{"id":1272,"date":"2026-07-30T19:09:25","date_gmt":"2026-07-30T19:09:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movingandmortgagehub.com\/?p=1272"},"modified":"2026-07-30T19:09:25","modified_gmt":"2026-07-30T19:09:25","slug":"how-anti-ice-protesters-became-prisoners-in-trumps-war-on-antifa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movingandmortgagehub.com\/?p=1272","title":{"rendered":"How Anti-ICE Protesters Became Prisoners in Trump\u2019s War on Antifa"},"content":{"rendered":"<article>\n<div><ul><li><span>Share on Facebook<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span>Share on Twitter<\/span><\/li><li><i><?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"UTF-8\"?>\n<svg>\n<\/svg><\/i><span>Share on Bluesky<\/span><\/li><li><span>Email<\/span><\/li><li><span>Comments<\/span><\/li><\/ul><\/div>\n<div>\n<p><strong><span>Savanna Batten got<\/span> <\/strong>her first call from the FBI the year she turned 18. It was 2011, and the Animal Liberation Front had set fire to a fur store in Idaho and raided mink farms in Iowa and Washington. The feds were cracking down, just as Batten had been chosen as president of Animal Connection of Texas. Her mother, Cynthia Lokey, says the group she and her daughter belonged to confined its own activities to peaceful protest. \u201cWe never did anything like that,\u201d she said of the ALF actions, \u201cbut I\u2019m not gonna knock other people for doing it, because those places are atrocious.\u201d<\/p><p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/movingandmortgagehub.com\/?p=1270\">The Kushner-Backed FIFA Takeover Tearing the Soccer World Apart<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Even then, Batten knew not to speak to the feds. Animal Connection\u2019s lawyer told her, \u201cIf they come to your door, don\u2019t talk to them.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Fourteen years later, the FBI once again had Batten in its sights. On July 4, 2025, she\u2019d participated in a demonstration outside Immigration and Customs Enforcement\u2019s Prairieland Detention Facility, southwest of Dallas. The plan had been to make noise and shoot off fireworks to let the detainees know they weren\u2019t alone. But some of the activists were armed, and one of them shot a cop.<\/p>\n<p>Law enforcement arrested Batten and nearly everyone else who attended the protest,  11 of them with . \u201cIt was a planned ambush with the intent to kill ICE corrections officers,\u201d the US attorney said three days after the shooting. \u201cThis was not a so-called peaceful protest.\u201d The defendants, prosecutors initially theorized, had used the chaotic demonstration to lure officers into a deadly trap.<\/p>\n<p>Then, in September, a gunman in Utah assassinated Charlie Kirk. The evidence suggests that the accused murderer acted alone. But in the furious reaction that followed, the Trump administration ramped up its assault on dissent, alleging that a network of left-wing activists and NGOs were engaged in a nationwide plot to foment political violence. Trump designated antifa\u2014a decentralized anti-fascist movement he described as \u201ca militarist, anarchist enterprise\u201d\u2014as a domestic terrorist organization. He ordered law enforcement to use every tool available to \u201cinvestigate, disrupt, and dismantle\u201d antifa operations.<\/p>\n<p>The Prairieland case became the Justice Department\u2019s proving ground for its new war on antifa, and the defendants were  on federal terrorism and conspiracy charges punishable by decades in prison. Prosecutors spun up an elaborate tale of a Texas \u201cAntifa Cell\u201d engaged in a campaign of terror\u2014one in which the fireworks demonstration became \u201cconspiracy to use\u201d explosives, and possession of radical literature became evidence of criminal intent. The government even portrayed Batten\u2019s leftist book club as a recruiting and propaganda arm of the conspiracy. Batten, the indictment , was \u201cpart of a group that created and distributed insurrectionary materials called \u2018zines.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Conspiracy charges can be an , enabling prosecutors to win convictions against defendants who were only marginally involved in alleged crimes. And as anti-ICE protests ramped up, the Trump administration began seeing conspiracies everywhere. Five days after the Prairieland shooting, the DOJ  for conspiring to impede ICE officers in Washington state. In October 2025, the feds brought conspiracy charges against six people (including <em>Mother Jones<\/em> contributor Kat Abughazaleh) protesting at a Chicagoland detention center\u2014a case that would eventually fall apart amid court filings  \u201cwide-ranging\u201d prosecutorial misconduct. Undeterred, the DOJ then filed conspiracy charges against 15 people in Minnesota it claimed were affiliated with \u201cAntifa affinity groups\u201d; the government hasn\u2019t bothered to allege that any of those defendants injured federal officers.<\/p>\n<p>But Prairieland was where the administration hoped to make its biggest mark. As the trial began this past winter, FBI Director Kash Patel spoke as if it were already a done deal. \u201cNineteen people have been convicted for acts of violence related to antifa,\u201d he said on a podcast. \u201cYou don\u2019t got to believe me\u2026Everybody can go read the public indictment.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Patel\u2019s pronouncement may have been premature, but he wasn\u2019t wrong. It didn\u2019t matter that little evidence of a premeditated attack on law enforcement ever emerged. It didn\u2019t matter that every defendant, except the actual shooter, was exonerated of the original attempted murder charges. It didn\u2019t even matter that prosecutors struggled to show the defendants belonged to an \u201cantifa cell.\u201d In the end, they convinced the jury that Batten and most of her co-defendants were guilty of rioting, conspiracy, using explosives, and supporting terrorists.