December 11, 2025
What follows is a report on the organizing context in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex in light of the political repression surrounding, but not exclusive to, the Prairieland Defendants. This comes after we were asked to present on anti-ICE organizng in Chicago and DFW by comrades in the Zizania feminist squat in Athens. At the bottom we offer the best ways to provide solidarity to Prairieland Defendants, but you can find the most up-to-date support website via prairielanddefendants.com. We also highly encourage you to share the zine version of this report available here in both US letter and A4 sizes.
The Prairieland case is a political repression case stemming from a protest in solidarity with ICE Detainees that occurred on July 4th at the Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas, south of Fort Worth. There are currently 18 defendants facing life-altering state and federal charges. All but one are still in custody, being held on multi-million dollar bails and enduring horrific conditions. The accusations of the government are absurd, and the police response has been extreme, making it obvious that this is part of an effort to criminalize dissent along with the other high profile cases in Spokane, Portland, and Illinois. It has repeatedly been used by the Trump administration and its allies as an example of violence by “antifa.”
What do we know?
- There was a noise demo held at the Prairieland Detention Center on July 4th in solidarity with ICE detainees.
- In all, 18 people have been arrested and charged with a variety of crimes. 9 people were arrested that night, and another was arrested the next day during a raid on a house. The spouse of one defendant was arrested and charged with federal obstruction of justice with the evidence of a box of anarchist zines found in his car. One person the police believe to have been at the protest was detained after a 10 day manhunt involving the eventual arrest of 6 others. One of those arrested as part of the manhunt was charged with tampering with physical evidence for removing someone from group chats.
- Loved ones have good reasons to believe the state’s narrative is ludicrous based on their knowledge of the defendants and statements defendants have made since their arrest.
- As on November 13th, ten of the defendants have been combined onto a single indictment with a total of twelve charges. Seven others are charges separately on information.
What does the state allege?
- The state alleges that toward the end of the demonstration an individual fired a gun at an Alvarado police officer. The officer was allegedly injured in the neck and was released from the hospital within hours.
- The prosecution alleges that this was a coordinated ambush planned by all those in attendance. The subject of the manhunt and only accused shooter, Benjamin Song, is claimed to have been hidden by a number of individuals.
- The DOJ claims that the defendants are part of a violent ideological movement they call “antifa.” As evidence they cite zines, political rhetoric, and many practices common for activists such as using Signal, wearing black, and asserting their rights when arrested. They also use as evidence the printing press found in 2 defendants’ garage, which they used to print books for small left-wing presses.
– From the Support FAQ on dfwdefendants.noblogs.org/resources/
Prairieland Detention Center, located just south of the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, is one of ICE’s newest detention facilities. Holding kidnapped migrants and facilitating their deportations allows ICE to carry out the repression of the state’s internal political enemies. For example, the Prairieland facility detained Ángel Espinosa Villegas1, an anarchist participant of the George Floyd Uprising who was deported to Chile earlier this year and as of this writing, it still detains Leqaa Kordia2, a Palestinian participant of the Columbia encampment protests.
As mentioned in the quoted FAQ, this heavy repression of the Prairieland Defendants is being touted by the US government as its first legal case against “antifa.” Des Revol has been indicted on “corruptly concealing a document or record” for allegedly moving a box of zines, labeled as “antifa materials” by the government, from his spouse’s home. He is currently in federal prison with other defendants as his case moves forward and will likely be facing deportation proceedings afterwards3. In addition, a second FBI-led raid was conducted on the home of two defendants specifically to seize the printshop printer, the FBI justified this seizure by claiming their home printshop was used to print and distribute “antifa” and related “subversive” materials. Repression of anarchist publishing is nothing new of course, but this attack on speech in conjunction with the Oct 7th detainment of a local Filipino DACA recipient, Ya’akub Ira4, specifically for his advocacy of Palestinian liberation portend concerning headwinds for the currently unfolding repressive environment.
