‘This is injustice’: how leftist zines were used to sentence anti-ICE protesters to decades in prison
cross-posted from: https://infosec.pub/post/48474500
Last year on the Fourth of July, a small group from Dallas-Fort Worth held a night-time noise demonstration, setting off fireworks outside the Prairieland Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facility south of the cities, in solidarity with the detainees. A few protesters broke away and spray-painted graffiti on employees’ cars and a security post, slashed the tires on a government van and broke a security camera. The facility’s guards ordered the protesters to disperse, and most of them did. When a police officer arrived at the scene, drawing his gun, an armed protester shot her rifle, hitting the officer in the shoulder. The officer survived.
After a three-week trial, a jury found eight of nine protesters guilty of “providing material support to terrorists”, among other crimes. For the Sotos, this “material support” included owning a “printing press” used to print anarchist zines and being part of a leftist book club, the federal government argued. The couple had already left the scene by the time guns were drawn. All eight of the defendants sentenced so far have received unusually harsh sentences – 30 to 100 years – essentially life in prison.
Their attorneys announced their intention to appeal, but many supporters are doubtful that anything short of a presidential pardon from a future administration would free them.
The Prairieland case was the first tried and convicted under the Trump Department of Justice’s “counter-terrorism” initiatives targeting “antifa” – short for antifascist – a decentralized movement the administration has officially categorized as a “domestic terrorist organization”. The federal government argued the Prairieland defendants, what they called a “North Texas Antifa cell”, had planned the demonstration as an assassination attempt against a law enforcement officer. The government alleged this conspiracy even though the defendants were loosely connected, and some who attended the protest did not even know each other.
The conviction of the Prairieland defendants has shocked legal and civil liberties experts, who say the Trump administration is making examples of them and setting a dangerous precedent for what this means for the first amendment right to protest and to create and distribute information.
“It is not only an attempt at chilling speech,” said Chip Gibbons, policy director at the advocacy group Defending Rights and Dissent, “but an indication that the [the Trump administration is] going to continue going after protests extremely hard.”
In total, 22 people have been charged in connection with the protest: five others took plea deals, another five have state charges pending and three more were indicted last month. What the federal government has described as “antifa extremists” are activists you’d find anywhere in the US: trans people, tattoo artists, vegans and anti-ICE community members who engage in mutual aid. The federal government’s focus on the possession of leftwing literature, including zines, and other basic security measures common in our modern era – like owning Faraday bags, meant to block wireless signals to prevent surveillance; using the encrypted messaging app Signal; or dressing in all-black clothing – is alarming to activists.
“Zines are a foundational first amendment document” going back to the Federalist papers, said Xavier de Janon, the director of mass defense at the National Lawyers Guild and the attorney representing Elizabeth in her state case. “Zines discussing ideas of revolution, mutual aid, ideas of a world after capitalism, should not be able to be criminalized in and of themselves … That’s just dangerous to all of us.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/jun/24/prairieland-texas-ice-protests-zines?referring_host=RedditOpen linkView original on infosec.pub
It’s intimidation. It’s headlines for the faithful and ignorant.
Never mind that every single chain in the “terrorist conspiracy” is nonsense…that’s just details. The message is that protest gets jail time.
The legality doesn’t matter…whether the sentences are overturned or reduced or kept in place by activist judges…the message to the faithful and ignorant is that “antifa” is a terrorist movement.
Reminder: https://youtu.be/0YFdwfNh5vs
So now citizens are being imprisoned based on political beliefs.
When can Americans begin claiming asylum?
First they came for the migrant workers and I did not speak out
Then they came for anti-fascists...
They've also been coming after queer and disabled people, especially trans and bipoc people. We got conveniently left out of the original poem.
Kinda ironic since these were people actively speaking out against the detainment of migrants workers
Not really? The poem is from the perspective of Martin Niemöller, a man who absolutely saw the stages of increasing repression as the unfortunate costs of a safe society. Until the Nazis came for him.
More analagous to kinda aloof WASPy Democrats who are all about clearing encampments in the pursuit of urban 'beautification' or the very moderate incurious Republicans.
Unashamed fascism right out in the open. Fuck this country.
You get a harsher sentence for owning a printing press than for being a pedophile rapist
That's just vandalism, which is a perfectly acceptable form of protest against fascist concentration camps.
And that's defense of self and others against potentially deadly violence from a member of a gang known to murder with impunity.
If anybody had suggested that as part of the plot of a Hollywood movie 10-15years ago, they'd be rejected for being WAY too over the top on the draconian oppression for anyone to suspend disbelief.
Truly a ridiculously monstrous miscarriage of justice.
And it fucking SHOULD be.
Can we get a list of the jurors? We better do house checks to make sure they're safe...