<\/p>\n<p>In a Fort Worth courtroom in June, a right-wing judge sentenced Batten to 50 years behind bars\u2014a stark warning to others who might challenge the president\u2019s agenda.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong><span>Batten was a<\/span> <\/strong>prodigy among North Texas activists. When she was 12, around the time her father abandoned the family, she started reading about factory farming. She soon went vegan and convinced her mother to give up meat. They began attending protests, taking on the Ringling Bros. Circus and Fort Worth\u2019s historic Stock Show &amp; Rodeo. \u201cShe was so involved in everyone\u2019s rights,\u201d said Susan Oakey, a longtime Animal Connection activist. \u201cNot just animals, but anyone who was mistreated.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>There was nothing cynical about Batten\u2019s activism. \u201cShe\u2019s never even voted,\u201d said her older sister Amber Lowrey. \u201cIt\u2019s not politics for her; it\u2019s just where she sees injustice happening, that\u2019s where she wants to be.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Batten didn\u2019t go to college. \u201cShe likes to educate herself,\u201d her mother said, and besides, \u201cwe were poor people.\u201d Instead, she joined the Emma Goldman Book Club, a local anarchist reading group run by Elizabeth and Ines Soto. The Sotos were \u201cworking-class parents who had kids fairly young and have managed to live very rich political and social lives,\u201d said Luis, a participant in the book club, \u201ctrying to find ways to be meaningfully contributing to history.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Sotos and Batten drew close. She helped lead the book club and friends began to think of them as a unit, at times referring to them as \u201cthe trio.\u201d It was an exhilarating meeting of the minds. Batten still went to protests, garnering a couple of arrests that were resolved with community service, but the book club became a center of her political life. There were potlucks, skill-sharing workshops, and poetry readings. The ideas they discussed were radical, frequently circling insurrectionary anarchism. \u201cAnarchists must attack,\u201d reads one anonymous zine, <em>Insurrectionary Anarchy: Organizing for Attack<\/em>, passed around by participants. \u201cWaiting for the state to disappear is defeat.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Their tight communities kept them from getting carried away. \u201cObviously, we have these very revolutionary ideas, but we also have to acknowledge that nobody wants to leave their kids,\u201d said Kels Fryman, a book club participant. \u201cWe do have a responsibility of care.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In 2024, Batten and the Sotos received 2,000 pounds of community-building tools in the mail. An anarchist publishing venture in the San Francisco Bay Area was shutting down, and their copy machine, hydraulic paper cutter, and Duplo DB-280 binder needed a new home. It was a gift and a responsibility. They installed the print shop in the Sotos\u2019 garage and started throwing around logo ideas. \u201cThey had their first big book order for their poetry stuff,\u201d Fryman said. \u201cThey were like, \u2018Someone is actually interested in having us publish their poetry. We\u2019re gonna get a real order, not just us being dorks.\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Their work was rudely interrupted by the feds.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong><span>July 3, 2025<\/span><\/strong>\u2014the day before the day that would change her life\u2014was Batten\u2019s day off at Panera. Alone in her Forth Worth apartment with the feral cat she\u2019d rescued from behind the restaurant and the hermit crabs she\u2019d adopted out of a dumpster, she battled a cold.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, in a ranch-style house on the far side of the metroplex, plans for the next day\u2019s action were taking shape. The South Dallas residence had a shabby abundance about it, with three mattresses in some bedrooms, Costco-scale stores of snacks, and video gaming setups under string lights. There were 10 adults, an infant, and two dogs living there. Many of the residents were trans and had helped each other find work at UPS. Since the group had come together to buy the home in 2021, they\u2019d called it the \u201cBig Gay House.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It was a hub of leftist activism; many there knew Batten and the Sotos through the book club, though the trio wasn\u2019t known to hang out at the house. The home was also a refuge. \u201cWe helped a lot of trans people that were struggling with their home situation,\u201d said Stephanie Shiver, who lived there with her wife, Meagan Morris. One of them was Autumn Hill, who\u2019d grown up in a conservative Christian home in Pennsylvania. Coming out as trans to her parents didn\u2019t go over well, and she moved to Texas in 2022. Her now-wife, Lydia Koza, joined her soon after. \u201cMeagan would talk about this place as though it was an organization unto itself or a cause unto itself,\u201d Koza told me. \u201cIt\u2019s actually much more informal than that. It\u2019s just a bunch of nerds with a house.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The idea for a protest at the Prairieland facility had been brewing for a few days, but the details were still fuzzy. A little after 9:30 p.m., a group of activists stepped into the backyard and started throwing out suggestions. The most radical came from Benjamin Song. \u201cWe can take the place and free the people inside,\u201d Susan Kent recalled Song saying when she testified as a cooperating witness. \u201cShoot over their heads with cover fire.