DFW Support Committee Highlights Key Video Footage for Public, Which Federal Judge Mark Pittman Kept Under Seal for Weeks After Trial
FORT WORTH, TX — Four months after the federal Prairieland verdicts, and a year after the Fourth of July noise demonstration held in solidarity with ICE Detention Center detainees, around which the Prairieland case revolves, the DFW Support Committee was able to piece together trial evidence to debunk government claims and refute rampant mischaracterizations in the media of that night’s events.
The US District Court for the Northern District of Texas, which recently sentenced nine federal trial defendants to consecutive terms of 30-100 years in prison, kept key evidence sealed for weeks after the March trial had concluded. Until now, this evidence has not been widely viewed by the public. The DFW Support Committee has highlighted certain video evidence that shows the July 4 demonstration was not an ambush or an attack—the dominant narrative coming from the government and uncritically repeated by mainstream media. CCTV footage depicts a largely uneventful gathering aside from a few protesters shooting fireworks into the air and minor vandalism. The evidence also shows a police officer arriving on the scene, quickly drawing his firearm, aiming it at departing protesters, and firing, despite the clear absence of any threat.
The government’s charges of using and carrying explosives, as well as conspiracy to do so, stem from the use of consumer grade fireworks. Two different CCTV cameras (GX13 and GX14) recorded footage of fireworks being shot into the air, not at the detention facility, as some news media claim. The same footage shows protesters leaving when asked to do so by detention center staff. Additional CCTV footage (GX11) shows minor vandalism, including spray painting a police vehicle, carried out by a single individual. Instead of charging that person with vandalism, the government dubbed the protest a riot and charged eight defendants with rioting and material support for terrorism for the same minor vandalism carried out by a single person.
After the noise, fireworks, and minor vandalism took place the night of July 4, 2025, the scene at the Prairieland ICE Detention Center—a razor wire, fully-fenced fortress—was relatively calm. It was only after Alvarado Police Department Lt. Thomas Gross arrived on the scene that things escalated.
Bodycam footage from Lt. Gross (GX3) shows him exiting his vehicle and immediately pointing his gun at the back of a protester, before taking a shooting stance and firing. Additional CCTV footage from the detention facility (GX10 at 1:29:26) shows a protester running away, Lt. Gross aiming at them, and Prairieland defendant Benjamin “Champagne” Song firing suppressive shots at the ground to avert the murder of the fleeing protester. Rather than attempting to murder Lt. Gross, as the government claims, it appears clear that Song was trying to save a life. The events that this evidence depicts have been corroborated by Song in a post-sentencing statement. But when Song’s lawyers attempted to argue “defense of another” at trial, the government filed an emergency motion to block the argument. In a ruling that contradicted his own timeliness rules for motions and arguably outside of his authority, US District Court Judge Mark Pittman granted the government’s motion.
Moreover, bodycam footage from Lt. Gross (GX3 at 2:23) reveals that the projectile trails emerging from Song’s direction are angled away from the officer in an entirely different direction, making it implausible that a bullet from Song’s gun was what injured Lt. Gross. The same bodycam footage also shows that the projectile trail from Lt. Gross leaves his gun and returns virtually along the same path, indicating that his bullet may have ricocheted, which is not uncommon. Damage to Song’s rifle, which seems to indicate that a bullet hit it, supports a scenario in which Lt. Gross’s bullet ricocheted off of Song’s rifle to graze Lt. Gross on its return. In addition, the photographic evidence of his impact wound (GX4, page 4) does not fit the profile of a direct hit from the kind of semi-automatic rifle used by Song, but does fit the kind of injury sustained from a ricocheted bullet.
One of the most common government narratives supporting its claims of an “ambush,” and repeated by media, is that Song was hiding in or near the woods. But this narrative is also contradicted by the evidence. In recently released footage from the trial (GX3 at 2:21), Song is shown in the middle of the street, in plain view, and wearing a neon green neck gaiter. It is highly unlikely that Song was not visible to Lt. Gross even in the dark.
Notably, the only defendant who admitted to vandalism the night of the July 4, 2025 noise demonstration, Nathan Baumann, received a sentence nearly thirty times shorter than most trial defendants. The minor vandalism weakly underpins the government’s allegations of terrorism and the after-the-fact designation of the demonstration as a riot. Moreover, Baumann was unknown to any of the other defendants prior to the demonstration and he had the least political affiliations cited in trial testimony, bolstering many supporters’ claims that the sentences are meant to punish defendants for their political ideas rather than their actions.
Another argument the government used at trial to bolster its accusations of material support for terrorism is the claim that all of the protesters were wearing black, so-called “tactical” clothing, body armor, and masks in an effort to conceal their identities. While dressing in black does not constitute criminal behavior, let alone material support for terrorism, the government failed to even prove those claims. The protesters seen in police bodycam footage (GX16 at 1:30 and GX18) are wearing a variety of outfits and colors, including short-sleeve t-shirts, tank tops, and blue work pants, thereby undermining the government’s material support argument. The government never charged anyone with terrorism nor had to prove that terrorism took place that night.
Yet another unfounded government claim used at trial was the alleged conspiracy between Prairieland defendants Maricela Rueda and her husband, Daniel “Des” Rolando Sanchez Estrada. The government claimed that Rueda asked her husband in so-called “coded language”—during a phone call from jail before Sanchez Estrada was arrested—to move a box of political zines. This fabricated story is quickly debunked by reviewing the audio file of the call between Rueda and Sanchez Estrada (GX76) offered as trial evidence by the prosecution. During the call, Rueda is heard clearly asking her husband, without code and with earnest, to take care of her animals (rabbits, cats, and a dog), her daughter, her house, and her car.
The government also used the same call to imply that Rueda instructed her husband to move a box of political literature, but Rueda gave no such instructions. Trial evidence instead showed Sanchez Estrada retrieving from his parent’s house a box of his own belongings—unrelated to the July 4 protest and containing First Amendment-protected material—and transporting the box to a friend who collects historic zines and art (GX186). The government at no time provided evidence that the box was being concealed or hidden in order to protect anyone or avert arrest and prosecution.
All nine federal Prairieland trial defendants have filed notices of appeal with the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals to fight their convictions and extreme sentences.
The Prairieland cases, involving 22 people charged with both state and federal charges, stem from a noise demonstration in solidarity with detainees at the Prairieland ICE Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas, on July 4, 2025. After the protest, an officer with the Alvarado Police Department arrived on the scene, quickly drawing his gun and pointing it at departing protesters. Shots were fired and the officer allegedly sustained minor injuries (GX2), but authorities have never provided hospital records to justify these claims. Alvarado police arrested ten people in the area, and a dozen more were arrested over the following several months.
Visit the Prairieland website for revealing information that debunks the dominant narratives which have been perpetuated by the government in its aim to criminalize anti-ICE resistance: https://prairielanddefendants.com/what-really-happened-at-prairieland.