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Last year’s July 4 began as an eventful, if typical, day in the small town of Alvarado, Texas. While the Dallas exurb held a two-day long Independence Day celebration, few seemed to acknowledge that within their town’s borders hundreds of immigrants are held in horrific conditions in an ICE detention center.

This complacency is something that Meagan Morris, alongside 17 other activists, aimed to disrupt by holding a peaceful protest outside the detention center’s walls. However, the night quickly went awry when a local cop was shot in the neck. All levels of government quickly politicized the shooting as an “antifa" terrorist conspiracy, aggressively launching a campaign of repression and propaganda against protestors who, according to their own statements and even plenty of the government’s own scanty “evidence,” had no plans for violence.

“The government line about a targeted attack [would be] a ridiculous suicide attack. I'm a middle aged housewife with arthritis and a whole family and home and dogs to lose,” Meagan Morris, a trans woman and defendant in the case, told Trans News Network from jail in FMC Fort Worth. “Neither myself, nor any of my friends are in some hurry to throw our lives away and live either in jail or on the run or something for a pointless act of violence. I'm not even physically capable of something like that!”

Morris is one of over a dozen activists who were arrested on outlandish allegations of a terrorist conspiracy to attack the facility. But prosecutors have provided no evidence that she nor any of her co-defendants had any involvement in the shooting. The defendants have been held on bail worth millions per individual, due to the charges’ legal severity. A separate individual, Benjamin Song, was dubiously charged with the shooting. The trial is set for Feb. 17.

And yet, the government insists that they’re an “antifa cell” that was hellbent on attacking federal officers. According to The Intercept, an FBI official was not even able to say with certainty whether the police officer in question shot first. Since the shooting of Charlie Kirk last September and Trump’s publication of the NSPM-7 memo targeting “domestic terrorism,” the federal government has ramped up its targeting of left-wing individuals under the conspiratorial lens of “antifa.”

Due to the fact the government’s case heavily relies on the defendants’ political views rather than their actions, groups that defend the incarcerated consider them to be political prisoners. These are people who are incarcerated not for violating laws, but for “their thoughts and ideas that have fundamentally challenged existing power relations,” according to the 2009 Encyclopedia of Race and Crime.

The treatment of the defendants is largely guided by their alleged ideological affiliation with what prosecutors describe as the “militant enterprise” of “antifa,” an organization that does not actually exist but has long served as a boogeyman to demonize any resistance to the far-right.

The Prairieland detention facility finished construction in early 2017 and was initially reported to have specific housing for trans migrants. But, as was later revealed, this never came to fruition.

Instead, the detention center set a course to treat trans women as nearly all jails and prisons do; perpetuating the institutional oppression of guards and officials working in tandem to turn a blind eye to transphobia and brutal sexual assault. Meanwhile, many Alvarado residents only saw the facility as a way to get new jobs and bolster their local economy.

Violations of human rights quickly – and predictably – became routine after Prairieland’s opening in 2017. Just one year into operations, ICE covered up the death of an Armenian immigrant at the facility – only revealed five years later in an investigation by Prism.

Early in 2020, a Guatemalan immigrant died from a treatable medical condition, just a month after being transferred to Praireland. The detention center later that year faced a class-action lawsuit from detainees over unsafe conditions that continued into the Biden administration as COVID-19 spread to nearly 200 immigrants by 2021, according to the ACLU.

In a separate investigation, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton ruled that the facility was legally allowed to withhold some unknown materials from a state Freedom of Information Act request.

And today, protesters are held in prison for a crime that there’s no evidence they committed. Some weren’t even at the protest.

“What happened July 4th was a normal protest, and regardless of what transpired that night, it’s clear that the scale and aggression of the police response is a fear tactic to send a message not only to DFW but across the country of how this administration will treat anyone standing against their rising authoritarianism,” the Dallas-Fort Worth Support Committee (DFWSC), a group of friends and family directly supporting the defendants in their legal battles, declared on their website.

DFWSC alleges that not only are some of the defendants incarcerated in spite of “likely never setting foot in Alvarado,” but that defendants saw their homes and families hit by militarized raids against unarmed civilians.

“Ongoing raids of several other homes across Texas have created hardship for defendants’ friends and families: agents deployed flashbang grenades, caused extensive damage, and detained spouses, family members and housemates without cause.”