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Song grew up a Rush Limbaugh fan and served in the Marine Corps Reserve, receiving an other than honorable discharge after not being allowed to skip drills to finish college exams, the <em>Washington Post <\/em>reported last year. Song broke with the right in 2016. \u201cI used to write off the accusations that the Republican Party was racist because here we are, this Asian family who are Republicans,\u201d Song told the <em>Post<\/em>. \u201cThen you saw the racist rhetoric escalate in 2016 with Trump.\u201d In 2019, Song spent two weeks protesting in Hong Kong. \u201cThey were Asian people under a Western system just faced with this unimaginable authoritarianism and bravely fighting back,\u201d Song told the <em>South China Morning Post<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Song\u2019s suggestion for the Prairieland action\u2014something out of <em>One Battle After Another<\/em>\u2014elicited a chorus of disagreement. \u201cI remember the mood changing appreciably,\u201d Koza said. \u201cI was one of the people who was very emphatically like, \u2018No, that\u2019s insane.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Still, nobody was too alarmed. Song didn\u2019t live in the Big Gay House, but was often there, in part because they were gender non-conforming. Friends tended to use they\/them or she\/her pronouns when referring to Song, whom they called Champagne or Bubble. \u201cIf I had thought Bubble was serious enough about this other plan\u2026I would have told everybody, \u2018Don\u2019t go. Also, maybe we need to stop having Bubble at the house.\u2019 But I didn\u2019t think it was that serious,\u201d Koza said.<\/p>\n<p>The group settled on a \u201cnoise demonstration\u201d\u2014setting off fireworks and shouting support\u2014to let detainees know they hadn\u2019t been forgotten, but someone asked if they were still bringing guns. Guns are a fact of life in Texas, and Song and some other members of the community believed they had an important role to play in leftist politics. Song belonged to the local chapter of the Socialist Rifle Association, a national organization that the FBI was investigating even before Trump returned to office. They\u2019d also joined the Elm Fork John Brown Gun Club, which provided security at protests, drag shows, and homeless encampments. And they led firearm trainings at the Big Gay House, focusing on techniques like suppressive fire, where a stream of bullets is aimed around, but not directly at, a target, limiting its movement.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re just trying to survive in this fucked up self-immolation of the United States,\u201d Koza told me.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In a Signal chat, Batten\u2019s friend Maricela Rueda, a poet and doula, argued that \u201crifles might make the situation more hot.\u201d Song countered that guns would actually deescalate the situation: \u201cCops are not trained or equipped for more than one rifle so it tends to make them back off.\u201d In any event, guns weren\u2019t a deal-breaker.<\/p>\n<p>By the day of the protest, Ines Soto was telling a group chat of around 200 leftists that this action would be the ideal event for anyone who was more comfortable at book clubs than demonstrations. \u201cNoise demos are really dope for people inside,\u201d he wrote. \u201cThese are pretty low risk.\u201d Still, when the FBI searched his car following the protest, agents would find a satchel with a Glock hanging from a headrest.<\/p>\n<p><strong><span>Batten arrived late <\/span><\/strong>to the Prairieland protest, catching a ride with the Sotos after a full day at Panera. By the time they pulled into Alvarado, the small town near Fort Worth over which the 1,000-bed Prairieland facility looms, the others had already fanned out along the tree line. What happened next was vividly described in court documents and trial testimony.<\/p>\n<p>Rueda was there, shouting \u201c<em>\u00a1Esperanza!<\/em>\u201d into a megaphone. Others pulled fireworks out of a red Igloo cooler and shot them over the facility; surveillance footage from the evening shows their bright bursts in the sky. The Sotos and Batten encountered other familiar faces from leftist community events, including Autumn Hill, Zachary Evetts, and Seth Sikes.<\/p>\n<p>Song, donning a fluorescent green gaiter, stationed themself nearby as a lookout with their partner Rowan Gibson and a cart carrying a rifle bag. Meagan Morris stayed behind too, playing Pok\u00e9mon on a Nintendo Switch in a red minivan many in the group had used to carpool from the Big Gay House.<\/p>\n<p>The noise demonstration had its intended effect. Detainees pressed against the windows. \u201cEverybody in the facility was in the back,\u201d including \u201cthe aliens,\u201d Officer Dekeithan Reedy, one of the contracted ICE guards, testified. They could see the protesters and the protesters could see them. Law enforcement would allege the fireworks had been aimed at the building, though the warden testified the explosions caused no damage. The only person hurt by a firework was Sikes, who failed to read the instructions. \u201cIt went off in my lap,\u201d he testified.<\/p>\n<p>Two protesters split off and ran to the employee parking lot. One of them was Nathan Baumann, a 20-year-old from College Station who had never met anyone in the group before. He\u2019d only joined the Dallas\u2013Fort Worth leftist Signal chat a few weeks earlier, when a cute girl had shown him the QR code at a No Kings protest. Partly hoping to see her again, he\u2019d driven north for the protest at Prairieland. He showed up wearing black bloc attire\u2014a tactic he claims he learned about on TikTok\u2014and carrying spray paint.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In the parking lot, Baumann started kicking out brake lights and tagging a car with \u201cbigot\u201d and \u201cICE Pig.\u201d Moving to an empty guard shack, he painted \u201cFuck You Pigs.\u201d He testified that another protester broke a security camera and slashed all four tires of a van used to transport detainees. Initially, Baumann claimed this was Sikes, but in court settled on Evetts. The total cost of the damage to the car and security camera was $3,018.