Sanchez is one of 18 defendants in a vast government case surrounding a July 4 protest outside the Prairieland Detention Center, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Alvarado, Texas, a small city near Fort Worth. A police officer was shot at the protest. But, like more than a third of the other defendants, Sanchez wasn’t even there. Participants and supporters say that the event was intended as a noise demonstration, and that they lit fireworks to show solidarity with the facility’s 1,000-plus detainees. The indictments have so far claimed that the protesters “provided material support” for terrorism, categorizing the fireworks as “explosives.” Five are charged with multiple counts of attempted murder.
To Xavier T. de Janon, the director of mass defense for the National Lawyers Guild, the implications of this case are alarming. If you attend a demonstration that becomes volatile due to an action taken by someone in the crowd—or, for that matter, someone in law enforcement—you could now find yourself on trial for something you had little to do with. Even if you aren’t present, as was the case with Sanchez, you run the risk of facing potentially life-ruining federal charges. If Prairieland sets the precedent, de Janon said, “the state could just accuse you of anything and say you ‘conspired’ to do [it].” The trial, in other words, could shape the future of protest under the second Trump administration—and the future of American civil liberties.
At approximately 10:37 p.m., a group of 11 people, faces covered, approached the Prairieland Detention Center from an overgrown tree line to the building’s west. One broke the camera on the guard shack at the property’s entrance and spray-painted “Fuck You Pigs” on it, then headed to the parking lot, where they tagged “ICE Pig” on a white Toyota Prius. At least five followed the razor wire fence north, fanning out and splitting into smaller teams of two to three. One group remained close to the facility entrance, keeping watch.
Group chat logs in the lead-up to the protest show some back-and-forth about whether it was necessary to bring guns. Benjamin Song, a former Marine reservist and the alleged shooter, argued in favor. They would act as a deterrent in case the confrontation turned hostile. “Cops are not trained or equipped for more than one rifle,” he allegedly wrote, “so it tends to make them back off.” The group arrived at the facility with 11 firearms but left many in their cars, backpacks, or a wagon near the entrance shortly after arriving.
Two minutes later, two officers exited the building to confront the protesters. One of the protesters appeared to signal to the others with a flashlight; at least two then fled the parking lot, away from the officers. At around 10:59, Thomas Gross, an Alvarado police lieutenant, pulled up to the scene, engine revving. The protesters scattered. “Hey, stop!” he yelled. “Get on the ground!”
One of those bullets hit Gross. When Adam Sharp, a fire marshal with the Alvarado police, arrived shortly after, the injured officer walked up to him, indicating which way the protesters escaped. Sharp then cut open Gross’s uniform to better check the wound. The bullet had entered the trapezius, above Gross’s collarbone and followed the trajectory out his upper back. “It grazed you, bud,” Sharp said, before driving him to a nearby Brookshire’s supermarket parking lot, where an emergency helicopter was set to land.
And then there are the questions of the rifles themselves and the four words that prosecutors pointed to before Gross was shot: “Get to the rifles!” If the group really was planning an ambush, would it have been necessary to “get to the rifles”? When Amber Lowrey, sister of Prairieland protester Savanna Batten, visited Batten’s home after the FBI searched it, she found Batten’s work uniform laid out on the bed, a meal prepped in the microwave, her cat traumatized by the flash grenade. Lowrey remains unconvinced her sister would leave this life she’d made behind: “Any rational person would know that the story the state has spun—that was a suicide mission.”
Soon, North Texas’s then-acting U.S. Attorney Nancy Larson, an active member of the conservative Federalist Society, learned of the case. Larson had only been on the job since May 29, and her office had been rocked by DOGE cuts and resignations: As much as one-fourth of the office had left, disillusioned by the Trump administration’s politicization of the Department of Justice.
Meanwhile, Larson made her case to the cameras. At a July 7 press conference, she labeled the protest “a planned ambush with the intent to kill ICE corrections officers.” Johnson County District Attorney Timothy Good, a Liberty University law school graduate who had recently ousted a 32-year Republican incumbent, also expounded the case to the media. On July 16, he told a local Fox affiliate “there are more people involved” than had already been arrested, adding that police would target everyone who “aided and abetted” the protest. (Larson has since been replaced by Ryan Raybould, formerly a litigation partner at the law firm of Kirkland & Ellis.)
Dario Sanchez’s arrest stemmed from a surprise July 9 visit from a fellow Socialist Rifle Association member, John Thomas, who is accused of “smuggling” Song, his former roommate, out of Alvarado. A distraught Thomas had shown up at Sanchez’s door after his apartment had been raided, his electronics confiscated: He told Sanchez he didn’t know where else to go—he only remembered his address. Sanchez, following their SRA chapter’s security protocols, removed Thomas from group chats in an attempt to prevent messages and identities from leaking.
Outside, Sanchez and Irina were handcuffed and separated. Casey Brashear, an FBI task force officer, took Sanchez aside and asked about another soon-to-be arrested alleged co-conspirator, though Sanchez said he didn’t recognize her name. This turned out to be Rebecca Morgan, who wasn’t at the protest but allegedly housed Benjamin Song for several days, until that evening, when her home was raided, Song was captured, and she was arrested at work. Brashear offered Sanchez a deal: Let the police impersonate him online, and he could avoid 50 years in prison. “That just told me they were just angling to try and scoop up other people for no good reason,” Sanchez said. After Sanchez told Brashear he wouldn’t talk without a lawyer, he spent around 30 days alone in a segregation cell. In September, he was briefly rearrested at gunpoint after Googling about whether he could convert a model car into a remote-controlled device. His home still bears the scars where the FBI busted in last July.
In early November, I walked to the edge of the sunflower field next to the Prairieland Detention Center, brown and dried by fall, where police had captured several protesters months earlier.
Then Justin’s mother, who has lived in the neighborhood for 20 years, appeared at the door. “You need to go,” she told me. In July, she gave a statement to local news, and since then, she said, she and her family have faced recurring traffic stops “every time we fucking pull out of our driveway.”
Shortly before I arrived, the police had arrested Janette Goering—accused of participating in Benjamin Song’s escape by providing him a Faraday bag. Song allegedly thanked her for the bag on July 6, but Jesse Spahn, Goering’s husband, said she’d made it at a workshop, a month or two earlier, not directly connected to the protest.
“This could go good or bad, you know, if she cooperates or not,” an officer told Spahn at the raid. Then they ordered Janette, barefoot and in pajamas, into a black SUV. Her bond is set at $5 million.
Hence then, the article about they say they re protesters the doj says they re terrorists was published today ( ) and is available on The New Republic ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( They Say They’re Protesters. The DOJ Says They’re Terrorists. )
Also on site :