“In one instance, federal agents tackled the adult child of a defendant and put a bag over their head before arresting them and transporting them to jail,” DFWSC’s accounts claim “‘I was terrified, I had no idea what was going on,’ the child later said. “During this interrogation, agents offered this person monetary bribes in exchange for information, which of course were refused. Police also attempted to extort them by offering to ‘get rid of a warrant’ if they cooperated with the law enforcement investigation.”

As of publication, Meagan Morris is still incarcerated. Throughout the case, prosecutors have exclusively referred to her by her deadname, even though she legally changed it nearly two decades ago.

After her arrest, Morris was initially held in the Johnson County Jail for three months in solitary confinement, and told TNN that the jail’s attention to medical care and health hazards was nonexistent.

“They only grudgingly gave me my medications, especially my HRT, when I made a big stink in the media and they had direct attention. They never gave me pain killers for my arthritis, I had to purchase them from commissary. Same with the lotion for my skin condition, I had to purchase that out of my own money,” she wrote, adding that the water quality was “gross and gives everyone there the runs.”

Due to the confinement, she had scarce means to interact with other people. On occasion, she was able to call her family and talk to them on tablets. She could talk to the inmates directly across from her, and any guards on duty – especially one who she describes as “a nerd and we talked about Stellaris and Helldivers a bunch.” Save for these minimal interactions, she was held in total isolation for three months, a length of solitary confinement internationally recognized as torture.

As Trans News Network has reported in previous coverage on Maryland and Florida, prisons routinely put trans women into solitary confinement to “protect” them from sexual assault. But this “protection” comes at a steep psychological cost, and is an inadequate replacement for placing trans women in safe housing conditions with other women or trans people.

She was eventually moved to a second ward, where a separate detainee would yell transphobic slurs at her. A guard, rather than stepping in, said that he agreed “trans people were against God’s will.”

Currently, Meagan asserts she still deals with poor facilities and treatment after her transfer to FMC Fort Worth, a federal men’s prison for inmates with specific medical needs. While she is getting some medical care such as her hormones, she has again been denied adequate care for her arthritis, with medical staff only offering ibuprofen.

She notes that in spite of the cold weather of early winter, staff have refused to turn the heaters on. Additionally, her toilet has been overflowing –– staff have refused to fix it.

Most humiliating, however, has been the continuous deadnaming and misgendering by government officials, prison staff, and even her own state-appointed lawyer.

“[Prosecutors] refuse to use my legal name, instead using my dead name which hasn't been legally mine since 2007,” Morris wrote.”When they use my dead name, they are very specifically violating a court order that's almost 2 decades old. Calling me by my birthname is simply flagrant disrespect both of me, and of the basic principles of rule of law.”

She also added that “most of the other inmates have been more affirming of my gender than the federal government.”

Shockingly, even Morris’ Texas public defender has spent his time engaging in transphobic tirades about her, drawing community concerns over whether she is receiving the fair legal representation that she’s supposed to.

“I do not care what [she] calls [her]self,” Robert Luttrell, her public defender, wrote in an Aug. 18 email to Morris’ partner rife with misgendering. “[Her] legal name is [Deadname] Morris. That is what is on all of [her] legal documents. Therefore, [she] is [Deadname] Morris. [She] is being held in the male portion of the Johnson County jail as well.”

In the email, Luttrell falsely claimed Meagan has not legally updated her gender and commented on her genitals, which needless to say has no relevance to her case.

The emails were circulated to the community by local news, and then later spread on social media, leading to multiple people reaching out to the state-licensed attorney to voice concern about his treatment of Morris. At the time of publication, Luttrell has never met her in person.

“Unless [she] has somehow manages[sic] to change [her] genetics [she] is a male in the eyes of the law. If [she] doesn’t want me as [her] lawyer [she] can always hire one,” Luttrell said to one social media user.

In another email, he compares his legal defense of Meagan to cases where he has defended child rapists, murderers and traffickers in court. Luttrell wrote, “I don’t have to support what my clients do, or who they are in order to defend them. If I did support them wouldn’t that make me a bad person?”

In the same email, he went even further in his tirade.

“Under the eyes of Texas law [she] is a man and will go to male prison if convicted. What do you think they will do to [her] in prison when [she] identifies as female? Have you thought about that? Because I have. Do you think the guards will protect [her]? They shot a cop in the neck. Maybe you should think about the reality of the situation and not your feelings.”