<\/p>\n<p>Two freaked-out guards stepped out of the detention center and approached the protesters at the fence. \u201cWe start to tell them they have to leave,\u201d recalled Reedy. At 10:56 p.m., a 911 call went out from Prairieland\u2019s control center. \u201cSomebody\u2019s trying to get in. Can you send somebody?\u201d the caller said. \u201cThey\u2019re walking the perimeter.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As the protesters fled, it began to rain. Sikes and Hill briefly argued about whether to pick up the debris from the fireworks. \u201cI wanted to ditch,\u201d Sikes testified. Then he saw the lights of a cop car approaching. \u201cThis has turned into a situation I very much don\u2019t want to be part of,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m running.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Alvarado police Lieutenant Thomas Gross pulled into the parking lot just before 11 p.m, his body camera rolling. He\u2019d spotted the anti-ICE graffiti and saw a masked protester run past him. Gross yelled, \u201cStop!\u201d then exited his vehicle, pulled his gun, and gave chase. Within seconds, Song shouted, \u201cGet to the rifles!\u201d and started firing. One round struck Gross in the upper shoulder, coming out near his neck and lodging in his ballistic vest. \u201cFuck, I\u2019m hit,\u201d he shouted as he went down.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Sikes looked back just in time to see the muzzle flash. He recognized the \u201cthuk-thuk\u201d of the binary trigger on Song\u2019s AR-15, which doubled the rate of fire, from his Socialist Rifle Association range days. Gross lifted himself back up, balancing on a knee, and fired three rounds in response. One hit Song\u2019s AR-15, jamming it.<\/p>\n<p>A moment later, Song came running past Sikes. \u201cOh shit! Oh fuck! Oh shit! Oh fuck!\u201d Song yelled as they ditched their rifle.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat the fuck did you just do?\u201d Sikes shouted. But Song was gone.<\/p>\n<p>Batten and the Sotos were down the road when the shooting started. They clumped into a larger group as Rueda and Sikes caught up. Soon, police were everywhere, ordering them to sit down. The cops began picking apart the protesters\u2019 bags. Sikes had a pistol on his hip and a disassembled AR-15 in his backpack. He\u2019d wanted to be prepared for \u201caggressive counterprotesters,\u201d he later testified.<\/p>\n<p>At 11:12 p.m., law enforcement pulled over Meagan Morris\u2019 minivan less than a mile from Prairieland. Johnson County Sheriff\u2019s Deputy Carl Parsons noticed a pistol on the floorboard and asked if there were any other weapons. \u201cThere\u2019s some in the backseat,\u201d Morris said. The cops snapped on gloves and uncovered several bulletproof vests, rifles, and loaded magazines.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBro, what the fuck?\u201d Parsons mused. \u201cThis is like a straight coordinated terror attack on fucking Prairieland.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong><span>Nearly 24 hours<\/span> <\/strong>later, Song lay in a field of sunflowers, dehydrated and hallucinating, as drones and helicopters flew overhead. Song, who had changed their Signal username to \u201cDelete,\u201d opened the app and texted Lynette Sharp and Susan Kent to arrange an extraction. \u201cHe crawled all night, all day the next day,\u201d Sharp testified. By the end, she said, Song had \u201cstarted to pray to the sunflowers.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Sharp and Song\u2019s roommate John Thomas finally found Song about a mile from Prairieland on Highway 67. \u201cHe said, \u2018Thank you for saving my life,\u2019\u201d Sharp recalled.<\/p>\n<p>There was no plan for how to hide Song, but they quickly settled on an apartment where Thomas was cat-sitting. The next day, Sharp brought the fugitive edibles, a blond wig, and chicken wings. They put their phones in the microwave and stepped into a bedroom to debrief. According to testimony from Sharp and Thomas, both of whom signed plea deals, Song told them they\u2019d shot the cop and that if they could turn themselves in and get everyone else out of trouble, they would, but that wasn\u2019t the way it worked. Song said they were glad nobody was killed.<\/p>\n<p>Song would remain on the run for 11 days, spawning online comparisons to Luigi Mangione. In the meantime, law enforcement started searching for anyone they hadn\u2019t caught. Baumann, Gibson, and Evetts were all arrested the night of the shooting. Hill somehow made it home to the Big Gay House around midnight. \u201cShe seemed shell-shocked,\u201d Koza said. The next day, around dinner time, the FBI bashed open the front door.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey broke windows, they called in a big BearCat, they had a drone fly in,\u201d Shiver said. \u201cThe first person out of the house [had] a one-month-old baby literally in her arms,\u201d Koza recalled. Hill was taken away in an armored vehicle and the others were left to stand outside while agents ripped apart their home, emptying a gun safe and seizing literature.<\/p>\n<p>More raids followed. At one point, an FBI agent seized a \u201cProud Anti-Zionist\u201d sticker from Maricela Rueda\u2019s jeep; at trial, the agent said he\u2019d been looking for anything \u201canti-government.\u201d Rueda\u2019s husband, Daniel \u201cDes\u201d Sanchez Estrada, wasn\u2019t involved in the Prairieland action. But according to his friend Kels Fryman, he began to worry that his collection of radical literature could compromise his green card status. So, following Rueda\u2019s arrest, he dropped off a box at Fryman\u2019s apartment. Shortly after, he was pulled over on the pretext of making a wide right turn, according to court testimony. The feds ultimately charged him with corruptly concealing evidence, alleging he\u2019d moved the subversive \u201cdocuments and propaganda\u201d to disrupt their case against his wife. They raided Fryman\u2019s place, too. \u201cOur entire apartment was unlivable,\u201d she said. \u201cThey flipped our beds; they took out every drawer in the house and dumped it on the floor. There\u2019s still broken glass in our couch.