06/23/2026
For setting off fireworks and spray-painting cars outside a Texas immigration detention center — six people just received 50-year prison sentences. One received 100 years. Another 70.
Eight people were sentenced Tuesday in connection with a July 4, 2025 demonstration outside the Prairieland ICE detention center in Alvarado, Texas — the first federal terrorism case the Justice Department has ever brought against activists labeled “antifa.” Benjamin Song received 100 years. Maricela Rueda received 70 years. Six others received 50 years each.
Here’s what actually happened that night — and why the sentences have alarmed civil liberties experts across the political spectrum:
On July 4, 2025, approximately 12 protesters gathered at the edge of the Prairieland detention center, launching fireworks and using loudspeakers to boost the morale of detainees inside. The fireworks caused no property damage. Two protesters split from the group to disable ICE vehicles. Benjamin Song, who was legally armed, allegedly fired toward officers after a local police officer drew his weapon — and an officer was struck nonlethally. Ballistics evidence at trial showed the injuring bullet was curved, suggesting the officer may have been wounded by ricochet rather than direct fire.
The officer, Alvarado Police Lt. Thomas Gross, has fully recovered.
Seven of the eight defendants were convicted not of shooting anyone — but of riot, material support to terrorists, and using explosives, based largely on their use of encrypted Signal messages, their black clothing, and printed materials the prosecution called evidence of “antifa” ideology. The Trump administration designated antifa as a domestic terrorist organization last fall.
Critics warn the case could have wide-reaching impact on protests, given that organizations operating within the U.S. are supposed to be protected by First Amendment free-speech rights. Last week, federal prosecutors charged 15 additional people in Minnesota with conspiracy for anti-ICE protests — claiming they had thrown chunks of ice at federal vehicles and set up blockades.
Let’s hold both things at once: a police officer was shot and injured. That is serious. Benjamin Song pulled a trigger and an officer went to the hospital. That warrants prosecution.
And: six people received 50-year federal prison sentences for setting off fireworks, spray-painting cars, and wearing black clothes. The officer they’re accused of helping attack has fully recovered and is back at work. Their sentences are longer than those given to many people convicted of actual murder.
The DFW Support Committee called it “a sham trial, built on political persecution and ideological attacks coming from the top.”
The question every American — regardless of politics — should be asking: when did fireworks outside a detention center become a terrorism offense carrying a century in prison? And if this precedent holds, what does that mean for the next protest? And the one after that?
📌 Source: CBS Texas / Texas Standard / AP / Democracy Now / Left Voice
