#antiice — Public Fediverse posts

Why We Have to Fight Back Against ICE Protesters’ Terror Convictions

Since his first inauguration, Trump has been throwing charges at protesters and seeing what sticks. He always failed — until now.

Natasha Lennard, March 17 2026

Excerpt: "It started on President Donald Trump’s very first day in office in 2017. Over 200 #InaugurationDay #protesters were mass arrested and charged with hefty riot and conspiracy felonies for simply being present and wearing black at a rowdy demonstration.

"Since then, the government has sought and failed to convict left-wing activists on thin, unconstitutional claims of collective guilt.

"Just as the J20 prosecutions, as the inauguration cases were known, fell apart, so too did cases accusing dozens of participants in the Atlanta-based #StopCopCity movement of #DomesticTerrorism, #racketeering, and conspiracy.

"It became a pattern of sorts. Prosecutors on both the federal and state level throwing extreme and overreaching charges at leftists, based on infirm theories of collective liability, aiming to paint #antifascist, #AntiRacist movements as criminal terrorist networks. The evidence marshaled in these cases was consistently no more than typical #FirstAmendment-protected activity, like making protest signs, raising bail funds, or being present at a demonstration. The cases drained movement energies and resources.
Again and again, though, they failed.

"This was the pattern repeated in the malign, overreaching cases against protesters in #FortWorthTX. The #AntiICE activists had mounted a demonstration at a U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement jail in nearby #Alvarado.
There were consistencies with other anti-protest cases. There had been some illegal activity outside the #PrairielandDetentionFacility last July, and a police officer was shot. The government latched onto these circumstances to build its strategy of criminalizing dissent through guilt by association.

"Even in conservative Texas, I didn’t think a jury would buy the government’s case that these defendants were 'North Texas Antifa Cell operatives' — an organization fabricated whole cloth by the Trump administration — who had orchestrated an elaborate ambush of the ICE facility.

" 'Most people looking at this case are still stuck on the shooting aspect, but the jury decided the shooting was beside the point,' a member of a support group for the defendants told me. 'The verdict is that a normal #NoiseDemo deserves to be called terrorism and people should spend potentially the rest of their lives in prison. The implications of this are obvious, and people should know that the DOJ is going to try this again.' "

Read more:
https://theintercept.com/2026/03/17/ice-protester-terrorism-convictions-trump-prairieland/

Archived version:
https://archive.ph/uvx92

#USPol #DomesticTerrorism #AntiICEProtests #Texas #ResistICE #SilencingDissent #AntiTerrorismLaws
#CriminalizingProtest #Resistance

I guess all #Goths are #Terrorists?

Wearing #AllBlack at #Protests Makes You Guilty of #Terrorism, Prosecutors Tell Jury

The Prairieland case is a major test of the Trump administration’s push to label “#antifa” protesters as #terrorists.

“They’re here asking you guys to put protesters in prison as terrorists.”

by Matt Sledge
March 12 2026,

"Federal agents raiding the home of two alleged #antifa 'operatives' seized a telling piece of evidence, a defense attorney said during closing arguments in a landmark trial Wednesday.

"A printing press.

"That printing press was never presented to jurors. Still, the government has kept it locked away because it hated the #pamphlets and #zines it published, lawyer Blake Burns said.

"Burns represents Elizabeth Soto, one of nine defendants whose fates were in the hands of jurors as deliberations began Thursday. All are accused of roles during or after a late-night noise demonstration outside #PrairielandDetentionCenter, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility near Dallas that ended with a local police officer wounded by gunfire.

"The case has become a bellwether for the Trump administration’s crackdown on dissent from the left. The government charged people involved with the #AntiICE protest with a slew of charges, including attempted murder and terrorism counts that defense attorneys said are being used to #CriminalizeProtest.

" 'They’re here asking you guys to put protesters in prison as terrorists,' Burns, the defense lawyer, told jurors. 'That’s not happened before. And you are literally the only people in the world who can stop it.'

"During 10 days of testimony in a packed Fort Worth, Texas, courtroom, prosecutors bombarded jurors with images of radical zines printed on the press, anti-government internet memes, drawings of burning cop cars, and a video of an unidentified street brawl between far-left and far-right protesters.

"Prosecutors acknowledged those materials were protected by the #FirstAmendment but said they showed the roughly dozen people who assembled outside the ICE facility were steeped in antifa tactics.

"Eight of nine defendants on trial this month face material support for terrorism charges for wearing '#BlackBloc' clothes at the protest. Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel have hailed the first-ever use of terrorism charges against alleged antifa members."

Read more:
https://theintercept.com/2026/03/12/antifa-ice-protest-texas-trial-terrorism/

Archived version:
https://archive.ph/UFFO9

#USPol #CriminalizingDissent #CriminalizingProtest #Fascism #Authoritarianism #CharacteristicsOfFascism

Anti-ICE #Protesters Convicted on #Terrorism Charges for Wearing All Black

By Matt Sledge, March 13, 2026

Excerpt: "The defendants said the protest was a peaceful demonstration meant to show solidarity, pointing to the megaphone that one member of the group brought to shout slogans to detainees. Prosecutors pointed to the guns, ballistic vests, and trauma first-aid kits they brought as evidence of malicious intent."

Read more:
https://theintercept.com/2026/03/13/ice-protesters-terrorism-prairieland-antifa/

#Antifa #RadicalZines #AntiICE #PrairielandDetentionFacility #Texas #USPol #CriminalizingDissent #BlackClothes #BlackBloc #CharacteristicsOfFascism #BenjaminSong #AutumnHill #ZacharyEvetts #SavannaBatten #MeganMorris #MaricelaRueda #ElizabethSoto #InesSoto