One year after Sanchez Estrada’s arrest, his sister, Ana Bell, posted a video statement about her brother and the trauma the government has put her family through in its prosecution of the Prairieland case. In the video, released earlier this month, Bell is surrounded by shelves of fantasy and science fiction books, including some familiar titles that frequently show up on banned book lists: The Handmaid’s Tale, 1984. With her children, Bell co-owns and runs a bookstore in Rockwall County, Texas. “I feel it is a war on free speech, rather than just my brother,” she told me when we spoke last week. In the government’s efforts to paint a temporarily connected group of people who opposed immigration detention as a “North Texas Antifa Cell,” it may not have said flat out that sharing a book is now a crime. It didn’t have to.
Until now, Ana told me, her family “kept quiet.” They didn’t want anything they said used against Sanchez Estrada. “But it is bigger than him,” she said. “I love my brother dearly and I want him to come home.… Out of all the defendants, I believe everybody should go home.”
Melissa Gira Grant: What was it like in court? You were there for the sentencing, just a couple weeks ago?
Melissa: During your brother’s sentencing, the judge said, essentially, “We’re doing this to send a message to anybody else who shares this ‘ideology.’” What did it feel like in the moment for that to be said so directly?
I own a bookstore. We are a fiction store only. But my shelves are full of female and male characters that lead armies to battle, fighting oppression, fighting injustice, fighting their own types of fascism in their worlds. You have Katniss in The Hunger Games, you have even Harry Potter in his own world. You have all of these characters that are standing up against injustice and they’re in fiction books. If you were to say that reading these types of books makes you antifa; that’s your ideology because you love reading these? Then all of us in the bookish community will be in jail.
If you were going to tell me that the contents of the box, the zines, the stickers, the poetry, that’s the crime—then we have a bigger problem here, which is free speech.
How is talking about corporations destroying our environment a big issue that someone will have to be in jail? How is a book of poetry expressing your own feelings on a political climate? It’s a crime that you should be in jail for 30 years. Look at all of those things, and then look inside of your home, at what things that you have in your own home that fit the same sentiment.
I feel it is a war on free speech rather than just my brother, but I feel that he’s right now the flag or the one thing that is representing the battle.
Ana: When it happened, I was in Mexico. My parents, they live about three miles away from my house. [Law enforcement] raided their home. I called my kids, I called some friends, and I was telling them, this is what happened to my parents. I told my kids, “If somebody comes into the house, you let them take whatever they want to take, you step aside, you don’t talk to them, you don’t engage.” And I had friends ready so that as soon as something would happen in my house, my kids will send them a message, they will come and keep the kids safe. My youngest was 15 last year, and my oldest is 20.
I’m not saying the officers that came to the house came in with the purpose of getting my mom to faint, came in with the purpose of taking my dad’s income, came in with the purpose of taking my sister’s phone. That’s not at all what I’m saying. What I’m saying is their actions are following orders that had no legal basis whatsoever. They’re rummaging through my parents’ house, and we still didn’t know what my brother’s charges are or where he’s at.
It just makes no sense. It was terrifying because I was away from the country. I’ve been divorced for almost 14 years, so it’s just me and my kids, and having to be away to earn an income and then hear that all of this is happening.
Melissa: What happens next?
So we just have to hope that whoever comes in power understands that carrying a box of your own magazines is not a violation of any kind of law, you’re actually protected under the First Amendment for freedom of speech. So it should be a no-brainer to be like, “We really messed up over here.” He’s totally entitled to read about raccoons and the environment. And he’s totally entitled to not feel that police brutality is OK. You know what I mean?
Ana: Yes. And that was it. They kept saying they shared this ideology, they shared this type of mentality, this is what terrorism looks like.
They’re not telling us in any of the documents that they put in the court record, “We’re coming after your freedom of speech.” They’re saying he was holding a box of zines that are considered antifa. Well, what do you consider antifa? Well, [the zines] are talking about the government. They’re talking about police brutality. They’re talking about consent. They’re talking about the environment.
Ana: To me, bringing that point of Lorenzo’s passing, which is super unfortunate, then you start reading articles from the right-wing media and they’re talking about, “He was illegal, he was a criminal,” all these things. Dehumanizing him. I didn’t know him. I don’t know who he is. But I’ve seen what happened to Renee Good before. I’ve seen what happened to Alex Pretti before. So for me, it is so important that people understand. Yes, you will see the videos. But when you are watching these videos, you need to look—actually pay attention to what is happening on the screen, not the narrative that is being painted for you.
I live with what I tell people is kind of like my own survivor’s guilt. And it is the fact that I get to be free while he doesn’t. Like just lying on my bed for five extra minutes, I feel guilty of it because he doesn’t get that. And it’s not anything that I did, it’s not anything that he did, but it is there. That feeling is there when we eat some food and we’re thinking, like, “Man, he’s barely getting the knockoff brand of noodles in his cell, and here we are at an Asian restaurant eating the great noodles,” that type of thing. All of that, it comes back, and it’s a constant reminder that he’s not with us and through no fault of his own.
Ana: This past week we had a phone conversation. One of our friends, in an email, told him I had posted the statement video, and he was so grateful. He just wanted to let me know that he appreciated that I had done that.
You’re literally depriving him from the things he loves the most, and for no reason.
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