You may have heard of the “Prairieland” trial in which nine activists who participated in an anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement protest on July 4, 2025 at the Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas were recently convicted on a host of extremely serious charges and eight were just sentenced to a combined 450 years in federal prison.
Their crime? Well, one protester shot at a cop, wounding him in the shoulder. But the defense stated said cop was about to fire on another protester who was running away.
The others on the scene did little more than bog-standard street protest, only to have Trump-administration-aligned prosecutors and judges slam them all with wildly overblown conspiracy charges of just the type they’re now hoping to make stick on left-wing activists around the country.
You know, the whole “Antifa” fantasy thing that the hardest right-wing government officials are concocting to crush any protest they don’t like? Spelling antifa with a capital A, as if people with antifascist views are all in a literal nationwide organization of that name with tens of thousands of heavily armed militants ready to take over “Murca.” Or whatever.
That patent nonsense was apparently the sum total of the government’s case against the activists along with actual evidence that would normally only be sufficient to send the one shooter up on felony charges for maybe as much as 20 years (serving as “little” as 85% of that sentence for good behavior since there’s no parole in federal prison) and see the rest of the protestors get charged with misdemeanors or possibly low-level felonies with little or no prison time involved when all was said and done.
But, no, this time was different. The shooter, Benjamin Hanil Song, was sentenced to 100 years in prison. According to the Guardian, he “was convicted of attempted murder of an officer of the United States, as well as firearm and explosives charges. He was also convicted of riot [and] providing material support to terrorists.” Five other protesters who were actually present at Prairieland last July drew sentences of 50 years each. The Guardian reported that all of them “were convicted of riot, providing material support to terrorists, and explosive charges.” The explosives being fireworks, by the way.
Another protestor on the scene, Maricela Rueda, is being sent up for 70 years on those same charges plus a very particular one: corruptly concealing a document or record. I’ll come back to that in a moment. Defendant Elizabeth Soto’s husband Ines Soto, who is also a defendant, was granted a continuance and will be sentenced on July 1.
According to a US Department of Justice Office of Public Affairs press release (in which you can see how the government talks about this case), “Seven others … pleaded guilty prior to trial to one count of providing material support to terrorists and they will be sentenced on July 1.”
So all that’s bad enough. But there was something worse about the verdict that’s going to make any journalist and certainly any news publisher stand up and take notice. I am both things, of course, and I am definitely doing so.
There is a ninth defendant who was also sentenced. A person who evidently was not present at the protest and had nothing to do with it. His name is Daniel Rolando Sanchez-Estrada. He is married to Maricela Rueda. She called him from jail after she was first busted and asked him to move a box containing left-wing zines.
And that’s why Rueda got an extra 20 years added to her already outrageous sentence and Sanchez-Estrada is getting sent to prison for 30 years.
According to the Guardian, “The defendants in the case are a collection of activists who were loosely affiliated with one another through a local leftwing book club and gun group. During the trial, prosecutors highlighted many of the zines that the book club read as evidence of the conspiracy and ideology that linked the demonstrators. That evidence was met with widespread criticism from legal observers who said that it amounted to criminalizing freedom of speech.”
But wait, it gets even worse. Defendants Elizabeth and Ines Soto were attacked by the feds for ‘providing material support to terrorists’ like the other defendants, according to another Guardian article. But in their cases, “this ‘material support’ included owning a ‘printing press’ used to print anarchist zines.” Elizabeth was already blindsided by one of the aforementioned 50 year sentences and it remains to be seen what sentence Ines will get hit with next week.
Yes indeed, big First and for that matter Second Amendment red flags 100 feet high reading “FRAME UP” are raised by this insult to democracy. What Rueda and Sanchez-Estrada chose to read and ideas they chose to hold and express are protected under the First Amendment. She was well within her rights to ask him to move the box and he was well within his rights to do so. More importantly, their possession of printed matter expressing anti-government sentiments was not a crime any more than their being members of a gun club or a book club was. The Sotos, for their part, were similarly blameless for owning a printing press and using it to print zines, irrespective of its political content.
As for Second Amendment issues in the trial that would have had the National Rifle Association up in arms (so to speak) if they weren’t merely a right-wing front, according to the Guardian, “Prosecutors also focused heavily on the cache of guns that many of the defendants owned and some brought to the detention center on 4 July. It is undisputed that all of the firearms were bought legally and that there was only one person who fired a weapon on 4 July.”
Thus readers had better believe this travesty of justice is a big concern to someone like me. Because if Sanchez-Estrada can get railroaded to the federal pen for 30 years, Rueda can draw a calculated and vicious 50-year sentence for completely legal activities like using Signal on auto-delete for communication with other activists then have it extended by 20 years, and at least one of the Sotos can also get a 50-year sentence for this kind of stuff, anyone can.
On the journalist tip, if mere possession of left-wing publications that are critical of the government can be used to spin completely politically-motivated conspiracy charges out of thin air, a precedent has been set and such charges can be used anywhere … and on anyone who possesses similar materials.
And what force will be able to stop the Trump administration from starting to go after more people that produce and distribute such publications like the Sotos? The lower courts? That really depends on the judges and the government will likely appeal verdicts it doesn’t like. The Supreme Court? Perhaps, but I wouldn’t hold my breath for the dominant “Constitutionalist” faction of that august body to remain faithful to their supposed strict Constitutional values when it comes to defending left publishers.
The simple answer is that there’s no way to tell at this juncture. And that means that publications with left-wing editorial lines, including BINJ.News, are under direct threat from the Prairieland verdict as much as anyone who engages in similar Constitutionally protected First Amendment activity like protesting the Trump administration in the streets.
All I can suggest to make the feds reverse course on this road to political perdition is that everyone who believes in the First Amendment needs to do the opposite of what the current administration clearly wants us to do and step up protests for the bedrock democratic rights of all Americans and all immigrants to this beautiful and messed-up nation.
My colleagues and I at BINJ.News and in the independent press coast-to-coast will keep doing our thing, too. And we’ll see how we’re all faring in a few months once the drama of the midterm elections has played out.
In the meantime, if you want to help free the Prairieland defendants, here’s the website of their support network: prairielanddefendants.com. Looks like they have about $50,000 to go on their $200,000 funding drive; so consider tossing them a donation.
Apparent Horizon—an award-winning political column—is syndicated by the MassWire news service of the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism. If you want to see more reporting like this, sign up for BINJ’s free weekly newsletter at binj.news/signup.
