8 convicted in Texas immigration center shooting and protest are sentenced to decades in prison

A former US Marine reservist and seven others were sentenced Tuesday to decades in prison over a shooting last year that wounded a police officer during a demonstration at a Texas immigration detention center.Prosecutors called the crime an act of terrorism and said the eight were linked to the leftist militant group Antifa.The defendants’ attorneys denied any Antifa ties and family members expressed shock and anger over the stiff sentences.Benjamin Song, the Marine reservist who was convicted of opening fire during the July 4 demonstration outside the Prairieland Detention Center near Dallas, was sentenced to 100 years in prison, the maximum punishment.The seven others sentenced in Fort Worth courtrooms received prison terms ranging from 30 to 70 years.“I am livid,” said Lydia Koza, whose wife, Autumn Hill, was sentenced to 50 years in prison.“The government wants to take her entire life away because she attended a protest.

Nobody died.”US District Judge Reed O’Connor, one of two judges overseeing the proceedings, said what happened wasn’t a protest but “an assault on democracy.” All but one of the eight defendants sentenced Tuesday were convicted on terrorism charges.“The need to deter this type of conduct is high,” O’Connor said.The case drew attention beyond Texas as critics warned it could have wide-reaching impact on protests and First Amendment free-speech rights.The Justice Department called it the first sentencing of “defendants affiliated with” Antifa after President Donald Trump last fall signed an executive order designating it as a domestic terrorist organization.Trump issued the order even though there is no domestic equivalent to the State Department’s list of foreign terror organizations.Antifa is not a single organization but rather an umbrella term for far-left militant groups that confront or resist neo-Nazis and white supremacists at demonstrations.“The sentences handed down today make clear that Antifa terror...