Democracy,\u201d said Reed<\/a> O\u2019Connor, a Republican-friendly<\/a> judge who among others handed down the sentences. O\u2019Connor argued<\/a> that the government needs to \u201cdeter this type of conduct.\u201d In a statement to The Guardian<\/em><\/a>, Song called it \u201ccollective punishment.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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In a statement, FBI director Kash Patel said the agency \u201cremains committed to identifying, locating, and dismantling Antifa and its funding networks across the country,\u201d 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 \u201cantifa.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The DOJ is trying to punish people for trailing ICE officers \u2014 and if it succeeds, other activists could be next.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The indictment notes that the defendants are involved with the Black Cat Workers Collective and claims they \u201cinfiltrated and exploited lawful protests\u201d 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<\/a> and Alex Prett<\/a>i, which the federal government has suppressed<\/a> efforts to investigate and prosecute. It accuses some \u2014 but not all \u2014 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.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The indictment cites communications on Signal, which was used widely to coordinate mutual aid distributions<\/a> and patrols of neighborhoods<\/a> for ICE vehicles in Minnesota. Patel said during the protests that the FBI had opened an investigation<\/a> into activists\u2019 groupchats. Here, the indictment says defendants coordinated \u201canti-law enforcement action,\u201d practiced operational security \u2014 or OPSEC \u2014 techniques, and engaged in \u201ccounter-surveillance tactics.\u201d One defendant is accused of kicking a government vehicle and \u201ccausing dents.\u201d Two are accused of traveling across state lines \u201cwith the intent to kill, injure, harass, intimidate, or place under surveillance another person.\u201d In plain English, the DOJ is trying to punish people for trailing ICE officers \u2014 and if it succeeds, other activists could be next.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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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. \u201cI seem to be indicted for holding meetings,\u201d Davis reportedly<\/a> told the judge. Indeed, the 94-page indictment claims that Davis moderated an \u201cEmergency Meeting on Resistance to ICE Operation\u201d 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 \u201canarchist blog.\u201d 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.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The strategy here is guilt by association. Just as White House officials justified Alex Pretti\u2019s death by smearing him as a domestic terrorist and \u201cwould-be assassin,\u201d any of the thousands of regular people who resisted ICE\u2019s siege of the Twin Cities could be called an antifa terrorist \u2014 and be condemned to a lifetime in prison as a result.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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