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI heard a buzzing,\u201d remembers Dario Sanchez, a Socialist Rifle Association member whose home was searched on July 15, 2025, as part of the investigation and who is now facing state charges. \u201cIt was a small quadcopter. It was just floating around in the living room looking at us as we walked out.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That same day, Song was finally arrested at the apartment of another friend, Rebecca Morgan. The cops had caught the shooter, but the raids and arrests of people peripherally involved with their communities continued into the next year. The Sotos\u2019 house was searched twice because the FBI was \u201clooking for evidence of mass production of propaganda,\u201d an agent testified. Among the items seized, according to court documents: \u201cAnti-Government Papers,\u201d \u201cBinder of Revolution based Literature,\u201d and \u201cBox of Pamphlet and Flyers.\u201d The feds even took the printing equipment.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey kept their machines,\u201d Elizabeth Soto\u2019s attorney Blake Burns later told jurors, \u201cbecause they hate what gets printed at the Sotos\u2019 household.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong><span>Batten first called<\/span> <\/strong>her mother from the Johnson County Jail around 4 p.m. the day after the protest. \u201cShe said, \u2018I didn\u2019t do anything,\u2019\u201d Lokey recalled. They focused on practical matters, like the pets. \u201cShe was very concerned about her crabs and her cat,\u201d Lokey said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Batten didn\u2019t yet know how bad things would get. \u201cShe expected that once they had a chance to parse through everything, it was going to be found that this was all a big misunderstanding,\u201d said Lowrey, her sister.<\/p>\n<p>The arrestees were immediately thrown into solitary. Batten struggled with the prolonged seclusion\u2014a situation that, according to the United Nations, can constitute torture. Her family arranged for her to speak with a counselor, but she\u2019d started to lose her words. \u201cShe almost sounded like a stroke victim,\u201d Lowrey said.<\/p><p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/movingandmortgagehub.com\/?p=1267\">Democrats Call For Ethics Investigation into Congressman Max Miller<\/a><\/p>\n<p>In three months, Batten lost 36 pounds, according to her family. \u201cShe looked anorexic,\u201d Lokey said. (The jail disputes that she lost a significant amount of weight.)<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSavanna has been strict vegan since she was 14 years old,\u201d Lowrey told me. \u201cShe can\u2019t just start eating these bologna sandwiches.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In September, Batten was moved to Wichita Falls, Texas, and put into the general population. The sudden change was overwhelming. At least this jail made an effort to provide a vegetarian tray, though often it would feature nearly raw pinto beans.<\/p>\n<p>Even as her conditions improved, she faced an existential dilemma. The government was offering deals to the defendants: plead guilty to providing material support to terrorists in exchange for a maximum sentence of 15 years\u2014far less than they might get if they went to trial. The other two Prairieland defendants housed with her in jail, Gibson and Morgan, folded. But Batten refused. Her mother had told her, \u201cYou\u2019ll have to sign a piece of paper saying that you did a whole lot of things that you did not do, and your confession will be written by the devil himself.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Other defendants had cooperated from the start. Morris started spilling information as soon as the cops searched her minivan full of guns. She waived her Miranda rights and told the FBI the plan was for a noise demonstration, law enforcement testified at trial. In a second meeting she requested a few days later, she told agents she suspected a member of the group, who was not named in court proceedings, \u201cwanted to do this the whole time, to shoot someone.\u201d They wanted everyone around with guns to provide cover, she said, while they do their \u201clittle jackoff fantasy and run away.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Morris soon regretted giving those interviews. \u201cShe knows it hurt her and hurt everybody else,\u201d Shiver, her wife, said. \u201cShe was just in a car, she didn\u2019t do anything in a very literal sense, and so she was angry and desperate and made a real bad mistake.\u201d When the plea deals came around, Morris declined to sign.<\/p>\n<p>Ultimately, Baumann, Sikes, Kent, Sharp, and Thomas agreed to be cooperating witnesses. \u201cI don\u2019t blame them,\u201d Lowrey said, \u201cbecause I know what was done to Savanna to try and extract that same agreement from her.\u201d Gibson and Morgan took the plea agreements without cooperating.<\/p>\n<p>That left nine defendants willing to go to trial. In a revised indictment issued in November, most were charged with providing material support to terrorists\u2014maximum sentence: 15 years. They also faced one count of using explosives, one for \u201cconspiracy\u201d to use explosives, and one for rioting (10, 20, and five years, respectively). Song, Evetts, Hill, Rueda, and Morris were also charged with attempted murder, the latter four because prosecutors said they were familiar enough with Song\u2019s thinking to have foreseen the shooting. Prosecutors dropped the original attempted murder charges against Batten and the Sotos, but each still faced half a century in prison.