The decades-long rulings on prairie lands should worry every American

. للانتقام لمقتل كيرك، تعهدت الإدارة بذلك (المعروفين أيضًا باسم مناهضي الفاشية) الإرهابيين. Now that promise is starting to come to fruition. This week, eight Texas activists were sentenced to prison terms ranging from 30 to 100 years — one for attempted murder, but most for supposed membership in an insurgent “Antifa cell,” including one who was sentenced to 30 years in prison in part for transporting a box of magazines.

These unusually harsh rulings represent a major victory for the Trump administration, one that will likely serve as a blueprint to target activists across the United States. They were quickly celebrated by the bold administration. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a statement that the rulings show the law will be harshly applied to “Antifa terrorists who attack law enforcement and federal facilities.” But many of the convicts did no such thing.

The Texas cases relate to a July 4, 2025 protest outside the Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas. Nearly a dozen protesters set off fireworks and chanted messages in Spanish through a megaphone. Then it escalated: A few people slashed an ICE truck’s tires, broke a security camera, and vandalized a guard shack. When guards exited the building and asked the group to leave, some complied, but others stayed. After a police officer arrived at the scene and pulled his gun, one of the subjects shouted “go to the guns” and fired the gun he had 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 Shooter He said shoot Because he thought the officer was going to shoot a protester, he was convicted of attempted murder. But in addition to the shooting charge, prosecutors called Song an “Antifa cell leader.” Along with 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 less serious crimes ranging from rioting to providing material support to terrorists, sweeping charges that the government applied to acts as disparate as distributing anarchist literature and “dressing in black bloc clothing.” But their rulings also spanned decades.

Two people — Savannah Patten and Elizabeth Soto — were not involved in planning the protest, arrived separately from others, and left when asked to do so by guards, before the shooting. They were each sentenced to 50 years in prison. Among other charges, the government announced that they “were part of a group that created and distributed insurrectionary materials called ‘zines.'” Daniel Sanchez Estrada, who did not attend the protest at all, was sentenced to thirty years in prison for transporting a box of magazines — an act that prosecutors claimed was “corruptly concealing a document or record.” Inés Soto, Elizabeth Soto’s husband, was granted a continuance and will be sentenced on July 1, according to the Department of Justice. (As will seven others (They pleaded guilty to providing material support to terrorists, and some of them testified as witnesses at the trial.) Other rulings indicate that his sentence will be similarly harsh.

The Department of Justice has reportedly admitted that the magazines were not illegal – they were made for a book club named after anarchist organizer Emma Goldman, which read on topics including feminism and “wiping out artificial intelligence from the face of the earth”. But she claimed that the Sotos, through their presence at the Zen exhibition, provided “material support to terrorists.”

“The violence and terrorism practiced by the defendants is an assault on democracy.” Reed said O’Connor, A Friend of the Republican Party The judge who among others issued the rulings. O’Connor Argue The government needs to “deter this type of behavior.” In a Statement for The GuardianSong described it as “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 that more cases are coming. Last week, prosecutors charged 15 people in Minnesota with a range of charges including conspiracy to obstruct or injure a federal officer, solicitation to commit a violent crime, assault on a federal officer, and destruction of federal property. Like the defendants in the Prairieland case, the Department of Justice claims that the 15 people charged in Minnesota are linked to “Antifa.”

and Suppressed جهود التحقيق والمحاكمة. It accuses some of the defendants — but not all of them — of using homemade shields, using debris to block traffic, and obstructing DHS vehicles with wood, leaf blowers, and other objects as they left the Whipple Federal Building to make arrests.

and I opened an investigation In group conversations of activists. Here, the indictment says the defendants coordinated “counter-law enforcement actions,” practiced operational security techniques — or OPSEC — and engaged in “counter-surveillance tactics.” One of the defendants is accused of kicking a government vehicle and “causing scratches.” Two are accused of traveling across state lines “with the intent to kill, injure, harass, intimidate, or place another person under surveillance.” بلغة واضحة، تحاول وزارة العدل معاقبة الأشخاص الذين يتخلفون عن ضباط إدارة الهجرة والجمارك – وإذا نجحت، فقد يكون هناك نشطاء آخرون هم التاليون.

Although the indictment distinguishes between allegedly legal and illegal actions, its language is slippery. Eric Davis, a professor of religious studies at Macalester College in St. Paul and one of the arrested activists, expressed disbelief at the charges against him at a court hearing last week. “It looks like I’m being accused of holding meetings,” Davis said It is said He told the judge. In fact, the 94-page indictment alleges that Davis ran an “emergency meeting about resisting the ICE process” in January and sent messages about other meetings in group chats on Signal. The indictment notes that another defendant, Isaac Uman Sant, wrote an article in an “anarchist blog.” Saint allegedly mentioned in his article witnessing someone breaking into an ICE vehicle. It is worth noting that the indictment does not say that Saint vandalized the car, but rather that he was in the presence of someone who did so.

The strategy here is guilt by association. Just as White House officials justified Alex Peretti’s death by smearing him as a domestic terrorist and “potential killer,” any of the thousands of ordinary people who resisted ICE’s blockade of the Twin Cities could be labeled an anti-FIFA terrorist — and could be sentenced to life in prison as a result.