Luttrell doubled down on this violent transphobia towards his client in an email reviewed by Trans News Network, stating “someone shot a cop… I’m taking a position that I hope will save [her] life but maybe I should follow your advice and set [her] up to be harmed or killed in prison.”

In another email posted to Tumblr, he threatened someone who reached out to him. “Why don’t you come down to my office and speak to me this way. I dare you.”

Luttrell is still representing Morris for her Texas state charges as she searches for a more suitable attorney while detained before the trial. She is represented by a different attorney for her federal charges, and has not reported any issues with him.

Another trans woman facing charges is Autumn Hill, who didn’t even attend the protest. One of Morris’s partners who stayed home on July 4, she recounted her experience and denied the government’s claims of conspiracy in emails exchanged with TNN from jail.

“I waited all night for Meagan to come home. It was very distressing. No plans were made to commit any illegal activity, and it is a tragedy to me that the night ended in violence and mass arrests,” she wrote.

“I sat at the corner at the end of our street where it connected to the main road outside our house for something like an hour waiting for Meagan to come home that night, desperately hoping that she hadn't been caught up in whatever ploy the police intended to use to attack her reputation and take away her liberty.”

Hill recounts how, because her wallet was in the van used to transport protesters, police decided that was probable cause to arrest her.

“Later that afternoon, I heard multiple loud bangs in the front of the house,” she remembered. “The police knocked down our front door with a battering ram and flew a drone into the front door, loudly ordering us to come outside with our hands up.”

She did as the police told, fearing she would be shot if she displeased the heavily-armed officers.

“I walked out of the front door to find multiple guns immediately pointed at me and my family, including the infant daughter of one of our housemates, a new mother who was relying on us for housing at the time. I remember being ordered not to move, and then ordered to turn around and walk backwards to be handcuffed. At the time, I was wearing only a red houserobe. We were detained outside our house for hours.”

Hill was initially held in Johnson County jail, where she also describes facing numerous human rights violations.

“Living at Johnson County for 80 days was the longest time I’ve felt hunger cramps every single day before every single meal,” she wrote.

It took over a week for her to receive needed medications, even then only after pleading with the jail’s medical staff.

Like Morris, she was held in conditions that meet the UN definition of torture.

“We were in Administrative Segregation the whole time, so I only had contact with other inmates through the ‘bean chute’ - the slot they used to feed us - for 80 days,” she recounted. In spite of this, she found solidarity with others behind bars.

“I could see the indoor Rec Yard for my unit C5C through my bean chute, though, and the boys from the main eight person pods could tell that I was a trans woman - I would sit by the bean chute, using the tablet to read or make phone calls most of the day, and when they would go to rec yard, they would look at me, wave, and blow kisses sometimes. It made me laugh.”

Currently, she’s held at FMC Fort Worth with Morris, where she has had less trouble receiving her medications and said that the other incarcerated people at the facility were “much more gender-affirming to me throughout the entire process than any representative of the government has ever been since my arrest."

Initially after transfering to the federal facility, she felt immense fear, owing to the extremely high rates of sexual assault against incarcerated trans women housed with men. Nevertheless, the community she formed inside has been instrumental in helping her approach this situation.

“Outside of those first few days of uncertainty, I have felt nothing but a sense of community here. Jail reminds me more than anything else of Boy Scout Camp - my co-defendants describe it as being like living in poverty or at high school, but with extremely steep penalties if anyone is caught fighting, doing drugs, or having sex,” she wrote. “It's like a little village in here, and the guards are much more problematic to us than the other detainees, who mostly like to make delicious cakes and soups and other recipes with what's available on the commissary and share with their neighbors.”

After hearing concerns that Morris and the other DFWSC prisoners count as political prisoners, Trans News Network analyzed court records for the case and spoke to experts on authoritarianism about its implications.

Michael Coppedge, a professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame and an investigator for the Varieties of Democracy Project, specializes in research on authoritarianism across the world.

“I think there's some similar techniques being used. Arresting people with little propagation who have not really done anything to break the law, but are just creating a nuisance for armed forces or the police, or just filming things that seem to threaten the agents of the government who don't want to be held accountable for their actions,” Coppedge told TNN. “Creating excuses to arrest people as a way of suppressing dissent.”

