A justice system turned upside down: protesters face decades-long sentences while an agent who killed Renée Good, an unarmed female activist, walks free.
Johannesburg, 25 June 2026 - CIVICUS, the global civil society alliance, condemns the sentences handed down to eight protesters yesterday by the Federal Court in Fort Worth, Texas. The brutally unjust sentence of 30 to 100 years in federal prison targeted individuals protesting outside the Prairieland ICE detention centre in Alvarado on 4 July 2025.
These extreme sentences represent one of the most severe punishments imposed for protesting in recent US history. They raise grave concerns about the use of terrorism-related charges against protesters and migrants' rights.
The Prairieland defendants and their attorneys have maintained that the 4 July 2025 demonstration was meant to be a peaceful noise protest in solidarity with detainees inside the facility, and that no one intended for anyone to be harmed.
However, the federal authorities have described the defendants as members of an “antifa” cell. The judgment relied on evidence including political literature, encrypted communications, black clothing, and alleged protest planning. It recast ordinary and lawful behaviour as evidence of terrorism. The National Lawyers Guild and other observers have raised serious concerns about the defendants’ First Amendment rights and the fairness of the trial.
Benjamin Song received the harshest imprisonment of 100 years, and Maricela Rueda received 70 years. Five defendants - Autumn Hill, Savanna Batten, Zachary Evetts, Meagan Morris, and Elizabeth Soto - were sentenced to 50 years each. Daniel Rolando Sanchez Estrada, not even present at the protest and accused of moving a box of antifascist zines afterwards, was convicted to 30 years.
The disparity in the delivery of justice is shocking. They are the harshest protest-related verdicts in recent history, while the ICE agent who shot the peaceful protestor and observer Renée Good has faced no criminal punishment. The sentences are longer prison terms than any handed down to participants in the 6 January 2021 assault on the US Capitol. Capitol rioters have received presidential pardons, with some seeking compensation. This includes people charged with assaulting police officers, who are now positioning themselves to receive payouts from a USD 1.8 billion federal “Anti-Weaponisation Fund.”
This statement comes shortly after CIVICUS issued an urgent call to the United States to end attacks on anti-ICE protesters and civic freedoms activists. The Prairieland sentences are precisely the kind of escalating, politicised crackdown CIVICUS has been documenting. It reflects the pattern that led the CIVICUS Monitor in December 2025 to downgrade the United States’ civic space rating to “obstructed,” citing the criminalisation of peaceful protest, the growing militarisation of protests, and the branding of dissent as “domestic terrorism.”
We call on the US government to:
1. Cease the criminalisation of peaceful protest and end the abuse of “domestic terrorism” and “material support” provisions to attack civic freedoms protected by the First Amendment.
2. Ensure that Prairieland defendants are guaranteed the full due process and meaningful access to appellate review, free from political interference or retaliation based on their political beliefs or associations.
3. Conduct a prompt, thorough, independent and transparent investigation into the killing of demonstrators in protests, and ensure accountability where wrongdoing is found. Federal agencies must stop shielding officers from scrutiny by reassigning personnel. Incidents involving the use of lethal force must be subject to independent review.
4. Uphold the equal application of the law and ensure that decisions regarding investigation, prosecution, sentencing and clemency are guided by legal principles and human rights obligations rather than political allegiance.
We stand in solidarity with the Prairieland defendants, with the family of the demonstrators killed by police violence, and with every person in the country still willing to raise their voice.
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