The ringleader of a Texas antifa cell received a 100-year prison sentence on Tuesday in the first federal case to bring terrorism-related charges against antifa operatives, while seven of his accomplices will each spend decades behind bars for their roles in the terrorism plot that targeted immigration officers.Cell leader Benjamin Hanil Song was sentenced to 100 years in federal prison, effectively a life sentence, for the attempted murder of a police officer during the cell’s July 2025 attack on an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Alvarado, Texas.
Judges Mark Pittman and Reed O’Connor handed down the sentences simultaneously in separate courtrooms after Pittman, a nominee of President Donald Trump, reassigned several defendants to O’Connor, the district court’s George W. Bush-nominated chief judge, for unstated reasons.
Mugshot of Benjamin Hanil Song (Johnson County Sheriff’s Office)
All eight antifa cell members were found guilty earlier this year following a 12-day jury trial presided over by Pittman. Though the verdict was mixed, they were convicted on a majority of the 65 criminal counts they faced, including providing material support to terrorists, rioting “with the intent to commit an act of violence,” possession of and conspiracy to use an explosive, and corruptingly concealing incriminating documents.Song, Arnold, Evetts, Morris, and Rueda were additionally charged with attempting to murder federal officers and discharging a firearm in furtherance of a violent crime.Prosecutors said two security officers guarding the ICE detention center that night were lured outside by the sound of fireworks into the line of gunfire, and an Alvarado Police Department officer who was at the scene responding to a disturbance call was shot in the neck, though he survived.Song, however, was the only one convicted on the attempted murder and firearm charges, while the rest were acquitted.For the attempted murder conviction, Song faced up to life in federal prison. The lone count of providing material support to terrorists, such as firearms training, communications equipment, weapons, manpower, and transportation, carried a maximum 15-year prison sentence.The last remaining trial defendant, Ines Houston Soto, will be sentenced on July 1 due to scheduling problems, along with Joy Abigail Gibson and Rebecca Morgan, who had entered guilty pleas ahead of trial.Federal officials praised the convictions as part of the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle organized groups that commit political violence in the name of antifa. The aggressive prosecutorial approach, which sought to make examples out of the antifa terrorism suspects, was in line with Trump’s proclamation designating antifa as a domestic terrorist organization.
