On July 4 last year, a few hours after sundown, about a dozen left-wing activists gathered outside the Prairieland Immigration and Customs Enforcement Detention Facility in North Texas. 

Some protesters set off fireworks while others spray-painted cars and a guard booth. As federal officers stepped outside to confront them, local police arrived, and shortly after, shots were fired. Investigators say an Alvarado police officer was hit in the neck by a bullet and released from the hospital the following morning. 

Most of the activists were arrested. Nine of them face serious federal charges, ranging from attempted murder to providing material support to terrorists, in a trial that begins Tuesday.

Prosecutors characterize the events that night as an “antifa attack” on the federal government. The defense calls it a protest gone wrong. But the implications of this trial extend beyond the fate of one group of activists: For the first time, federal prosecutors are seeking to convict protesters — most of them American citizens — on charges related to domestic terrorism. The outcome will test whether President Donald Trump’s years-long campaign to brand leftist activists as terrorists can succeed in the courts.

“This is the first indictment in the country against a group of violent Antifa cell members,” Acting U.S. Attorney Nancy Larson said in a November press release.

Since charges were filed, senior members of the Trump administration have held up the Prairieland case as a proof point in their wider campaign against anti-government organizing, arguing that local activism and demonstrations are coordinated attacks by domestic terrorists. Trump’s DOJ portrays antifa — a contraction of anti-facist long understood as a loose left-wing ideology, not an organization — as a structured “militant enterprise” comparable to foreign terrorist organizations, one that calls for the overthrow of the U.S. government and poses a national security threat.

But legal experts tell MS NOW that the Prairieland case — in which defendants face decades in prison on state and federal charges — is more complicated than the government’s framing suggests, and that the prosecution appears to be motivated by politics. They warn that the DOJ’s targeting of progressive activists risks criminalizing protest activity, and reflects an expansion of executive power under the Trump administration that casts protesters and perceived political opponents as enemies of the state.

“This indictment stretches far beyond a specific, violent criminal action that might have taken place,” said Rachel Levinson-Waldman, director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice. “It characterizes these people who put together a protest as being in an antifa cell and tars all of them with this label of domestic terrorists.”

Levinson-Waldman said the overreach threatens the civil liberties of all Americans. 

“This is not just about antifa,” she said. “Anything that somehow feels at odds with this administration’s policies could be considered domestic terrorism and will be pursued with the full force of the federal government.”

Trump’s first term coincided with the rise of the far-right, and energized a counter-movement on the left. The president has always been quick to frame leftist resistance as terrorism.

His first few years in office were marked by sometimes violent street clashes between alt-right organizers and the far-left groups opposing them. After the white nationalist Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville — where one counterprotester was killed by a neo-Nazi and dozens more were injured — Trump publicly elevated the anti-fascist movement, placing it on equal footing with white nationalism.

“You had some very bad people in each group too,” Trump told Mark Levin in 2019. “Don’t forget that was the beginning of antifa. That’s when you first started hearing the word antifa. I’m not sure I heard the name antifa before Charlottesville.”

Trump called antifa “sick, bad people” — and he wanted to find a way to prosecute them. 

“We’re looking at a lot of different things relative to antifa,” he told a gaggle of reporters in 2019. “Antifa, in my opinion, is a terrorist organization.” 

In 2020, Trump announced plans to designate antifa as a domestic terror organization. Experts wondered not only whether he would follow through, but what the point would be, since the U.S. had no federal domestic terrorism charge to prosecute.

But the rhetoric in Trump’s first term became policy in his second. Weeks after his second inauguration, Vanity Fair reported that the Federal Bureau of Investigation and DOJ would shift their domestic terrorism investigations away from far-right extremist groups — which were responsible for a surge of violence in America over the last decade and inspired multiple deadly mass shootings — and toward leftist groups.

Federal investigators hadn’t previously focused on antifa for good reason, according to Tom Brzozowski, the DOJ’s former counsel for domestic terrorism.

“Antifa has always been construed as more of a politics or an activity of radical opposition to the far-right as opposed to an actual organization,” Brzozowski told MS NOW. 

“It strains credulity” to include antifa on a list of domestic terrorist organizations, he said. Brzozowski took an early retirement last year after the department shifted its focus. 

“The manner in which they were going to undertake issues related to domestic terrorism departed significantly from what I thought was appropriate,” he said. 

