Last July, a group of armed Antifa militants ambushed an ICE detention facility in Texas, bringing rifles, body armor, and military-style medical kits. During the attack, one officer was shot through the neck. On Tuesday, several Antifa militants who participated in the attack were sentenced — including one individual who was convicted of attempted murder.
But you might not necessarily glean that if you read the Washington Post’s headline of the story.
“Federal judges in Texas on Tuesday gave eight members of an alleged ‘antifa cell’ prison sentences as long as 100 years for their roles last summer in a protest that turned violent outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility,” Molly Hennessy-Fiske wrote. (The SEO headline for the piece states: “Alleged antifa members in Texas are sentenced for ICE protest”).
This wasn’t a “protest that turned violent.”
According to the Department of Justice, the defendants didn’t merely show up with signs and get caught up in a crowd that lost control. The defendants got a lay of the land beforehand, discussed bringing firearms, arrived wearing dark clothing and face coverings, carried body armor, and brought firearms to the scene.
They also brought what the DOJ described as “military-grade first aid kits with tourniquets and other items for gunshot wounds” (as if anticipating needing such medical care as if authorities would randomly fire into a peaceful crowd of protesters).
The plan, as prosecutors laid out, was to use fireworks to lure agents in the ICE facility outside. After disabling CCTV footage, the militants set off fireworks. One agent inside the facility called 911 and Alvaredo Police Lt. Thomas Gross responded to the scene. While issuing commands, Antifa militant Benjamin Song yelled “get to the rifles” before opening fire, body cam footage showed.
Gross was struck in the neck but survived.
Song was convicted of attempted murder and was sentenced to 100 years in prison.
The other defendants were convicted of providing material support to terrorists, rioting and conspiring to use and carry explosives, according to Fox News, and were also sentenced Tuesday.
Yet throughout Hennessy-Fiske’s article, readers are told these Antifa militants are only “alleged” members of the Antifa cell and that Antifa is merely a “loosely knit movement of far-left activists — often anti-capitalist or anti-state — who oppose fascism and other right-wing ideologies.”
Prosecutors’ description of Antifa is slightly different, instead defining Antifa as “a militant enterprise made up of networks of individuals and small groups, primarily ascribing to a revolutionary anarchist or autonomous Marxist ideology, which explicitly calls for the overthrow of the United States government, law enforcement authorities and the system of law.”
The Washington Post wasn’t alone in its outright false and twisted coverage.
The Guardian’s Sam Levine headlined his piece: “Texas anti-ICE protesters convicted of terrorism charges sentenced to at least 50 years in prison,” with a subhead that read: “Activists accused of being part of Antifa get long prison terms in case seen as test of Trump’s crackdown on dissent.”
Levine portrays the defendants as merely “nine activists” and described the ambush as follows:
The demonstrators arrived late at night with a plan to set off fireworks as part of a noise demonstration to show solidarity with those detained inside. A few of the protesters spontaneously broke off from the main group and vandalized cars in the parking lot, a guard shack, slashed the tires on a government van and broke a security camera. When a police officer arrived on the scene and drew his weapon, one of the activists fired an AR-15 from the woods, hitting the officer in the shoulder. The officer survived.
There’s a lot wrong with Levine’s description of the attack, starting with the fact that he described it as merely a “noise demonstration.” But perhaps what’s most egregious is that Levine frames it as though the officer “drew his weapon” first which then prompted “one of the activists” to fire an AR-15. But Song isn’t an “activist.” He is a convict, an attempted murderer. Levine’s framing suggests some self-defense element — a defense leftists are spreading on social media.
Then of course there is the other evidence that was presented to jurors who ultimately voted to convict Song. Song proposed freeing the detainees at the facility and told members of the Antifa cell they should “wear black bloc and bring rifles, because he (Song) wasn’t going to be arrested” during a July 3 “gear check,” according to DOJ. Evidence further showed, according to the DOJ, that “some of the defendants attended a peaceful daytime protest at Prairieland on July 4 — without the gear they brought that night — and that they reported back to other defendants details regarding security at the facility.”
According to the DOJ, the defendants purposely dressed in dark clothing to both conceal their identities and “aid and abet those members engaged in illegal acts by making members indistinguishable from one another to law enforcement.”
The defendants brought 11 firearms in total and conducted “reconnaissance and discussed what to bring to the riot, including firearms …” the DOJ press release states.
Much like the jurors decided, a group that conducted reconnaissance, coordinated equipment, brought rifles and body armor, discussed freeing detainees, shot a police officer, and had one member convicted on attempted murder was not merely at a “protest” that “turned violent.”
