Back in March all eight defendants in the Prairieland ICE Detention Center trial were convicted for an attack on the detention center which took place last July.
Eight defendants were found guilty Friday of providing material support to terrorists for their roles in the antifa attack on the Prairieland ICE detention center in 2025, marking one of the most sweeping terrorism-related convictions in the case to date…
Alvarado Police Chief Teddy May welcomed the guilty verdicts, noting that Lt. Gross – the officer shot in the neck during the attack – has fully recovered…
“I don’t believe any reasonable person could believe the suspects didn’t know what they were doing,” May said.
As I described in detail here, the prosecution argued that Benjamin Song was the leader of an Antifa cell and planned the attack in detail, including plans to shoot at police.
The group arrived at the facility late that night dressed in black — also known as “black bloc” to avoid being identified — and began spray-painting anti-police graffiti, slashing tires, destroying a surveillance camera and setting off fireworks. Officers inside the facility called local police.
When Alvarado Police Lt. Thomas Gross arrived just before 11 p.m. and got out of his car, one of the protesters — former Marine reservist Benjamin Song, who the prosecutors argued was the group’s leader — allegedly yelled “Get to the rifles!” He then opened fire with his AR-15-style rifle with a modified trigger that increased the rate of fire, according to investigators.
The bullet passed through Gross’s shoulder and out the back of his neck, narrowly missing his spine. He testified last week that he believed he had walked into an ambush and pulled his gun…
Several AR-style rifles were found at the scene, according to the criminal complaint, some defendants were armed, wearing body armor and carrying two-way radios. Prosecutors said 11 guns were recovered in total, with several found in defendants’ cars, disassembled in backpacks or near the detention center entrance. Investigators also recovered magazines from the scene containing ammunition, 12 sets of body armor, fireworks, a flag that said “Resist Fascism, Fight Oligarchy” and fliers that said “Fight ICE terror with class war.”
The defense in the case argued that the rest of the group were only expecting a “noise demonstration” and that shooting at police wasn’t part of the plan that night. Obviously the jury didn’t buy it.
Today, the eight defendants who’d been found guilty were all sentenced to decades in prison. Benjamin Song, the man who shot the police officer, was given 100 years.
Benjamin Hanil Song, who was convicted of the attempted murder of a law enforcement officer, was sentenced to 100 years in prison. Together, the Prairieland terrorists received a combined sentence of 450 years in prison:
- Maricela Rueda was sentenced to 70 years in prison;
- Cameron Arnold was sentenced to 50 years in prison;
- Savanna Batten was sentenced to 50 years in prison;
- Zachary Evetts was sentenced to 50 years in prison;
- Bradford Morris was sentenced to 50 years in prison;
- Elizabeth Soto was sentenced to 50 years in prison; and
- Daniel Rolando Sanchez-Estrada was sentenced to 30 years in prison.
Testimony and other evidence at trial established that the defendants were members of a North Texas Antifa Cell, part of a larger militant enterprise made up of networks of individuals and small groups primarily ascribing to an ideology that explicitly calls for the overthrow of the United States Government, law enforcement authorities, and the system of law. An expert testifying in the government’s case told the jury that ANTIFA’s coordinated efforts involve obstructing Federal law through organized riots, violent assaults, and armed confrontations with law enforcement officers, increasingly targeting agents and facilities related to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement in opposition to the agency’s deportation actions.
Evidence at trial revealed that most of the ANTIFA Cell involved in the Prairieland attack looked to Benjamin Song as a leader. Song acquired firearms that he distributed to co-defendants and recruited members at gun ranges and combat sessions he conducted, as well as from various ideologically aligned groups. For example, defendants Ines Soto, Elizabeth Soto, and Savanna Batten were part of a group that created and distributed insurrectionary materials called “zines,” according to trial evidence…
Trial evidence demonstrated that collectively, this ANTIFA Cell acquired over 50 firearms in the Fort Worth/Dallas area prior to July 4. During trial, the government introduced numerous chats of the members, who used an encrypted messaging app to coordinate with each other that had auto-delete functions, permanently deleting some Antifa Cell members’ communications. They also used monikers in group chats to hide their identities, and some of the planning chats included only trusted participants. The chats introduced at trial revealed that members in this limited group conducted reconnaissance and discussed what to bring to the riot, including firearms, medical kits, and fireworks…
Among other things, Kent testified that the night before the attack at a “gear check,” Song proposed to free the detainees at the Prairieland detention facility and told the group that they should wear “black bloc” and bring rifles, because he (Song) wasn’t going to be arrested. Evidence at trial also revealed that some of the defendants attended a peaceful daytime protest at Prairieland on July 4—without the gear they brought that night—and that they reported back to other defendants details regarding security at the facility:
Despite the conviction and the long sentences, the media is still referring to this group of losers as an “alleged ‘Antifa cell.'” Here’s the Washington Post:
Federal judges in Texas on Tuesday gave eight members of an alleged “antifa cell” prison sentences as long as 100 years for their roles last summer in a protest that turned violent outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility.
And the Post repeated their BS definition of Antifa:
Short for “anti-fascist,” antifa is a loosely knit movement of far-left activists — often anti-capitalist or anti-state — who oppose fascism and other right-wing ideologies.
Any definition of Antifa which doesn’t mention their decision to embrace violence and vandalism is whitewashing the group. The article ends with a plea read outside the courtroom by Benjamin Song’s mother:
In the statement, Song said he opposed fascism but insisted he was not a member of an antifa group, and that antifa is not a group.
“He has accepted full responsibility,” Hope Song said. “But he will never accept responsibility for a lie … which they are using to prosecute people all across the country for domestic terrorism.”
The NY Times coverage is possibly even worse:
The leader of a group of protesters accused of being members of the far-left movement antifa was sentenced on Tuesday to 100 years in prison after a jury found him and seven other demonstrators guilty of supporting terrorism while taking part in an armed assault last summer against an immigration facility in Alvarado, Texas.
The extraordinary sentence against the protester, Benjamin Song, was only one of the harsh penalties meted out in the case during separate hearings in Federal District Court in Fort Worth by two judges who castigated the defendants for using violence and attacking the democratic process during the protest.
Nine young demonstrators, including Mr. Song, were found guilty in March of an array of charges stemming from the attack on the Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility, which resulted in a police officer being shot in the neck…
The sentencings in Fort Worth appeared to be a clear signal that, at least in Texas, the courts would deal aggressively with ICE protesters — especially those accused of adhering to the leftist ideology of antifa, a contraction of the word “antifascist.”
Mistakes were made! Those mistakes “resulted” in a police officer being shot in the neck. Only in the last paragraph of the story do we learn that Song opened fire on a police officer while shouting “Get to the rifles!”
All of these sentences are going to be appealed. My own take is that it’s obvious all of these people were part of the planning for a violent attack. Pretending they are not part of a group while they have group meetings and group chats and coordinating their activities together seems pretty foolish.
The fact that they avoid filling out a member list on paper or paying dues has an alternative explanation which should be obvious to anyone not working at the Post or the Times. Just as they use fake names in their chats and dress in black bloc and don’t bring their phones to their “actions” the goal is to avoid accountability. For far too long this has worked. Hopefully the sentences in this case will make some of these goons think twice about their fondness for vandalism, violence and revolution.
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