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong><span>There are traditions<\/span> <\/strong>of anti-fascism stretching back to the early 20th century, and anarchist activists\u2014often clad in black bloc\u2014have committed vandalism and sometimes violence around the United States. But the many-tentacled, cohesively violent organization the Trump administration has conjured under the name antifa is a phantasm. Mark Bray, a historian of anti-fascism who consulted with Sanchez Estrada\u2019s public defenders, has traced the roots of the American anti-fascist movement to anti-racist skinhead punks fighting turf battles across Europe in the \u201980s and \u201990s against neo-Nazi and fascist groups. \u201cThat\u2019s the specific tendency of anti-fascism that came over to the US,\u201d he told me. \u201cThey weren\u2019t directly organizing against the American state or American state agencies. They were organized against Klan and Nazi groups.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Trump\u2019s first term began with antifa-identified demonstrators crashing through DC to protest his inauguration, leading to a rash of arrests on riot charges. Later that year, antifa-aligned activists clashed with neo-Nazis at the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. During the George Floyd protests in the summer of 2020, Trump claimed that antifa \u201cthugs\u201d were flying around the country stoking violence. In 2021, Trump supporters, including Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, argued that the January 6 Capitol riot was, somehow, an antifa false-flag operation.<\/p>\n<p>The Prairieland case offered Trump an opportunity to finally put his black-clad bogeymen behind bars. \u201cFor the first time ever, the FBI has arrested anarchist violent extremists and charged these Antifa-aligned individuals with material support to terrorism,\u201d Patel gloated in a statement.<\/p>\n<p>For years, the government has \u201ctargeted leftist and liberal protest movements, claiming broad conspiracies\u201d were behind individual crimes, notes Mike German, a former FBI agent turned civil liberties advocate. And the material support for terrorism statute\u2014enacted in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing\u2014doesn\u2019t actually require prosecutors to prove defendants are part of a terrorist organization. The feds simply had to show that Batten and her friends had aided in something defined as a predicate act, like destroying government property or attacking an officer. Judge Mark Pittman asked during the trial why the government needed to talk about antifa at all: \u201cWhether it\u2019s antifa or it\u2019s the Methodist Women\u2019s Auxiliary of Weatherford, why does it matter?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s a bit of a superficial effort to demonstrate that the DOJ is actively on the hunt for antifa,\u201d said Thomas Brzozowski, who served as counsel for domestic terrorism at the Department of Justice until 2025. Though he said the defendants should be prosecuted for what they did that night, painting their actions as part of a nationwide leftist conspiracy against Trump and his administration was political theater.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe notion that this is a handful of people who allegedly did a thing is insufficient for their conspiratorial mindset and also their effort to try to demonize\u201d the left, Bray told me.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s certainly how many on the left saw the DOJ\u2019s obsession with the defendants\u2019 reading material. A spokesperson for the publishing collective Ill Will, whose zine <em>War in the Streets<\/em> was found in the box seized from Sanchez Estrada, told me that the feds were \u201cinterested in the relationships and communities\u201d of activists who dared to demonstrate outside ICE facilities. \u201cThe real crime here is friendship, not conspiracy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong><span>Most Fridays in<\/span> <\/strong>February, a crowd gathered on the sidewalk outside the Lon Evans Corrections Center in downtown Fort Worth, where Prairieland defendants had been thrown back into solitary. Just as they had for the ICE detainees, more than 20 of their friends, family, and supporters staged noise demos to let them know they weren\u2019t alone. They brought whistles, drums, spatulas, pots, pans, a ruler, a metal box of chocolates, an electric piano, and a speaker to play the defendants\u2019 favorite music. One mother blew a horn, trying to reach her child\u2019s ears.<\/p>\n<p>When jury selection began on February 17, there were reasons for the defendants to be optimistic. Ren\u00e9e Good and Alex Pretti had been killed by federal agents in Minnesota the previous month, and public opinion was turning against ICE, even in Texas. In the courthouse, I watched as one potential juror after another rose to say they disagreed with Trump\u2019s immigration crackdown. \u201cI think if what I have seen is even partially true, it\u2019s horrific,\u201d said one. \u201cThis is inhumane. There are laws,\u201d said another. \u201cI have a very strong fear since all this started,\u201d said an immigrant in the pool, and Evetts teared up.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou understand what\u2019s going on in Minneapolis has nothing to do with what\u2019s going on in this courtroom?\u201d Judge Pittman asked a prospective juror.<\/p>\n<p>In the afternoon, Pittman\u2014a Trump appointee\u2014called a mistrial. Someone had noticed Rueda\u2019s attorney was wearing a shirt with photos of the civil rights struggle, featuring Martin Luther King Jr. and Shirley Chisholm, under her jacket. It happened to be the day Jesse Jackson died. \u201cIt\u2019s essentially the equivalent of bringing a protest sign in here,\u201d the judge said. \u201cIf any of my prosecutors wore ICE pins, the defense would go ballistic.