You probably remember this attack on an ICE detention center in Texas which took place on July 4, 2025. A group of eleven anarchists dressed in black showed up at the ICE detention center and set off fireworks and vandalized vehicles. When local police arrived, one member of the group, Benjamin Song, opened fire, hitting the officer in the shoulder.
The shooter went on the run and was captured a week later. In his escape attempt he received help from additional members of the group who were also later arrested. In all, a total of 19 people have been connected to the crime. Five of them pleaded guilty to involvement in the plot last year, though they denied any intent to commit violence against police.
Joy Gibson, Lynette Sharp, Seth Sikes, Nathan Baumann and John Thomas pleaded guilty in Fort Worth federal court on one count of providing material support to terrorists. The terrorist act, the government says, was vandalism of the Prairieland Detention Center and a shooting that injured an Alvarado police officer who responded to the scene. A gunman also fired at two correctional officers, according to court records.
Ben Florey, Baumann’s attorney, said his client is only pleading guilty to damaging property. Florey maintained Baumann had no intentions of violence on July 4 — something other defendants and their attorneys have said.
“He would admit that he painted some cars, and he already has,” Florey said. “It was graffiti. And unfortunately, it was free speech until he damaged someone else’s property.”
Two more members of the group pleaded guilty to helping plan Benjamin Song’s escape:
Dallas resident Rebecca Morgan, 24, and Kennedale resident Susan Kent, 23, pleaded guilty in Fort Worth federal court to one count of providing material support to terrorists, a felony. They face up to 15 years in prison and will be sentenced in March…
After the shooting and the arrests of nine other defendants at the scene, criminal complaints allege Song hid out in a sunflower field until the next day. Meanwhile, Kent was part of a group that allegedly met at a hotel in Cleburne to plan getting Song away from Prairieland.
Defendant John Thomas, with the help of Lynette Sharp, helped drive Song back to Dallas. Song was arrested at Morgan’s apartment in Dallas after an FBI manhunt that lasted more than a week.
So that’s seven who’ve accepted a cooperation deal offered by the government. Another nine people are being charged with more serious crimes, essentially domestic terrorism for planning and carrying out the attack which resulted in a police officer being shot. The trial of those nine started last week. Almost immediately, a mistrial was declared.
U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman on Tuesday declared a mistrial in the case of nine defendants indicted in connection with a shooting at a North Texas ICE detention center after a defense attorney while questioning potential jurors wore a T-shirt on which there were photos of Civil Rights Era-protesters.
Pittman said from the bench that attorney MarQuetta Clayton’s shirt, which she wore under a blazer, was an attempt to visually equate the civil rights movement to the Prairieland Detention Facility shooting, a position perhaps appropriate for argument to the jury, the judge said, but improper to deliver via clothing to panel members in jury selection…
The judge said he was exasperated.
“I’m left with no other choice,” he said.
Pittman said the mistrial would cost taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars. The judge said he intended to schedule a show-cause hearing at which Clayton will have to explain why she should not be sanctioned.
The trial was restarted and Judge Pittman selected a new jury. The government is trying to make the case that this was a planned Antifa attack organized by Benjamin Song, the shooter.
The nine defendants in this case – Daniel Estrada, Ines Soto, Elizabeth Soto, Maricela Rueda, Bradford Morris, Savanna Batten, Benjamin Song, Zachary Evetts, and Cameron Arnold – are each accused of attacking the Prairieland Detention Facility on July 4, 2025, allegedly under Song’s direction.
The violence culminated in gunfire that left a responding Alvarado Police Department Lt. Thomas Gross seriously injured.
Defense attorneys have argued there was no ambush. They called it a planned noise demonstration to show support for the immigration detainees.
If a group of bank robbers go into a bank and one of them shoots a bank teller, all of them can be charged with murder. That’s essentially the claim the government is making here, that this was an organized attack which was intended to lead to violence. By contrast, the defense argument is that some of the robbers thought they were just attending a “noise demonstration” where they would do a little vandalism but no one would get hurt. Essentially they’re claiming the attempted murder of a police officer wasn’t part of the plan it was just something that Benjamin Song did on his own without informing them. Here’s how the attack happened according to prosecutors.
