Sixteen people now face federal convictions tied to a violent July 2025 attack on an immigration detention facility in Texas. And across the country, and as far away as Norway, left-wing activist groups are organizing bake sales, poetry readings, fundraising dinners, and even a planned strip-club benefit to support the defendants they call political prisoners.
A Daily Caller News Foundation analysis found that groups in multiple U.S. states and in Europe posted calls to action or statements decrying what they call authoritarianism, all while describing the convicted attackers as persecuted heroes whose boldness should inspire others.
The case stems from a July 4, 2025, incident at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Prairieland Detention Center in Texas. Several armed, black-clothed activists arrived for what they framed as a protest. It turned violent. The mob vandalized property, threw fireworks, and defendant Benjamin Song, nicknamed "Champagne", opened fire on a local police officer who had tried to talk to the group, according to Department of Justice evidence. The officer was shot in the neck.
Jurors convicted Song and nine others in March. Eight defendants were found guilty of material support for terrorism, rioting, and explosives offenses. Song was convicted of attempted murder. A ninth person was convicted of concealing evidence. Seven additional defendants had already pleaded guilty to terrorism charges for planning the riot or helping Song flee justice.
Song demanded a new trial in an April motion, claiming he fired at the ground and casting doubt on whether he intended to kill the officer. A judge denied the request.
Federal prosecutors described all defendants as members of a North Texas "Antifa cell" largely led by Song. The case marked the first U.S. terrorism prosecution explicitly targeting the so-called anti-fascist movement. President Trump labeled Antifa a domestic terrorist organization in a September executive order calling for greater government attention to the threat.
Court records paint a picture that bears no resemblance to the sanitized version now circulating on activist social media. The group surveilled the facility beforehand. Written plans referenced "Peaceful Protest no more." They arrived with multiple firearms. They threw fireworks at law enforcement. Then Song started shooting.
None of that has stopped a growing network of sympathizers from repackaging the attack as righteous dissent.
A March 26 Instagram post by four Michigan-based groups falsely claimed that "many of the defendants have been convicted and are facing decades-long sentences for simply doing a sit-in outside a detention center." The post announced an April 4 event aimed at University of Michigan students and included a link to the DFW Support Committee, a Texas-based group that has raised funds for defendants and organized protests outside their Fort Worth courthouse.
The DFW Support Committee's website offers instructions for organizing fundraisers through seemingly innocuous events, bake sales, letter-writing campaigns, and community projects. After the federal verdicts, the committee called the jury's decision "stunning" and reflective of a "sham trial, built on political persecution and ideological attacks coming from the top."
Seven other activist groups, spanning Santa Cruz and Oakland, California; Hudson Valley, New York; Oregon; and elsewhere, encouraged donations to the committee following the verdicts. Their public 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. The church's description of the July attack that left a police officer with a gunshot wound to the neck: "a noise demo."
The solidarity campaign has crossed the Atlantic. The Bergen Art Book Fair in Norway, organized by the artist group Pamflett, quoted the DFW Support Committee's website and linked to it. The fair's schedule included an April 10 presentation backing a Prairieland defendant whom jurors convicted of hiding pro-insurrection anarchist materials known as "zines."
The event description framed the case in sweeping ideological terms:
"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 Bergen group also called the government's accusations "absurd" and the police response "extreme," claiming the prosecution was "part of an effort to criminalize dissent."
Trump had previously imposed terrorism sanctions on Antifa-aligned groups in Europe, making the transatlantic support network more than symbolic.
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 what they called "the dangerous precedent" the prosecutions set. Johnson County, Texas, charged Sanchez with hindering the prosecution of terrorism and tampering with or fabricating evidence, specifically, deleting suspects from group chats. He denies wrongdoing. A judge dismissed the hindering prosecution charge on May 22, though the evidence-tampering charge appears to remain.
Sanchez told panelists that the case has created a split among North Texas activists, some retreating, others stepping forward. He described a "chilling effect" on people he knows:
"Certainly, there are people that I know who have decided that they'd rather just stay home right now, right? Even when it comes to simple things like passing out harm reduction supplies in our queer neighborhoods here in North Texas... they were still worried that they might be targeted."
But Sanchez also said the organizing around the case has emboldened others, calling it a "back-and-forth" in which "there are still people who are deciding that now is the time for them to speak up about these sorts of things."
That framing, prosecution as inspiration, captures the dynamic perfectly. The convictions were supposed to deter political violence. For some on the far left, they appear to function as recruitment material.
One Oregon-based group, the Willamette Valley Abolition Project, announced a May 31 "strip club" fundraiser featuring performers whose earnings would go to the DFW Support Committee. The group later said in a since-deleted Instagram post that "the venue backed out."
The DFW Support Committee's website makes clear the legal fight is far from over. It noted that 13 defendants still face state trials in Texas, including nine who were already tried in federal court. The committee's guidance encourages supporters to send letters to prisoners, organize local events, and keep raising money for appeals.
The gap between what these groups claim happened and what the evidence shows is not a matter of interpretation. It is a matter of court records.
The Michigan groups called it "a sit-in." The Fort Worth church called it "a noise demo." The Norwegian art collective called the prosecution an effort to "criminalize dissent."
The DOJ evidence showed armed attackers who surveilled a federal facility, arrived with firearms, planned to escalate beyond peaceful protest, threw explosives at law enforcement, and shot a police officer in the neck. A jury of their peers reviewed the evidence and convicted them of terrorism, rioting, explosives offenses, and attempted murder.
Words like "sit-in" and "noise demo" do not describe what happened at Prairieland. They describe what these groups wish had happened, or what they need their supporters to believe happened, in order to keep the donations flowing and the solidarity events on the calendar.
The Prairieland case is the first federal terrorism prosecution to target Antifa-linked actors directly. That distinction matters. For years, defenders of the movement argued that Antifa was not an organization, had no structure, and posed no coordinated threat. The North Texas cell, with its surveillance, its written plans, its firearms, and its leader, put that claim to rest in a federal courtroom.
Now the same ideological ecosystem that insisted Antifa was just "an idea" is mobilizing across state lines and international borders to fund the legal defense of people convicted of terrorism. They are doing it with bake sales and poetry readings and church dinners and art fairs, wrapping political violence in the language of community and compassion.
A police officer took a bullet to the neck. Sixteen people were convicted. And the far left's response is to pass the donation jar.
When your movement holds fundraisers for people convicted of shooting at cops, the problem is not the prosecution. The problem is the movement.
