Leftist activists across the U.S. and beyond are organizing fundraisers and solidarity events for 16 people convicted of federal crimes tied to a violent July 2025 attack on a Texas immigration facility.
The wave of arrests began July 4 when armed, black-clothed activists arrived at the ICE Prairieland Detention Center for a protest that turned into a violent assault. The mob vandalized property before defendant Benjamin Song, nicknamed “Champagne,” began shooting at a local police officer who tried talking to them, according to Department of Justice evidence.
Song was convicted of attempted murder. The officer was shot in the neck.
“Many of the defendants have been convicted and are facing decades-long sentences for simply doing a sit-in outside a detention center.”
That claim — posted March 26 by four Michigan-based groups — is demonstrably false. The “sit-in” involved surveilling the facility beforehand, written plans for “Peaceful Protest no more,” arriving with multiple firearms, throwing fireworks and shooting at law enforcement, court records show.
Seven federal defendants pleaded guilty to terrorism charges in the months following the July incident. Jurors convicted Song and nine others in March. Eight defendants were convicted of material support for terrorism, rioting and explosives offenses.
Groups organizing support for the convicted defendants include the DFW Support Committee, a Texas-based operation that has raised funds and organized protests outside the Fort Worth courthouse. The committee’s website contains guidance on sending letters to prisoners and organizing fundraisers through “seemingly innocuous events such as bake sales.”
The committee called the jury verdicts “stunning” and reflective of a “sham trial, built on political persecution and ideological attacks coming from the top.”
Seven other activist groups in Santa Cruz, Oakland, Hudson Valley, Oregon and elsewhere have encouraged donating to the DFW Support Committee following the trial verdicts. Their statements called the convictions “devastating,” “oppression and retaliation” and part of a “terroristic assault on immigrants and protesters.”
A “Unitarian Universalist” church in Fort Worth advertised weekly fundraising dinners for the defendants in May Facebook posts, calling the July terrorist attack “a noise demo.”
“We know that the fight doesn’t end here, as we have to garner more support as we look toward appeals and supporting 13 defendants during their state trials.”
Prosecutors described all federal defendants as members of a North Texas “Antifa cell” largely led by Song, making the case the first U.S. terrorism prosecution explicitly targeting the so-called anti-fascist movement. Trump labeled Antifa a domestic terrorist organization in a September executive order that called for greater government attention toward the threat.
The Washington-based liberal organization Defending Rights and Dissent and the National Lawyers Guild hosted defendant Dario Sanchez in an April virtual panel focused on “the dangerous precedent” the prosecutions set. Johnson County charged Sanchez with hindering the prosecution of terrorism and tampering with evidence by deleting suspects from group chats. A judge dismissed the hindering prosecution charge on May 22.
Sanchez told panelists that watching comrades face consequences has created a “chilling effect” for some North Texas activists while emboldening others.
“Certainly, there are people that I know who have decided that they’d rather just stay home right now, right?” he said.
The case even sent shockwaves to Europe. The Bergen Art Book Fair website in Norway quoted the DFW Support Committee and included an April 10 presentation backing a Prairieland defendant whom jurors convicted of hiding pro-insurrection anarchist materials.
“As fascism continues to run rampant in the US under Trump and ICE is kidnapping people off the streets without any due process, we must turn our attention to how the act of dissent is being labeled domestic terrorism and how zines fit into the equation,” the event description says.
One Oregon-based group’s plans did not pan out. The Williamette Valley Abolition Project announced a “strip club” event planned for May 31 featuring performers whose earnings would go toward the committee. The group later said the “venue backed out” in a deleted Instagram post.