Trump’s campaign against antifa ramped up after the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk in September — alongside other high-profile shootings that administration officials rushed to blame on the far-left before the facts were clear.

Days after Kirk’s death, White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller vowed to target a “vast domestic terror movement” using the full force of the federal government. 

A week later, Trump signed an executive order designating antifa a domestic terrorist organization, followed days later by National Security Presidential Memorandum-7, in which Trump directed agencies and local law enforcement partners to prioritize investigations into this new kind of domestic terrorism; the order came with new descriptors and motivating ideologies for terrorists, including “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity,” “extremism on migration, race, and gender” and hostility toward “traditional American views.” 

And by the next month, the DOJ announced its first big win in Trump’s fight against anti-fascism: a superseding indictment against the Prairieland defendants in Texas, which added new charges on top of the attempted murder counts, including rioting and providing material support to terrorists.

There is no standalone federal crime called “domestic terrorism.” In the Prairieland case, prosecutors are using a law that makes it a felony to provide “material support” for certain violent federal crimes. The statute is rarely prosecuted and has typically been used in cases involving foreign terrorist groups.

Brzozowski said the new indictment provides the administration with a useful public-facing document that, for the first time, positions antifa next to a terrorism-related charge.

“That obviously turns into a convenient talking point for everybody in the administration,” Brzozowski said, qualifying his opinion with, “I’m not privy to the facts on the ground.”  

It did become a talking point.

“Expect similar cases to come as we dismantle antifa,” U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said on Fox News.

In December, Bondi issued a memo instructing federal prosecutors and law enforcement agencies to “zealously” investigate and prosecute these newly defined domestic terrorism cases and to encourage the public to turn in leaders of domestic terrorism organizations. The memo cites the Prairieland case.

As federal officials make policy changes and build new cases around domestic terrorism, they’ve also been invoking “terrorism” against demonstrators.

Courts have found that federal officers used excessive force against people protesting ICE in their cities — in recent months, those officers have beaten, blinded, gassed, arrested, shot, and in two high-profile cases, killed civilians. Senior Trump administration officials repeatedly labeled these civilians as “terrorists,” well before investigations were complete — including Minneapolitans Renee Good and Alex Pretti, hours after they were shot dead. Numerous cases brought by federal prosecutors against activists and bystanders have failed or been withdrawn due to scant or contradictory evidence.

In Maine, a civilian recorded an ICE agent claiming that the agency “has a nice little database, and now you’re considered a domestic terrorist.” ICE acting Director Todd Lyons denied that the agency had such a list, telling the House Homeland Security Committee this month, “I can assure you that there is no database that’s tracking United States citizens.” 

Terrorism-related investigations and prosecutions in the U.S. have disproportionately targeted Muslim and Arab communities post-9/11. But expanding the terrorist label to white protestors and ICE observers poses a challenge for the Trump administration.

“Conceptually, there’s a lot of hard work that needs to be done to call someone like that a terrorist,” said Wadie Said, a professor of law at the University of Colorado School of Law who studies national security and terrorism prosecutions.

Said explained that in news reports and indictments, a terrorism label functions less like a legal necessity and more as a rhetorical weapon — “a force multiplier” meant to single people out as “extra special bad” beyond their underlying alleged crimes.

“It’s not used in any type of neutral or objective way,” he said. “It’s just used as a cudgel or a slur to defame one’s enemies.”

Federal prosecutors are trying to paint the events of July 4 as a terror plot.

In all, 19 people were arrested on various charges related to the shooting and demonstration at the Prairieland facility. Several of those charged have already pleaded guilty to providing material support to terrorists.

In their recorded guilty pleas, several defendants admitted to different logistical acts that prosecutors qualify as “material support” — including coordinating over encrypted Signal chats, dressing in all black to conceal their identities, sharing photos of the detention center’s surveillance cameras before the protest, bringing radios and first-aid kits, and helping the alleged shooter hide from the law. One defendant admitted to providing the alleged shooter with a wig and clothes. Their sentences haven’t been decided yet; prosecutors said in pre-trial hearings that some are cooperating with the government. 

In a November hearing, a prosecutor described the July 4 protest as a “long-running conspiracy” driven by a shared antifa ideology. The government argues that former Marine reservist Benjamin Song was the leader of the antifa cell, and the gunman who fired at officers that night, hitting one in the neck. 