Setting aside the annoying and misinformed discourse of antifa in US social media, the significance of this legal maneuver should not be understated. Texas is located in the most conservative federal court circuit, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, the same court circuit responsible for bringing the case that overturned Roe v. Wade to the Supreme Court in addition to an attempt to bring a case to fully ban mifepristone (aka the abortion pill) in the US. On a bureaucratic level, this court also bucks standards of clearing its court dockets; its cases are heard at a much more rapid pace than other federal courts in the country. Already lawyers have expressed shock at the speed of the indictments and court hearings with the first of the trials starting in early-January according to the DFW Support Committee. To make matters worse, local Fort Worth courts have already felt emboldened to reprosecute organized leftist drag show defenders like Chris “Big Tex” G5 after their first failed attempts and the neighboring city of Arlington (the real host city of the FIFA World Cup Semifinals and Dallas Cowboy Stadium) has become one of the first cities to roll back LGBTQ anti-discrimination protections6. While Chicago is facing outright kidnappings from ICE, its legal justification, alongside heavier repression, may well come from this region.
All of this, of course, comes from a broader context. Texas is famously a bulwark for right wing politics and policy experimentation. In Johnson county alone, where the noise demo took place, Flock network surveillance cameras were used to collect evidence and prosecute a woman for allegedly self-administering an abortion. During the initial detention of Prairieland Defendants in Johnson County Jail, a fellow inmate (unrelated to this case) was forced to give birth in her cell and only afterwards was transferred to a hospital7. The sheriff of the county has been arrested, and released on bond, on unrelated sexual harassment, witness tampering, and aggravated perjury charges. In good old Texas fashion, a rally was held in the town in support of the sheriff after this news broke and a judge allowed him to continue working as sheriff8.
This last anecdote reflects the socio-political dynamics of the Dallas-Fort Worth area, and Texas more broadly. Everyone knows about the stereotype of the rambunctious gun-toting and freedom-loving Texan cowboy, but the imagination of freedom in Texas was conceived under the dual world-constitutive violences of the slave plantation and frontier settler-colonialism. On a more granular level, social life is heavily influenced by evangelical churches and their thinly-veiled political allegiances. Social interaction is determined by whatever church one decides to attend or not attend. The counterculture doesn’t fare much better. What often passes for radical is open support for the Democratic Party or its social democratic critics. While not a novel dynamic, it nevertheless thoroughly limits the political imagination. For example, a punk benefit show was organized to raise funds for the Prairieland Defendants, but Growl Records, the venue that initially booked the show and regularly hosts punk shows, backed out of hosting the show 3 days before the event was supposed to take place in the interest of keeping the venue a “safe space” for both sides of the political spectrum i.e. safe for Trump supporters. In addition, the owner of Growl is allegedly friends with police officers who informed him that the show would be surveilled and arrests made for language used for “attempts” at inciting a riot. This cowardice is not an isolated incident, local crust bands have asked for noise permits when asked to perform at squatted venues. Luckily a venue was secured at the last minute, but this is emblematic of the stupidity and political cowardice of local punk and punk-adjacent communities, despite their ethnic diversity, working class composition, and most significantly, radical posturing.
To say the least, it’s an uphill battle for the dozens of us that live in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex and actively seek and work towards the destruction of a settler-slaver conception of freedom that smothers us and is so readily valorized by people from all walks of life. Despite the grave legal implications from this case, there’s very little local support for the defendants, either due to pure ignorance or from being written off as “crazy extremists” or worse. Most “organizing” is relegated to digital spaces like discord servers or signal group chats due to the low-density suburban development of the entire metroplex resulting in car trips for simple errands regularly lasting 30+ minutes. Offline projects do exist of course and are important oases of radical relief, but if we are honest with ourselves, rarely do they become anything bigger than survival groups or glorified study groups with fluctuating attendance. We can contrast the Prairieland case with the recent inspirational anti-repression mobilization surrounding Sam Turnick’s arrest in Atlanta which of course comes in the wake of the Stop Cop City moment and the more robust radical community which preceded it9.
