In the last two weeks, a federal court in Texas sentenced nine anti-ICE protesters to incredibly draconian sentences, ranging from 30 to 100 years. This was based on the lie that they were part of an “antifa” terrorist conspiracy to ambush ICE agents. 

The charges stem from a protest at the ICE-run Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas on July 4 last year. Protesters painted graffiti on the facility and set off fireworks as part of a “noise demonstration” in solidarity with immigrants being held by ICE. Some had brought rifles—which is legal in Texas—and a gun was discharged, in disputed circumstances, injuring a police officer. The prosecution used the protesters’ black clothing and participation in Signal chats to try to make them look as sinister as possible. There is, however, absolutely no evidence that there was any plan or “conspiracy” to attack ICE agents. 

These nine protesters were found guilty of riot, “providing material support to terrorists,” and “carrying explosives during a riot,” while most of those charged with attempted murder were found not guilty. The exception was Benjamin Song, a former Marine reservist, alleged to have fired the shot that grazed the officer. For this, along with other charges, he received 100 years. Seven others received 50-70 years. Daniel Sanchez-Estrada was sentenced to 30 years for “concealing documents.” He was not even at the scene of the protest and was literally convicted for moving a box of anarchist zines at the request of his partner, Maricela Rueda, who has been sentenced to 70 years. 

An additional six protesters have now been handed sentences from 22 months to 15 years for “providing material support to terrorists,” with one more sentence coming next week. In all, 22 were charged.

A number of people have pointed out that these sentences are more severe than any handed out for the assault on the Capitol, led by fascists, on January 6, 2021. When he took office again last year, Trump immediately pardoned all those charged and convicted in relation to the events of that day—nearly 1,600 people—including people convicted of violent attacks on Capitol Police.

Repression Ramps Up

Over the past year, the Justice Department has pursued cases against a number of anti-ICE protesters on trumped up charges. Along with the recent federal indictments against 15 anti-ICE protesters in Minnesota and indictments against University of Michigan students protesting in solidarity with Palestine, the aim of the Prairieland sentences is to create a chilling effect against protest and the exercise of free speech by those on the left.

The ongoing mass resistance to ICE reached a high point in the January 23 general strike in Minneapolis. ICE’s invasion of a series of cities aimed to terrorize the immigrant population first and foremost, but also all opponents of Trump’s personal army, including the many thousands of people involved in community-based rapid response networks.

Clearly the far right wants retribution for their defeat in Minnesota, but they also want to lay the basis for new attacks. They want to win in the courts what they failed to win in the streets.

They seek, therefore, to define political opposition and non-violent resistance to ICE’s attacks as terrorism. Meanwhile the ICE agents who murdered Renee Good and Alex Pretti in cold blood—surely acts of state terrorism—have still not been charged with any crime.

The NSPM-7 Playbook

The Prairieland prosecutions and convictions follow the playbook set by Trump’s infamous National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7). This defines a series of political positions as motivations for terrorist activity. These include “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the United States Government; extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.” On this basis, Trump’s far-right regime has defined most ordinary people as holding one or another view that is inherently linked to criminality.

Some cases against anti-ICE protesters have fallen apart (like the prosecution of the Broadview 6 in Illinois) for lack of evidence and sheer incompetence by Trump’s prosecutors. But this should not make activists complacent. The outcome in Texas, as well the new cases in Minneapolis and Michigan, show that the administration will keep pushing to get the results they want.

How Can We Defeat State Repression?

As Marxists, we do not share the apparently anarchist-inspired politics of the Prairieland defendants. We believe in mass working-class action as the key to defeating ICE’s rampage. We do not believe that small groups of dedicated activists can take on and defeat this lawless regime on their own. Some of the actions of the defendants were misguided, but this does not make them dangerous terrorists. 

Defending those convicted for the Prairieland protest is not about defending every aspect of their politics. But we understand that this is an attack aimed at the entire left, at the tens of thousands in rapid response networks, and at all those who have stepped up to resist Trump’s regime.

The Department of Justice has focused on “antifa,” which is not actually an organization, as being at the heart of a violent conspiracy against the state. This is a classic ploy by the American ruling class directed at labor militants, socialists, communists, and Black revolutionaries in the past. Workers exercising their basic right to withdraw their labor and go on strike have been criminalized at various points throughout this country’s history. It is still illegal for public sector workers to strike in many states.

When the ruling class sees mass movements threatening their political control in society, all the talk of “constitutional rights” becomes secondary. The only reason working people have democratic rights that the bosses and their state feel they must respect is because they were won through social struggle. The ruling class, and certainly this far-right regime, is trying to overturn historic gains made by workers and the oppressed, and they will keep testing the limits. The best response is not just a good legal strategy, but to organize mass mobilization in the streets, putting the demand for dropping all the charges and reversing the sentences front and center.

The Lessons Of History

Thomas Mooney and Warren Billings, radical labor activists and members of the Industrial Workers of the World, were falsely convicted in 1918 of a bombing in San Francisco. Mooney was sentenced to death. After many years of imprisonment and struggle, they were pardoned. Two immigrant Italian anarchists, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, were falsely convicted in 1921 and executed for the killing of two people in an armed robbery. The fight to save Sacco and Vanzetti was a major international effort led by the communist movement. Half a century later, in 1972, as part of their attempt to “neutralize” Black Panther activist Geronimo Ji-Jaga Pratt, the state falsely convicted him of a murder which was then vacated many years later. This was one of a number of frame-up trials targeting Black revolutionaries in the 1960s and ‘70s. Famously the Chicago 8 anti-war activists were charged with criminal conspiracy for their role in the 1968 protests outside the Democratic National Convention.

The Prairieland convictions are just the latest example of such miscarriages of justice. In each case in the past, the response of the left was to take to the streets, use the cases to expose the real nature of class society and bourgeois democracy, and raise the political stakes of the battle as much as possible for the ruling class.

Donald Trump’s authoritarian regime is the poster child for the ruling class’s sharp reactionary turn internationally. Some of his actions can lead to division in the establishment, with sections of the Democratic Party opposing ICE’s rampage or the attacks on civil liberties. But no section of the bourgeois establishment will advocate the necessary class struggle approach to defeat Trump’s regime. 

And we should be clear that the new wave of repression is not just coming from Trump and the far right, and it’s not solely happening in the US. The repression on college campuses against Palestine solidarity activists began under Biden. In Britain, an organization called Palestine Action has been “proscribed” meaning that even putting “Palestine Action” on a poster can get you arrested. 

This series of crackdowns must be met with the broadest possible mass public defense campaign in the streets to free these prisoners—led by unions, immigrant rights organizations, and the organized left. Obviously the movement against ICE’s assault on working-class communities requires a serious, democratically-agreed approach to its strategy and tactics, but this should not mean that people should back down. What is needed is to continue taking on the ICE rampage and the entire reactionary agenda of the Trump regime with mass struggle, up to and including political strikes. This fight is far from over, and the convictions of the Prairieland 15 must be a call to action.