On Tuesday, the sound of their chains made it to the courtroom before they did. The four defendants, all clad in faded orange and white jail jumpsuits, shuffled into the federal courtroom in Fort Worth, Texas, with their hands and feet shackled.
Autumn Hill, Savanna Batten and Zachary Evetts had already been found guilty on a battery of charges, including providing material support to terrorists. The fourth person, Daniel Sanchez Estrada, was found guilty of conspiracy to conceal documents and records. Now they were being sentenced in a saga that began last July 4 at Prairieland Detention Center, an ICE facility near Fort Worth.
A group of protestors — including the 16 people who were ultimately arrested — attended a noise demonstration to show support for the people locked inside the facility. When police arrived to break up the demonstration, one of the protestors shot an officer in the shoulder.
Although many of the protestors did not know each other, the government claims they are part of an “Antifa cell” with the goal of creating terror in the US. The problem, as lawyers and experts pointed out during the trial, is that an organization called Antifa does not exist. Rather, it’s a catchall term used for a group of anti-fascist positions held by people throughout the country. And even though only one of the defendants was found guilty of a violent act, they were all sentenced to between 30 and 100 years in prison.
Sanchez Estrada, for instance, wasn’t even at the protest; he moved a box of zines for his wife (Maricela Rueda, another defendant) and was found guilty of conspiracy to conceal documents and records. When he walked into the courtroom for his sentencing, he seemed to mouth “I love you” to family members in the gallery.
“I am a father, I am a husband, I am a teacher, a poet,” Sanchez Estrada said before his sentencing. “I am many things, Your Honor, but I’m not a terrorist.”
He received a sentence of 30 years.
FBI director Kash Patel and acting Attorney General Todd Blanche framed the verdicts as just the first of more victories to come in their fight against what they call domestic terrorism.
“We will continue in this mission to hold others accountable who perpetrate such violence and fund these ANTIFA groups in the Northern District of Texas,” says Ryan Raybould, the US Attorney assigned to that district.
Judge Reed O’Connor, one of two judges who rendered the sentences on June 23, framed the case in similar terms. The defendants were a threat to democracy, he said at the sentencing, before adding, “The need to deter riotous, terroristic, assaultive behavior is high.”
Jason Blazakis, a counterterrorism expert and professor at the Middlebury Institute, tells Inkstick that the sentences in the Prairieland case are “out of line” with how the US government has treated terrorism cases in the past. For instance, people recently convicted of providing material support to ISIS have received sentences of nine to 25 years.
Blazakis is especially concerned about the “chilling effect” that both the verdicts and the sentences will have on speech. He points out that a patchwork of Signal chats and zines was used by the prosecutors to argue that the defendants shared dangerous, violent beliefs. As one of the prosecutors said on the day of sentencing, “You can try deterrence, but with these beliefs, that’s hard to do.”
Only one of the defendants — Benjamin Song — was accused of firing on law enforcement (he ultimately received a 100-year sentence). Yet the state pointed to fireworks as evidence that all of those present were part of a malignant plot.
Earlier this month, federal prosecutors charged 15 anti-ICE activists in Minnesota with conspiracy offenses, once again alleging coordinated efforts and ties to “Antifa.” There’s no shooting incident this time; instead, the state alleges protestors engaged in stalking, threats and assault.
Some charges have recently been dropped because of insufficient evidence, and experts allege pressure from the White House could’ve been a factor in the initial charges. Vice President JD Vance has consistently framed anti-ICE protests as a campaign perpetrated by a “left-wing network”; when Renee Good was killed, Vance called her “brainwashed” and “a victim of ideology.”
What’s more, Blazakis points out that Kash Patel has repeatedly touted the Prairieland case as a first-of-its-kind blow against “Antifa.”
“There’s no question that Trump, the White House see this as a great success,” Blazakis says, referring to the lengthy sentences. “The federal government is going to look at this as a success and then say, ‘This is going to be our playbook moving forward, and we’re going to put forward charges similar to this in other states where we have sympathetic district attorneys.’”
The fallout from the September 2025 killing of conservative media personality Charlie Kirk seems to have laid the groundwork for the Prairieland case. Vance hosted an episode of The Charlie Kirk Show, a podcast, following Kirk’s death, and Stephen Miller, the White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy, appeared on the show. Miller shared the message that Vance would later echo, claiming that there is a “vast domestic terrorist movement” that the Trump administration would “use every resource” to “identify, disrupt, dismantle and destroy.”
Shortly afterward, President Trump signed an executive order designating Antifa a domestic terrorist organization.
That executive order came up several times during the trial. For example, an attorney for Maricela Rueda argued that the government was using Prairieland as a test case for prosecuting anti-fascists they deem dangerous.
“This is an experiment for them,” the attorney said, “but this courtroom is not a laboratory, and Maricela is not a lab rat.”
Further, on the day of sentencing, an attorney for the government told Judge O’Connor that “this Antifa stuff has been going on for a number of years.”
Notably, O’Connor did not preside over the trial, yet he was still tasked with sentencing four of the defendants. The judge has a long reputation as a favorite of conservative prosecutors, with one law professor having previously described him as the “go-to judge” for attorneys “who want to file ideological suits.” After giving Autumn Hill, one of the defendants, a 50-year sentence, O’Connor snapped at an attorney who questioned if the judge had read the trial transcripts.
For her part, Hill offered a final statement before her sentencing. She said she was glad the officer who was shot was alive, and she said she was happy that her friends were still alive, too. “All I’ve ever wanted to do is help people,” she said, fighting back tears. “I didn’t want what happened that night to happen.”
