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In Texas, Protesting ICE Can Get You a Life Sentence

Under Trump, eight Prairieland defendants were sentenced to a combined four and a half centuries in prison.

Demonstrators showing support for people accused of conspiring to commit terrorism at the Prairieland immigration detention center last summer gathered outside of the Eldon B. Mahon United States Courthouse in Fort Worth on March 13, 2026.

When Savanna Batten heard her sentence read aloud in the federal courthouse of Fort Worth, Texas, she wasn’t all that surprised. For most people, half a century in prison for attending a protest might feel like an unexpected gut punch. But Savanna, one of the 22 Prairieland defendants, understood that hers had been no ordinary trial.

“We knew this was going to happen,” said Amber Lowrey, Savanna’s older sister. “This is a political case, and Texas is sending a message: If you show up to a protest at an ICE facility, expect to go to jail for decades.”

Last Tuesday, eight Prairieland defendants, all of whom have been incarcerated since July, received sentences ranging from 30 to 100 years in prison. Most of the defendants had done nothing more than show up to a noise demonstration outside the Prairieland Detention Center, an ICE facility in rural north Texas, on July 4 of last year.

One defendant, Daniel Sanchez-Estrada, was not present at the protest but was sentenced to 30 years for moving a box of anarchist zines.

“A bunch of people went to a noise demonstration that they saw on a Signal group chat, and now they are facing 50 years in prison,” said Xavier T. de Janon, director of mass defense for the National Lawyers Guild. “That should scare and outrage anyone going to any kind of protest in this country.”

The sentences, which read like Donald Trump’s Truth Social posts, are bizarre and wildly disproportionate. They come months after the conclusion of a three-week federal jury trial in March, which found all nine defendants guilty of “providing material support for terrorism” in a case understood as the Trump administration’s first significant victory over left-wing activism.

The 11 people who showed up to Prairieland on Independence Day, after seeing a flyer in a citywide Signal chat, intended to “lift the spirits of the detainees with a fun fireworks display and go home,” according to one defendant. Some protesters brought a cooler full of fireworks. Others came armed, anticipating counterprotesters. (In Texas, it’s very legal to bring firearms to a protest.) Some protesters shot off red, pink, and green fireworks and then cleaned up the debris. Others disabled a security camera, slashed a van’s tires, and spray-painted anti-ICE messages on a cop car. After about half an hour, the protest dispersed.

When local police officer Lieutenant Thomas Gross arrived on the scene, called by a Prairieland warden, most protesters had headed home. Yet the officer still pulled his gun, aiming at the back of a fleeing straggler, prompting another protester named Benjamin Song to fire eight rounds of suppressive fire. Lieutenant Gross was grazed in the shoulder and, after a brief stint at the hospital, fully recovered.

The federal........

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