Why We Have to Fight Back Against ICE Protesters’ Terror Convictions
Since his first inauguration, Trump has been throwing charges at protesters and seeing what sticks. He always failed — until now.
Natasha Lennard, March 17 2026
Excerpt: "It started on President Donald Trump’s very first day in office in 2017. Over 200 #InaugurationDay #protesters were mass arrested and charged with hefty riot and conspiracy felonies for simply being present and wearing black at a rowdy demonstration.
"Since then, the government has sought and failed to convict left-wing activists on thin, unconstitutional claims of collective guilt.
"Just as the J20 prosecutions, as the inauguration cases were known, fell apart, so too did cases accusing dozens of participants in the Atlanta-based #StopCopCity movement of #DomesticTerrorism, #racketeering, and conspiracy.
"It became a pattern of sorts. Prosecutors on both the federal and state level throwing extreme and overreaching charges at leftists, based on infirm theories of collective liability, aiming to paint #antifascist, #AntiRacist movements as criminal terrorist networks. The evidence marshaled in these cases was consistently no more than typical #FirstAmendment-protected activity, like making protest signs, raising bail funds, or being present at a demonstration. The cases drained movement energies and resources.
Again and again, though, they failed.
"This was the pattern repeated in the malign, overreaching cases against protesters in #FortWorthTX. The #AntiICE activists had mounted a demonstration at a U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement jail in nearby #Alvarado.
There were consistencies with other anti-protest cases. There had been some illegal activity outside the #PrairielandDetentionFacility last July, and a police officer was shot. The government latched onto these circumstances to build its strategy of criminalizing dissent through guilt by association.
"Even in conservative Texas, I didn’t think a jury would buy the government’s case that these defendants were 'North Texas Antifa Cell operatives' — an organization fabricated whole cloth by the Trump administration — who had orchestrated an elaborate ambush of the ICE facility.
" 'Most people looking at this case are still stuck on the shooting aspect, but the jury decided the shooting was beside the point,' a member of a support group for the defendants told me. 'The verdict is that a normal #NoiseDemo deserves to be called terrorism and people should spend potentially the rest of their lives in prison. The implications of this are obvious, and people should know that the DOJ is going to try this again.' "
Read more:
https://theintercept.com/2026/03/17/ice-protester-terrorism-convictions-trump-prairieland/
Archived version:
https://archive.ph/uvx92
#USPol #DomesticTerrorism #AntiICEProtests #Texas #ResistICE #SilencingDissent #AntiTerrorismLaws
#CriminalizingProtest #Resistance
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