45 Years, or 450: What the T-Word Did to Prairieland

Let’s imagine that the protest outside the Prairieland detention facility in Alvarado, Texas on July 4, 2025, occurred exactly as it did, with all parties still responsible for what they did and said– but the word “terrorism” was never used to describe it. Would the protestors still have received a combined sentence of 450 years in prison?

Before answering that, let’s look at the context, which starts with the concept of a “noise protest.”

Noise protests are a type of peaceful yet disruptive demonstration meant to communicate a message. In this case, the means of creating noise was fireworks, which seems appropriate, given that it was the 4th of July. The defendants in this case say that they did this to demonstrate support for the detainees inside the facility.

The protest was planned using Signal, and 11 people showed up shortly after 10:30 wearing “black bloc” clothing with their faces covered (that’s literally what black bloc clothing is– wearing black and covering your face with a scarf, balaclava, etc.) . Some of them spray-painted vehicles and a guard structure with the words “ICE pig” and “traitor.”

Their fireworks attracted the attention of two ICE officers and the Alvarado police, who arrived after the aforementioned officers called 911 to report the incident, converging on the scene at about 11pm.

The outcome is that a police lieutenant, Thomas Gross, was shot in the neck, just above his collarbone, injuring his trapezius before exiting through his upper back. He was airlifted to a hospital and released less than 24 hours later. There is general agreement that the shooter was Benjamin Song, who yesterday received a 100 year sentence for his crime, but there is disagreement concerning how many shots were fired, who shot first, and why they did it.

Police claimed they heard someone yell “Get to the rifles,” and then a man in a green mask opened fire on them, but an FBI official would later acknowledge that he wasn’t sure who fired first. The police initially reported that there were two shooters and 20-30 rounds of ammunition had been found, but in later documents they lowered that to one shooter and only 11 spent shell casings.

That shooter, Song, maintained that the police fired first– that the bullet that struck Gross did in fact come from Song’s gun, but that it first ricocheted off the ground before finding its eventual target. Song later issued a statement including the following:

“When I saw Lieutenant Thomas Gross stop pursuing and point his gun at the back of a running, unarmed protester, like he testified, I was terrified. . . As the evidence shows, I did not want to hurt anyone. I never had the intent to hurt anyone. I tried my best to avoid hurting anyone. It is impossible to say that I was trying to ambush anyone or planning any violence.”

Nearly 24 hours after the incident, Song was captured in a sunflower field “several hundred meters” from the detention center.

So there’s your “terrorist.”

The other defendants were arrested in multiple locations:

Meagan Morris was pulled over in a van a mile away from the shooting. She admitted to having driven people to the protest, but said she stayed in the van, and left two minutes after hearing gunshots.
Law enforcement officers headed to Morris’s house to serve a warrant, breaking windows and setting off flash bang grenades. They found Autumn Hill there and arrested her.
Liz Soto, Ines Soto, Marciela Ruda, Savanna Batten, Joy Gibson, Seth Sikes, and Nathan Baumann were arrested at a nearby intersection.
Zachary Evetts was arrested while walking along the highway near Venus, Texas, at about 2am the next morning.
Daniel Rolando Sanchez-Estrada was not at the protest, but was arrested at a traffic stop on July 6 after having transferred a package from his Garland house to an apartment in Denton. The box of “radical literature” contained “anti-government and anarchist documents, largely pamphlets and zines,” and earned Sanchez-Estrada a charge of “Conspiracy to conceal documents that would implicate Maricela Rueda.”

In addition to the charge of providing material support to a terrorist, Rueda, Hill, Batten, Morris, and Ines and Elizabeth Soto were also charged with “Conspiracy to use and carry explosives” and “Riot, with the intent to commit an act of violence.”

The “explosives” were legally purchased fireworks set off outside of a detention facility on the 4th of July.

Before going further, let me clearly state that I am not a lawyer, and nothing I say should be construed as legal counsel or stem from authoritative knowledge of the law, whether federal or local.

What would’ve happened without the word “terrorist” having been uttered?

As far as Song’s actions go, if you assume that he would have been deemed guilty of attempted murder of a federal officer, that’s still a federal crime, (§§ 1114(a)(3), 1113) with a maximum sentence of up to 20 years.

(Edit: If you don’t assume that Song was guilty of attempted murder of a federal officer, and that he could’ve been charged and held guilty for a lesser charge without being allowed to walk, there are options that the prosecution could’ve used:

The most obvious one is assault with a deadly weapon on a federal officer (18 U.S.C. § 111) — which was among the offenses federal investigators initially listed in this case, before “attempted murder” became the framing. It covers shooting and injuring an officer, but doesn’t require intent to kill, only intent to commit the assault. That could still carry 20 years, but is more likely to be sentenced lower, realistically.
If you credit Song’s version even partially, that he fired at the ground to disrupt Gross’s aim, and the round ricocheted up, then you’re describing someone who, by his own account, was not trying to hit Gross at all. That’s not attempted murder and arguably not even assault-with-intent; at most it would be something closer to reckless endangerment. That’s the kind of charge measured in a few years, rather than decades.)

Aiding and abetting that attempted murder of a federal officer is also a crime (18 U.S.C. § 2), but (of course) that’s not a standalone offense— it requires a specific intent to bring about the result, and taking action based on that intent. So that would also depend on the crime being charged.

The Prairieland defendants were charged with both “material support for a terrorist” and “aiding and abetting,” but for the most part the “aiding and abetting” charges didn’t stick. The jury rejected those charges. But they accepted the “material support” charge, which was based primarily on the defendants’ presence, the presence of legally-owned guns, clothing, zines, and the fireworks, aka “explosives.”