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>When proceedings resumed a week later, the new prospective jurors were less vocal about their distaste for ICE, and the trial rolled on.<\/p>\n<p>After calling a seemingly endless succession of cops, prosecutors brought the cooperators to the stand. Watching them was the hardest part for Batten. At the government\u2019s command, they read out the statements\u2014known as \u201cfactual r\u00e9sum\u00e9s\u201d\u2014they\u2019d agreed to. As part of their pleas, each testified that the July 4 incident had been an attack by an antifa cell, but none were willing to identify themselves as members.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Batten\u2019s lawyer, Chris Tolbert, asked Sikes if he\u2019d ever referred to himself as antifa.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo sir,\u201d Sikes said, \u201cother than tongue in cheek.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Lynette Sharp testified in a grody orange and white striped jail uniform, her shackles clinking. She was 57 at the time of the trial, but she looked older. During cross, she recounted the conditions at Johnson County before she signed the plea deal. \u201cI thought I would die there,\u201d she said. She was hearing impaired and took nine medicines a day, but guards would get angry if she asked for medication, she said, and she was hardly allowed to sleep.<\/p>\n<p>Sharp said she wasn\u2019t sure why she\u2019d signed the factual r\u00e9sum\u00e9, since she hadn\u2019t written it. Pittman cut her off. \u201cThink it might be a good idea to visit with your client?\u201d he asked Sharp\u2019s lawyer, seemingly implying that Sharp\u2019s testimony might endanger her plea agreement. The attorney hesitated, then said, \u201cI will visit.\u201d Talk of the jail conditions dried up after the break.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Susan Kent, 24, blinked back tears after a defense attorney asked if a cop inquiring whether she was a Democrat or left-wing had made her interrogation feel like a political persecution. \u201cAt the time it was political questions, but nothing was good,\u201d she said. \u201cI didn\u2019t consider it an extra step of persecution.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPoor thing,\u201d Lowrey whispered, \u201cshe\u2019s terrified.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cShe seemed like a hostage,\u201d Batten told her mother after Kent\u2019s testimony.<\/p>\n<p>Nathan Baumann, who spray-painted profanities during the protest, had been eager to cooperate from the moment of his arrest. He kept chattering until the cop who drove him off told him to be quiet. He later said he\u2019d lied to the cops that night, blaming his actions on others. Under questioning from defense attorneys, he admitted he\u2019d also lied in the leftist group chat when he\u2019d said that his parents were in danger of being deported and that he\u2019d protested for years and been arrested many times. \u201cI was trying to fit in,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n<p>Baumann told jurors about jailhouse conversations he said he\u2019d had with Hill. \u201cShe says she runs a homosexual cult,\u201d Baumann recounted. \u201c\u2018I am literally the cult leader\u2019\u2014that\u2019s a direct quote from Autumn.\u201d Koza, Hill\u2019s wife, later told me the \u201chomosexual cult\u201d thing was something she and Hill had joked about on jail calls.<\/p>\n<p>Baumann had known none of the defendants prior to the July 4 protest, and he admitted he\u2019d absorbed his knowledge of leftist protest tactics from TikTok. In this, he was similar to the government\u2019s antifa expert, Kyle Shideler, of the right-wing Center for Security Policy. Shideler began focusing on antifa in 2017, and last year, a week after Kirk\u2019s assassination, he published a plan for how the Trump administration could \u201cdismantle far-left extremist networks.\u201d On the stand, Shideler said his knowledge of antifa came from open-source research. He rambled about the hallmarks of antifa\u2014like using Signal, wearing black, and not publicly identifying themselves as antifa\u2014that marked the protesters as members of the terror group.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cJust because I have a copy of <em>Mein Kampf<\/em> doesn\u2019t make me a fascist?\u201d Pittman broke into the questioning, frustrated with Shideler\u2019s answers on cross-examination. \u201cNot unless it\u2019s consistent with your other behavior,\u201d said Shideler to a burst of laughter from the courtroom. Shideler said he hadn\u2019t meant it as a joke.<\/p>\n<p>The prosecution\u2019s case didn\u2019t seem to be coming together. As far as Batten was concerned, all they had on her was that she\u2019d been at Prairieland when the fireworks were shot off, had helped run the book club, and had some images on her phone with phrases like \u201cWhy riot.\u201d Supporters were starting to feel hopeful. \u201cAt this point, I struggle to imagine that most of these defendants could be convicted,\u201d Koza said the final weekend.<\/p>\n<p>The defense attorneys were feeling confident, too. When the prosecution rested, so did each defense team. They would call no witnesses. Lowrey and Lokey, shocked and teary, caught up with Tolbert on the courthouse steps and demanded an explanation. \u201cIt was very strategic,\u201d he told them\u2014a way to emphasize that prosecutors hadn\u2019t met their burden of proof. \u201cI thought, \u2018I agree, this is an obvious outcome, these people are not going to be convicted,\u2019\u201d Lowrey said, \u201cbut it\u2019s still very cocky.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>During closing, a prosecutor claimed for the first time that Batten and the Sotos had once called their group Antifa DFW but had rebranded to the Emma Goldman Book Club \u201cto hide what they were doing.