Nine people received between 30 and 100 years in prison for the attack on an immigration center in Texas

Author, News Department

Place of work, BBC Russian Service

Published an hour ago

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The defendants received 30 to 100 years in prison for the attack on a federal immigration center in Texas on July 4, 2025. According to the prosecutor's office, armed left-wing radicals opened fire on police officers and wounded one of them.

A jury found nine defendants guilty in March. On Tuesday, June 23, the court determined sentences for eight defendants. The sentencing of another defendant in the case is scheduled for July.

Benjamin Song, whom investigators considered the leader of the group, received the longest sentence. He was sentenced to 100 years in prison. Another six people received sentences ranging from 50 to 70 years. One of the defendants, found guilty of less serious crimes and not even present at the protest, received 30 years in prison, writes the New York Times.

The incident occurred on July 4, 2025, at the Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas, a facility where U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detains immigrants. About a dozen people dressed in black arrived at the center after dark.

As the prosecutor's office points out, some began to paint the walls and the official car, while others damaged the CCTV camera. They also set off fireworks. The leader of the group, Benjamin Song, a former Marine, was some distance away, armed with a rifle. When a police officer arrived to respond to an alarm call, Song shot him. The policeman was wounded and the attackers fled.

The activists were later detained and charged with terrorist activities.

According to Reuters, lawyers said the defendants were planning a peaceful protest in support of people being held at an immigration detention center and denied the group had ties to Antifa, the decentralized anti-fascist movement that President Donald Trump last year declared a "domestic terrorist organization."

Song's lawyer, Philip Hayes, said his client intends to appeal. According to him, those convicted are not “a bunch of terrorists,” but a group of young people “who wanted their voice to be heard.”