Alvarado, TX — On February 17, 2026, the trial of nine people connected to a July 4, 2025 protest outside Alvarado, Texas’s Prairieland immigration detention center begins. Daniel “Des” Rolando Sanchez Estrada wasn’t even at the protest — his wife was — but prosecutors have repeatedly pressured him into giving up his lawful permanent resident status because he allegedly moved a box of zines the day after. Now that he’s going to trial, he’s looking at four decades behind bars and deportation.

That’s because Trump administration officials and federal prosecutors characterize the July protest that Sanchez Estrada’s wife Maricela Rueda allegedly attended as an act of domestic terrorism perpetrated by a sprawling “North Texas Antifa cell.” After a police officer was wounded, allegedly by gunfire, the night of the protest, prosecutors describe fireworks as “explosives,” protesters as terrorists, and behavior as innocuous as wearing black clothing as “riot, with the intent to commit an act of violence.”

If convicted of both charges he’s facing — Corruptly Concealing a Document or Record and Conspiracy to Conceal Documents — Sanchez Estrada faces 40 years in federal prison. His wife is one of five people facing life in prison for charges including attempted murder.

Deportation Demanded for Moving a Box of Zines

This all stems from a 2025 Independence Day protest in solidarity with migrants locked up at the Prairieland Detention Facility. According to the state, Rueda was among less than a dozen protesters who set off fireworks and committed minor acts of vandalism at a “noise demo” outside.

She was picked up by law enforcement after the protest and called Sanchez Estrada, telling him she had been arrested and advising him to take care of their shared home. With these words, according to the state, Des and Mari initiated a criminal conspiracy.

Following the call, Sanchez Estrada is alleged to have gone not to the house he shared with Rueda, but to his parents’ home and removed a box of zines. An FBI surveillance team followed him as he dropped the box off at another apartment, executing a search warrant to seize political pamphlets including the squatting manual “If It’s Vacant, Take It” and a critique of insurrectionary anarchism.

Moving these zines was enough for the state to threaten Sanchez Estrada with 40 years in prison if he didn’t give up his green card.

Related: The War on Terror Turns Left

Sanchez Estrada told Unicorn Riot he’s been offered two plea deals, of which “both end in deportation.” Per communications from the state, he says, “even if I get acquitted, it is very likely I [will] get deported.”

Sanchez Estrada would be deported to Mexico, a country he hasn’t lived in since he was 14. He is a former DACA recipient who received his green card through marriage to Maricela Rueda. “I have no family there, I have no friends there,” he says. “And being away from your loved ones is the worst punishment.”

Just like Mahmoud Khalil, Des “has his green card on the line because the government is making allegations about him,” the National Lawyers Guild’s Xavier T. de Janon told Unicorn Riot. “The federal government does have the power to start removal proceedings against anyone who’s not a U.S. citizen. This is happening. It’s frightening.”

“My friend continues to be in jail over a box of zines,” said Alma, a close friend of Des and member of his support committee. “It’s really ridiculous and scary.”

Guilty Pleas for Supporting “Terrorism”

In addition to Sanchez Estrada, Rueda, and their seven co-defendants who will stand trial on February 17, the state has extracted cooperating or non-cooperating plea deals from 9 other people, the majority of whom did not attend the protest themselves, either.

“Plea deals were all on material support of terrorism, a post-9/11 charge used almost exclusively against militant Islam,” a member of the DFW Support Committee, organized in solidarity with the Prairieland defendants, told Unicorn Riot. “The way the statute is written is incredibly vague: supporting a list of crimes that are not themselves terrorism.”

For example, Nathan Baumann pled guilty to material support of terrorism related to vandalism outside the Prairieland Detention Center, which the DFW Support Committee member characterizes as “material support for breaking stuff.”

None of the pleas, significantly, assert that there was any type of plan to shoot law enforcement officers, dealing a blow to Acting U.S. Attorney Nancy E. Larson’s argument that “this was not a so-called peaceful protest, it was indeed an ambush.”

The extreme charges against protest activity like setting off fireworks or spray-painting come as the Trump administration launches a nationwide campaign against antifascist organizers.

“At President Trump’s direction, we are prosecuting Antifa like we prosecute groups such as Tren de Aragua and MS-13,” US Attorney General Pam Bondi told Fox News. “Expect similar cases to come as we dismantle Antifa.”

The Front Line is Texas

Activists caution that defending the Prairieland defendants is crucial to stopping Trump’s broader attacks on the American left.

“If we lose this, you’re next. The kind of precedent this is setting is going to potentially establish a playbook that the Trump Admin is going to use to continue to go after the left,” the DFW Support Committee member warned.

In the wake of the ICE killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis, we learned that the state will posthumously label even a mother and legal observer as a domestic terrorist.

For that reason, the committee is encouraging supporters from around the country to donate to legal defense and come to Dallas as court support during the estimated five-week trial starting in mid-February.

“Converge; make your way to Dallas,” an organizer with the Support Committee told Unicorn Riot. “The front line is Texas.”

Broad public support of Sanchez Estrada and his co-defendants in the coming months could impede the Trump administration’s escalating repressive campaign against domestic dissidents.

“They’re persecuting people for beliefs that they don’t like,” Sanchez Estrada emphasized. “I didn’t do anything. I don’t want to hurt anybody.”

Andrew Lee studies and organizes against economic and political displacement. He is the author of Defying Displacement: Urban Recomposition and Social War (2024).

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