There’s sparse radical history or tradition for us to learn from. Significantly, and despite existing racial tensions, there was an absence of militant organizing and unrest in Dallas during the famous ‘long, hot summer of ‘67’ and its afterlife in the 1970s. Rallies and marches, especially from the left, are fairly uncommon and low in energy. When they do occur, rest assured they will be heavily policed by overzealous activists or groups like the Brown Berets and other state-communists like PSL and FRSO’s front groups. You can read the last two reportbacks on the haters cafe noblogs for a more in-depth look into these dynamics10. To date, if memory serves correctly, there have only been two small riots in the Dallas-Fort Worth area by those outside prison walls. The first after the murder of the 12 year-old Santos Rodriguez in 1973 and the second during the 2020 George Floyd rebellion. The latter really only describing some windows of gentrifying business getting smashed and graffitied — a low bar but better than nothing.
Whether due to Southern manners or genuine fear, open defiance against higher ups is rarely seen. Agree with the cop to his face and flip him off when he turns his back; truly the Texan spirit is rowdy! Local government collaboration with ICE is the norm and designations of “sanctuary city” or the like are rightly met with eye rolls and skepticism. Shame and ostracization are poor deterrents for people, including children of migrants, to join organizations like ICE and CBP. After all in the end, we all have to get our bag and even better if it’s in the service of a country that “we” were raised to be patriotic and grateful for.
Any sustained resistance — maybe more aptly described as avoidance — against ICE or the state in general, happens in the mundane. Undocumented communities already have a wealth of experience in avoiding the state from their homelands and through previous migration crackdowns. Recently there’s been increased reporting of ICE activities in Latino-majority areas of Dallas, but previous activities of so-called rapid response groups are stymied by the distance between neighborhoods and inflexibility of work life. Instead undocumented families and friends rely on each other by noting immigration checkpoints in WhatsApp groups, beginning their commutes earlier in the morning before the checkpoints are set up, and falsifying car registrations renewals or other bureaucratic necessities. Social ties, both genetic and chosen, are heavily relied on to bring amenities for those unable to travel outside their home or to raise funds via raffles or parties. Of course we are not uncritical of the fraught dynamics that this support can operate from, nor do we conflate this with an underlying practice of a latent “brown anarchy” as the direction of these actions often point towards an integration and even pride in the maintenance of broader capitalist American society, but in light of these practices, the skills and best practices recommended in pieces like “States of Siege” from Ill Will seem asinine by those of us raised and embedded in undocumented communities. Do so-called revolutionaries have nothing else to offer us?
We write this report not just to complain about the state of radical politics in DFW, but to emphasize the odds we’re up against. We are not trying to undermine the work of DFW Support Committee, and other comrades and groups, but the community is small here in Texas and lacks connection to broader networks. Haters Cafe is not blameless in this, we have so far failed to cultivate propulsive capacity to generalize an understanding of rebellion beyond the spectacular and recuperative (i.e. marches, activism, orgs, etc.) or a substantive counter-narrative to combat the deep acceptance and striving of suburban American ideals for most of the population. We often see the assumption that people of color, both immigrant and homegrown, are resistant to the latter values which is not just patronizing, but quite plainly wrong. There are various causes for this failure of a counter-narrative on our end from grave interpersonal failures to the constant demands of daily life, but instead of self-aggrandizing hopeful narratives that promote failed dead-end strategies, honest accountings of on the ground situations are what’s needed. Dallas is not New York, it is not Seattle, it is not Portland, it is not LA, it is not Chicago. Dallas is the rest of America crystallized in space and ideology and we need your solidarity and support from the outside to come out on the other side of this wave of repression stronger and more prepared for the inevitable next waves.
The best ways to be in solidarity with the Prairieland Defendants are the tried and true letter writing, fundraising, and awareness events. We encourage you to be creative and decentralized in this. Take a look at how people in your neck of the woods are already organizing themselves. You don’t have seek permission from the DFW Support Committee, just let them know if you think the increased visibility will be useful. You can find contact and commisary information for the defendants at prairielanddefendants.com along with a link to join the DFW Support Committee announcements signal. To contact the support committee for additional questions, their email is dfwsupportcommittee [at] hacari.com
Source: haters cafe