On July 4, 2025, at least 10 masked militants dressed in black, some in body armor and carrying AR-style rifles, launched a coordinated nighttime ambush on ICE’s Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas, using fireworks and vandalism as a diversion before opening fire on responding officers and shooting an Alvarado police officer in the neck while unarmed correctional officers scrambled for cover.
According to federal complaints and a subsequent Justice Department indictment, the attackers were part of a self-described “North Texas Antifa Cell” that shared militant anarchist, anti-ICE, and anti-law-enforcement ideology, coordinated via encrypted Signal chats with auto-delete, stockpiled more than 50 firearms around Dallas–Fort Worth, trained together with weapons, arrived in “black bloc” gear, and even used a Faraday bag to block phone signals and frustrate tracking.
The case fits into a longer pattern in which Antifa-aligned groups, originally an anti-fascist street movement, have been flagged by U.S. security officials for violent “domestic terrorist” activity since at least 2016, particularly when targeting police, federal facilities, and immigration enforcement.
After an initial July 10 federal complaint charging ten suspects with attempted murder of federal agents and firearms offenses, the FBI later captured alleged ringleader Benjamin Song on July 15, and on November 14 a grand jury indicted nine alleged North Texas Antifa operatives while seven others were charged by information, for a total of 16 federal defendants and at least 18 people tied to the wider plot facing counts that include rioting, providing material support to terrorists, using explosives (fireworks) during a felony, obstruction, and attempted murder.
On November 19, five defendants—Joy Gibson, Lynette Sharp, Seth Sikes, Nathan Baumann, and John Thomas—pleaded guilty in Fort Worth to a single count of providing material support to terrorists for their roles in the Prairieland attack, admitting involvement in the vandalism, fireworks barrage, and gunfire that left the officer wounded; each now faces up to 15 years in federal prison, with sentencing scheduled for March 2026.
Federal prosecutors describe this as the first terrorism case explicitly tied to an Antifa cell since President Donald Trump’s September 22, 2025 executive order designating Antifa a domestic terrorist organization and directing agencies to prioritize such cases, and supporters of the crackdown argue that the Prairieland prosecutions prove these Antifa-aligned cells are not just an “idea” but organized terror networks finally being held to account for violent attacks on ICE and law enforcement.
