Eight Antifa members get 30 to 100 years for attacking a Texas ICE detention centre with weapons and explosives in 2025.
HOUSTON: Eight people convicted of involvement in an attack on an immigration detention center in Texas that authorities blamed on the left-wing Antifa movement were sentenced to decades in prison on Tuesday.
A federal jury in Fort Worth, Texas, found the defendants guilty in March of various charges including rioting, using weapons and explosives, obstruction and providing material support to terrorists.
Benjamin Song, who was described as the leader of a “North Texas Antifa Cell,” was convicted of the additional charge of attempted murder of a police officer.
Song was sentenced to 100 years in prison on Tuesday, the stiffest sentenced meted out to members of the group who took part in the July 4, 2025 attack on a facility in Texas run by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
The other seven defendants sentenced on Tuesday were given prison terms of between 30 and 70 years.
“The sentences handed down today make clear that Antifa terrorists who attack law enforcement and federal facilities will face swift and uncompromising justice,” Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a statement. “Their violent extremism has no place in our country.”
Seven other defendants pleaded guilty last year to one count of providing material support to terrorists and are to be sentenced on July 1.
ICE has played a leading role in President Donald Trump’s drive to deport millions of undocumented migrants from the United States.
Trump signed an executive order last year designating Antifa a domestic terrorist organization and officials said the Texas case was the first “targeting a coordinated group of Antifa cell members engaged in violent criminal activity.”
Antifa, a shorthand term for “anti-fascist,” is a nebulous movement of left-wing activists that experts say is more a political ideology than an organized group.
Antifa has a track record of confronting right-wing groups and engaging in civil disobedience.
According to prosecutors, the assailants, dressed in black military-style clothing, shot fireworks at the ICE facility and spray-painted “Traitor” and “ICE Pig” on cars and a guard structure.
When a police officer arrived on the scene, he was shot in the neck by Song, prosecutors said. The officer recovered and testified at the trial.