(Edit: Regardless, if the charge became reckless endangerment, that would pretty much kill the accompanying “aiding and abetting” charge, because it doesn’t make sense to say you purposefully aided someone’s violent crime that they, themselves, didn’t intend to commit.)

The “riot” charge was not cited in the original complaint from July, but appears to have been added as part of the terrorism charges in the superseding indictment. 18 U.S.C. § 2101, also known as the Anti-Riot Act, is a federal statute that makes it a crime to travel in, or use facilities of, interstate or foreign commerce with the intent to incite, organize, promote, participate in, or aid and abet a riot.The penalty cap is 5 years.

Courts have read that to include the internet and phone networks, so planning the demo over Signal could, in theory, supply it, since Signal traffic crosses state lines regardless of where the users are. That’s the only basis for a federal riot charge here.

So if you take the terrorism element out but leave the federal framework in place, Song is the only one left facing a serious federal charge. Attempted murder of a federal officer (§§ 1114, 1113) carries a maximum of 20 years. That’s what Song was likely looking at before he was labeled an antifa terrorist, the label that turned 20 years into 100.

For the five others who were present but fired no shots — Maricela Rueda, Autumn Hill, Zachary Evetts, Savanna Batten, and Elizabeth Soto — the worst case is the federal riot charge, capped at 5 years, and realistically less, since the underlying conduct (vandalism, setting off fireworks) is the kind of state-level misdemeanor that protests have always carried. And then there are the two whose alleged “crimes” don’t support even that: Meagan Morris, who sat in a van playing her Nintendo Switch, and Daniel Rolando Sanchez-Estrada, who moved a box of zines from one apartment to another.

Now let’s add it up. 20 years for the person who actually fired a weapon, 5 each (at most) for the five who were present, and effectively nothing for the two outliers, and you get a combined sentence of around 45 years. And that assumes every one of them is guilty of everything they’re alleged to have done. These are the people a Justice Department press release labeled as “North Texas Antifa Cell operatives” and “Antifa terrorists.” Forty-five years, against the 450 they actually received.

Let’s go back to the Trump executive order declaring antifa to be a “terrorist organization” (which, by the way, was issued nearly three months after the Prairieland incident), and the memorandum issued a few days later titled Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence which states the following:

There are common recurrent motivations and indicia uniting this pattern of violent and terroristic activities under the umbrella of self-described “anti-fascism.” These movements portray foundational American principles (e.g., support for law enforcement and border control) as “fascist” to justify and encourage acts of violent revolution. This “anti-fascist” lie has become the organizing rallying cry used by domestic terrorists to wage a violent assault against democratic institutions, constitutional rights, and fundamental American liberties. Common threads animating this violent conduct include anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the United States Government; extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality. As described in the Order of September 22, 2025 (Designating Antifa as a Domestic Terrorist Organization), the groups and entities that perpetuate this extremism have created a movement that embraces and elevates violence to achieve policy outcomes, including justifying additional assassinations

Sounds exactly like what fascist would say.

In fact, it’s right in line with how fascism is defined by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum: fascism is characterized by “strident, often exclusionary nationalism,” and a “fixation with national decline (real or perceived) and threats to the existence of the national community.” The nature of fascism is “protecting or elevating the rights of the national community above the rights of those seen as alien,” and “removing obstacles to national unity and suppressing those seen as challenging it.”

(Guess what else the museum’s website also features? A zine, illustrated by a Greek teenager during the German occupation of Thessaloniki in the early 1940’s.)

The Library of Congress’s overview of domestic-terrorism law, “Domestic Terrorism: Overview of Federal Criminal Law and Constitutional Issues” begins by conceding the thing this entire prosecution depends on obscuring: “Despite the federal statutory definition, no federal criminal provision expressly prohibits ‘domestic terrorism.’” Further down, under “Crimes of Violent Unrest,” it quotes FBI Director Christopher Wray describing the January 6 insurrection as domestic terrorism. Wray noted that some who came that day intended a peaceful protest but engaged in “low-level criminal behavior” after being “swept up in… motive or emotion,” and that the day showed how domestic terrorists can use social unrest as a weapon by “turning large groups of people to violence.”

Certain participants in the Prairieland incident also said they’d expected to be part of a peaceful protest. But if we’re comparing the Jan. 6 rioters to the protesters at Prairieland, that’s where the similarities end. Those participants didn’t engage in “low-level criminal behavior” as a result of being “swept up in motive or emotion.” They didn’t engage in criminal behavior at all. Nobody used social unrest as a weapon to turn large groups of people to violence, either.

But this did happen on January 6th. And the same president who declared antifa to be domestic terrorists literally pardoned every single member of the mass of rioters who stormed the capitol on his behalf– including members of the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, who, unlike “antifa,” are actual organizations with actual hierarchies, and whose leaders had been convicted of seditious conspiracy. That is– again– before they were pardoned.

Here’s a quick reminder about why these two events happened:

The protests outside of the Prairieland Detention Facility were about what’s happening inside it. Whatever you think about noise protests and vandalism, those tactics were deployed to draw attention to the inhumane conditions experienced by people like Leqaa Kordia, a Palestinian woman from New Jersey arrested during a protest at Columbia University. She spent a year at Prairieland, and was living in “a big open-air bathroom” while the protestors stood outside making noise on her behalf.

January 6th, on the other hand, was about violently attacking law enforcement to keep a man in power after he lost an election and lied about it. That, and smearing shit on the walls.

Of these two groups, the Trump administration has made a conscious decision to label the former as terrorists and the latter as patriots. Which prompts one more counterfactual, one more “what if” question for you to consider:

What if MAGA was declared a domestic terrorist organization?