The group arrived at the facility late that night dressed in black — also known as “black bloc” to avoid being identified — and began spray-painting anti-police graffiti, slashing tires, destroying a surveillance camera and setting off fireworks. Officers inside the facility called local police.
When Alvarado Police Lt. Thomas Gross arrived just before 11 p.m. and got out of his car, one of the protesters — former Marine reservist Benjamin Song, who the prosecutors argued was the group’s leader — allegedly yelled “Get to the rifles!” He then opened fire with his AR-15-style rifle with a modified trigger that increased the rate of fire, according to investigators.
The bullet passed through Gross’s shoulder and out the back of his neck, narrowly missing his spine. He testified last week that he believed he had walked into an ambush and pulled his gun…
Several AR-style rifles were found at the scene, according to the criminal complaint, some defendants were armed, wearing body armor and carrying two-way radios. Prosecutors said 11 guns were recovered in total, with several found in defendants’ cars, disassembled in backpacks or near the detention center entrance. Investigators also recovered magazines from the scene containing ammunition, 12 sets of body armor, fireworks, a flag that said “Resist Fascism, Fight Oligarchy” and fliers that said “Fight ICE terror with class war.”
It sure sounds like they came ready for an attack. The fact that Song shouted “Get to the rifles!” also makes it sound like violence was part of the plan. But the trans woman who drove the van claimed the group had no plan.
Morris, who is transgender, brought two AR-style rifles, body armor and portable radios to the protest, which were seized from her van, Texas Ranger Tyler Williamson testified. But after the shooting, he said Morris told him she had never left the van and that “there really wasn’t a plan.”
“She said they bring rifles in case there is violence,” Williamson said, noting that at a previous protest someone had been struck by a car.
Morris later summoned investigators to the jail where Williamson said she cried as she told them she felt “disgust and betrayal” that a member of the group “shot someone in cold blood.”
This sort of strikes me like the getaway driver for the bank robbery claiming his car was full of weapons but he though they were just going to protest the bank. And also, he’s shocked the head robber shot someone and wishes to disassociate himself form the shooter.
It’s hard to believe anyone is really that dumb, even Antifa goons.
What I think is happening here is that they planned this and brought all their guns and weapons and spent time at the range as part of the socialist gun club, but when the moment arrived most of the chickened out. They still tried to hide Song and help him escape but no one else was really to actually shoot at a cop. Now they are eager to throw Song under the bus to save themselves. That’s my opinion and it could be wrong but it fits with most of the facts of what happened last July 4.
Incredibly, it seems the defendants wanted to claim self defense in the shooting of the police officer.
Gross testified that as he pulled into the facility, he saw at least two people dressed in all black — including one with a green mask and an AR-style rifle — running away, and he yelled at them to stop. Body camera footage shows as the officer got out of his car, the person in the green mask, who prosecutors allege was defendant Benjamin Song, shouted, “get to the rifles.”
Within seconds, gunshots rang out and Gross fell to the ground. Gross told jurors he was shot once in his neck, and the bullet exited through his back. The officer fired three shots in response.
But after questioning from the defense, Gross and other witnesses testified that the officer may have pulled his gun before the shooter drew his rifle…
Law enforcement witnesses said it would have been “extremely reasonable” and “absolutely” justified for Gross to draw his weapon upon arriving at the scene. Defense attorneys used Gross’ testimony to imply that Song fired to defend the unidentified third person running nearby, and Gross used unreasonable force.
Judge Pittman ruled this out of bounds.
Despite objections from five defense attorneys, U.S. District Court Judge Mark Pittman found it’s legally invalid for the nine defendants — including Benjamin Song, who Pittman for the first time referred to as the shooter — to claim Alvarado Police Lt. Thomas Gross was shot to protect Song or a third person Gross saw running when he arrived on the scene.
The defense goal seems to be to turn the trial into a circus but so far the judge isn’t allowing it. Still despite how obvious it seems that this was all planned in advance, it appears prosecutors don’t have a smoking gun Signal message in which the group discussed killing anyone. So it’s still possible a jury could convict Song and decide the others were just heavily armed and armored rubes who had no idea what he was planning.
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