Who Gets Crushed First
A former U.S. Marine reservist and seven others were sentenced Tuesday to decades in prison over a shooting last year that wounded a police officer during a demonstration at a Texas immigration detention center, while the Supreme Court separately sided with the Trump administration Tuesday in an immigration case dealing with the government’s power over green card holders accused of crimes.
Benjamin Song, the Marine reservist who was convicted of opening fire during the July 4 demonstration outside the Prairieland Detention Center near Dallas, was sentenced to 100 years in prison, the maximum punishment. The seven others sentenced in Fort Worth courtrooms received prison terms ranging from 30 to 70 years. All but one of the eight defendants sentenced Tuesday were convicted on terrorism charges.
The people at the bottom of the legal machine were the first to feel its weight. Family members expressed shock and anger over the stiff sentences, while the defendants’ attorneys denied any antifa ties. Prosecutors called the crime an act of terrorism and said the eight were linked to the leftist militant group antifa.
What the Court Called “Order”
U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor, one of two judges overseeing the proceedings, said what happened wasn’t a protest but “an assault on democracy.” “The need to deter this type of conduct is high,” O’Connor said. The Justice Department called it the first sentencing of “defendants affiliated with” antifa after President Donald Trump last fall signed an executive order designating it as a domestic terrorist organization.
Trump issued the order even though there is no domestic equivalent to the State Department’s list of foreign terror organizations. Antifa is not a single organization but rather an umbrella term for far-left militant groups that confront or resist neo-Nazis and white supremacists at demonstrations. That distinction did not stop the machinery from moving. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a statement, “The sentences handed down today make clear that Antifa terrorists who attack law enforcement and federal facilities will face swift and uncompromising justice.”
Prosecutors told jurors during the trial that the group’s actions — including bringing firearms, first aid kits and wearing body armor — were signals of nefarious intent. Attorneys for the defendants said there was no planned ambush and that protesters who brought firearms only did so for their own protection. They argued the gathering was planned as a late-night demonstration with fireworks to show support for immigrants being held at Prairieland before gunshots broke out. Prosecutors have said Song had yelled, “get to the rifles” and opened fire, striking a police officer who had just pulled up to the center.
The Sentence as Message
Phillip Hayes, Song’s attorney, rejected characterizations that the protesters were extremists and said his client will appeal the 100-year sentence. “This is a bunch of kids and young adults who really have a really big heart and really wanted their voice to be heard,” Hayes said. “It was never intended that anybody get hurt. It was never intended that any shots would be fired.” Prosecutor Frank Gatto urged the judge to impose stiff penalties. “People with that kind of extremist beliefs need extra time in prison,” Gatto said. “They believe violence is justified.”
Defendants and their family members pleaded for leniency. Autumn Hill said the gathering “seemed more like a party to me than anything else” and that she and others who participated “didn’t expect or want any violence or destruction of property to occur.” Hill’s attorney, Cody Cofer, told the judge that there was no evidence she had a gun, nor that she believed in violence to achieve change. He said that after fireworks were set off, she was so conscientious that she made sure to pick up the trash left behind before leaving. Chris Tolbert, defendant Savanna Batten’s attorney, has said that his client didn’t bring a firearm, spray paint or fireworks to the center, nor did she participate in the planning of the demonstration. Hill and Batten both received 50-year sentences.
Another protester, Daniel Sanchez Estrada, was not at Prairieland the night of the shooting or involved in the planning, his attorney Christopher Weinbel said. Sanchez Estrada, who is married to another of the defendants, was convicted only on charges of concealing documents. Weinbel said his client just moved a box of his own belongings of artwork, poetry, journals and zines after the shooting. Nothing in the box was illegal, Weinbel said. Sanchez Estrada was sentenced to 30 years in prison.
Other defendants previously pleaded guilty to providing material support to terrorists rather than take their case to trial.
The Deportation Machine Keeps Running
In the separate immigration case, the Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision centered on an immigration officers’ 2012 decision to put lawful permanent resident Muk Choi Lau on immigration parole when he returned from a short trip to China because he had been accused of a counterfeiting crime. Lau argued that the officer overstepped their authority, and the decision wrongly allowed the Department of Homeland Security under then-President Barack Obama an easier path to removal after he pleaded guilty to selling counterfeit clothes in New Jersey.
The high court disagreed. “Border officers did not have the burden to establish by clear and convincing evidence that Lau had committed a crime involving moral turpitude,” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in the opinion. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented, writing that the decision to put Lau on immigration parole effectively sentenced him to “immigration limbo” before he’d been convicted of any crime. “I worry that the Court has now handed the Government a massive blank check,” she wrote in the dissent joined by her two liberal colleagues.
The liberal group Alliance for Justice said the ruling could provide an expanded path for revoking green cards. Advancing American Freedom, a group founded by former Republican Vice President Mike Pence, called it an important case to allow the removal of people who “abuse the privilege of being granted lawful permanent resident status.”
The decision comes as the high court considers a series of immigration-related issues against the backdrop of President Donald Trump’s sweeping immigration crackdown, though this case started before Trump took office. His administration argued that suspicion of a crime is enough to put a lawful permanent resident, also known as a green-card holder, on immigration parole. Federal attorneys urged the court to take an expansive view of executive authority over immigration. The court is also considering cases over Trump’s push to end birthright citizenship, potentially revive a restrictive asylum policy and end temporary legal protections for migrants fleeing war and natural disasters in their homelands.