“Six inches either way, up or down, he’s probably dead,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Shawn Smith said of the officer’s injuries. 

Prosecutors allege the other defendants “​​acted in concert” to help Song, who was on the run for about a week before he was captured. They argue that Song radicalized the other defendants, who printed anti-fascist zines at their homes and shared them among demonstrators. The equipment they brought to the protest suggests they were anticipating an armed confrontation, the government claims.

“Why on earth would you bring a first aid kit unless you intend — or plan to provide the resources to use it?” Smith asked the court in a pre-trial hearing.

Authorities also found firearms and tactical gear while searching the defendants’ homes and cars, Smith alleged. 

“They acted in concert,” he told the court.

Song and eight other defendants on trial have pleaded not guilty to various charges.

Defense attorneys are offering a different narrative. They argue that encrypted messaging, black clothing, zines and firearms are not crimes; that there is no organized antifa cell; and that there was no coordinated plan to attack Prairieland. Instead, they say, people — some who knew each other, some who didn’t — went to participate in a “noise demonstration” with bullhorns and fireworks, meant to loudly show solidarity with ICE detainees. It was a regular protest that spiraled into something else, the defense argues.

“There is no North Texas antifa cell,” said Meagan Knuth, president of the Dallas–Fort Worth chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, a progressive legal organization founded in 1937 that supports protest movements and liberal causes. (In October, a Texas Republican called on the DOJ to investigate the guild’s ties to antifa.)

Knuth, who is not representing any of the defendants, said the prosecution’s evidence of terroristic collusion — including that some defendants were members of a book club and a socialist gun club — falls short.

“At the end of the day, we’re talking about freedom of speech,” Knuth said.

For the families of the defendants, the case is personal.

On July 3, Autumn Hill allegedly hosted a “gear check” with other defendants at her home, and was part of the group setting off fireworks — evidence of a planned attack, the government claims. She’s facing charges of rioting, providing material support to terrorists, use of explosives, attempted murder, and discharge of a deadly weapon.

Hill is trans. Her wife, Lydia Koza, said that explains in part why Hill went to Prairieland the next day. She felt an affinity for people living under the threat of state power — in this case, immigrants in ICE detention. But Koza said Hill’s primary motivation was showing solidarity.

“Autumn Hill is the sweetest, kindest person I know,” Koza told MS NOW. “She’s so thoughtful. She loves books. She loves history.”

They’ve been married less than a year.

“We were going to have a long, long, happy, healthy life together,” Koza said.

When Hill returned home after the protest, Koza said “it was very, very obvious that she was surprised by whatever happened that night.” 

Hill was arrested the next day.

Another defendant, Savanna Batten, was charged with rioting, providing material support to terrorists, use of an explosive, and conspiracy. Prosecutors entered into evidence political zines found on her phone and noted that she was wearing a medical-aid kit at the protest.

“She’s antifa,” Smith said during the hearing in November. 

Her sister, Amber Lowrey, told MS NOW that the government’s description doesn’t match the person she knows.

“She’s a helper. She’s a baker. She’s a cook. She’s the best employee someone’s ever had. She’s so many things. She’s just sunshine,” said Lowrey, a mother of three and the oldest of five siblings. Batten is her youngest sister.

“So she’s kind of my baby too,” Lowrey said.

Lowrey said Batten, 32, has been protesting since she was 14 over a variety of causes — she joined the Occupy movement in Dallas and protested animal abuse at traveling circuses. Her presence at the Prairieland protest wasn’t unusual, Lowrey said.

When it became clear Batten wouldn’t be released, Lowrey went to lock up her apartment. Inside, she found a cherry cobbler Batten had baked to share with friends after the protest. It was sitting in the microwave, covered in mold.

The idea that her sister is a terrorist, Lowrey said through tears, is unimaginable.

The family and friends of the Prairieland defendants have organized. A group calling itself the DFW Support Committee has been raising money for legal defense and plans to host events outside the courthouse in the weeks ahead: poetry readings, LGBTQ pride events, and anti-ICE demonstrations will be timed to the trial. 

“We want the people in the courtroom to know that these defendants are human beings with communities who have support,” a spokesperson said. “And that they can’t be thrown away.” 

Jury selection begins this week. The trial is expected to last up to five weeks.

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