\u201d He finished by pointing to a picture of the club, people sitting in a circle reading zines. Here, he argued, was the conspiracy.<\/p>\n<p>Song\u2019s attorney Phillip Hayes argued that his client had made the split-second decision to fire in response to Gross drawing his gun on an unarmed protester. He pointed to the clouds of dust rising from the ground in a surveillance video, which he said indicated that Song had been laying down suppressive fire and hadn\u2019t intended to kill anyone. \u201cI knew another protestor was about to be murdered right in front of me,\u201d Song said in a statement published after the trial, invoking the killings of Pretti and Good. \u201cI was forced to use, by my duty to Life, the minimum defensive force.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Sanchez Estrada\u2019s public defender, Christopher Weinbel, took a more unusual tack. \u201cMy PTSD meds wore off about two hours ago,\u201d Weinbel, a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve, informed the jury before rolling into an impassioned case for why Song was the only one who should be on trial. \u201cThey took 51 people to talk to you about one person shooting one person!\u201d he shouted. \u201cThis should have been a three-day attempted murder trial!\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong><span>It took just<\/span> <\/strong>two days for the jury to find all nine defendants . Eight, including Batten, were convicted of material support for terrorism, using explosives, conspiracy, and rioting. As the judge read out the verdict, several of the jurors were red-eyed and crying.<\/p>\n<p>Batten saw only cowardice in those tears. \u201cEverything that I was convicted of, there was no evidence for it, not one piece of evidence,\u201d she told her sister that night. \u201cI believed that they would see that.\u201d A week later, she\u2019d rekindled her resolve. \u201cWe are not terrorists, we are being terrorized,\u201d she said in a statement passed to me by Lowrey. \u201cI\u2019m heartbroken and afraid of what this could mean for myself, my friends, and other people like us. But I\u2019m not giving up until we go home. I know my community and loved ones will not give up either.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Lowrey was mostly cried out by the time she heard the verdict. Her mother turned pale and gripped her hand. \u201cI reminded her, \u2018Just keep your face steady and do not let these motherfuckers see you cry,\u2019\u201d Lowrey said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat first guilty rang out like a death knell,\u201d Koza told me shortly after a call with Hill. \u201cShe basically is having to psychologically surrender the idea of ever being free, and that is the worst fucking thing in the world to me.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Shiver learned of the verdict shortly after stepping off her shift at UPS. She didn\u2019t cry until hours later, when she talked with her wife, Morris, who was now facing decades in prison. \u201cShe told me she was right all along, that the truth wasn\u2019t going to matter and she was going to get railroaded,\u201d Shiver said. \u201cThe rest of her life is going to be in prison now. She doesn\u2019t know how she\u2019s going to survive that. She\u2019s very worried about being raped and assaulted in prison for being trans.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Pittman and another hard-right judge, Reed O\u2019Connor, showed no mercy. This summer, they sentenced Batten, Hill, Evetts, Morris, and the Sotos to 50 years. Rueda, who was also found guilty of conspiring to conceal documents from investigators, got 70 years. Song, the only one convicted of attempted murder, got 100.<\/p>\n<p>Sanchez Estrada\u2014who hadn\u2019t even attended the protest and was convicted only of concealing his radical literature\u2014will spend 30 years behind bars. His attorney was floored by the outcome. \u201cI deployed three times in defense of the country and the Constitution, and you hope it meant something, everything I\u2019ve lost personally,\u201d Weinbel told me after the verdict. \u201cNot only did the last three weeks mean nothing, but the last 18 I\u2019ve spent in the Army mean nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Gibson and Morgan, who\u2019d taken plea deals but hadn\u2019t assisted prosecutors, received 15 years. The cooperators fared better. Sharp and Thomas got about nine years apiece; Kent and Sikes got six years. Baumann was sentenced to 22 months.<\/p>\n<p>The fight is far from over. The DOJ has promised to keep prosecuting activists. \u201cAntifa terrorists who attack law enforcement and federal facilities will face swift and uncompromising justice,\u201d acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a June statement.<\/p>\n<p>For the Prairieland defendants, there are still appeals to file and state charges to face. Did Lowrey have the emotional reserves for what would come next? \u201cI don\u2019t have a choice,\u201d she told me. \u201cThe government thinks that they just cleaned nine activists off the streets. But what they actually have done is created a fuckload more activists, and we are fucking angry, we are pissed off, we are livid, we are going to win.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd,\u201d she added, \u201cwe\u2019re going to do it in a way that none of the rest of us end up in jail.\u201d <\/p>\n<p><br\/><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<footer>\n<section><h3>Owned by no one\u2014except you.<\/h3><p><strong>We just keep seeing it happen<\/strong>: Newsrooms owned by billionaires and corporations are spinning their own narratives, overwriting the truth, following only stories that keep them in the pocket of those with even more power.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Not here<\/strong>. We\u2019re not owned by anyone. We\u2019re not part of any cult that demands our allegiance to a bottom line. 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