“Police or ICE agents do it while wearing masks and not identifying themselves to avoid accountability. Arresting people and then holding them incommunicado, that's not happening with everybody, but it's been happening with some people from what I understand,” he continued. “That's sort of like disappearing people, at least temporarily. I certainly hope they're not taking dissenting people and killing them and hiding it. I don't see any evidence of that, but it's disturbing.”

Just weeks after this interview, ICE agent Jonathan Ross shot and killed Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis, a queer woman who was protesting the agency’s invasion of her city.

Coppedge further elaborates that he believes democracy in the United States has been eroding since the first Trump administration.

“We've seen some erosion of democracy in the United States. As of the end of 2024, which is the most recent data we have… was with respect to the ability of the courts to hold the executive accountable and the willingness of Congress to hold the executive accountable and then take investigations. There's also some erosion in media freedom.”

Ari Shaw, senior fellow and director of international programs at the Williams Institute, agrees. With his research primarily specializing in Hungarian authoritarianism, he told Trans News Network that “attacks on LGBTQ people can be an early indicator of a more fundamental erosion of democratic norms and institutions.”

When asked about the Prairieland case, he drew a comparison to his prior work.

“We certainly see in our research cases where LGBTQ and trans people in particular are scapegoated within the context of rising authoritarianism,” Shaw said. “In many cases we see public officials weaponizing homophobia and transphobia for political purposes, whether to mobilize voters or to distract from domestic, social, or economic crises.”

“It’s a way of deflecting attention or scrutiny from existing controversies or things that may be more politically challenging for them. I can't say definitively that's what's happening in this case, but it's certainly something that we see in other contexts of a more authoritarian regime.”

He believes there are direct comparisons to Hungary’s persecution of LGBTQ+ people and what we’re witnessing in America today.

“Hungary in many ways is a paradigmatic example of this. Viktor Orban, who's been in power for much of the last decade, has really made attacks on sexual and gender minorities a central part of his political strategy for consolidating power and executive control over many areas of political and civic life,” Shaw told TNN. “We've seen within the last few years constitutional amendments [in Hungary] that have specifically endangered the lives of, or have rolled back rights for trans people, whether by defining sex in binary terms, or by limiting opportunities for legal gender recognition.”

“It's this focus on casting LGBTQ people and trans people in particular as sort of outside the norm of ‘tradition.’ This sets up this false enemy, and it's a way to rally the nation around his political agenda and it's been unfortunately remarkably effective.”

When asked for specific examples on this kind of action, he cited the Floridian “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which was modeled after Hungary’s “anti-LGBTQ+ propaganda law.” This was, in turn, modeled after a 2013 anti-LGBTQ+ law in Russia. “We’re seeing almost a direct influence of those strategies and efforts to restrict rights, in almost exact replica, in US states.”

“The Prairieland Defendants have been confined now for nearly 4 months, battling both state and federal Charges,” The Anarchist Black Cross, an organization supporting political prisoners in the United States, declared in a November statement. “Many have been moved far from their homes, having had their lives upended due to the government’s war against ‘antifa,’ and a fearmongering of anyone who holds dissenting beliefs.”

“This case is scary, and each person detained right now could have been anyone on the outside who went to a protest against ICE, expecting to go home right afterwards.”

“This is the first instance where the Trump Administration has framed ‘antifa’ as a terrorist group in a criminal case,” an October public statement from the National Lawyers Guild declared, “The National Lawyers Guild stands with anti-ICE dissent and calls for solidarity with the Prairieland Defendants. We cannot tolerate the dangerous criminalization of a noise demonstration against ICE.”

The NLG, a legal organization which fights for the rights of political prisoners, went further, condemning the government’s continued incarceration of these defendants with severe charges.

“We are alarmed by the appearance of federal prosecutors and agents coordinating with the Alvarado Police Department and Johnston County District Attorney’s Office to indefinitely detain the Prairieland Defendants through concurrent, extreme state and federal charges,” they continued. “Despite this incident occurring over three months ago, with allegations against defendants who weren’t even at the noise demonstration, the government is only now declaring that there was a so-called “antifa terrorist cell”, pursuant to Trump’s new directive.

The trial is scheduled to start Feb. 17, with Trump-appointed judge Mark Pittman saying he does not anticipate granting further delays in a court order. The government’s assertion that the actions of protestors last July amounted to terrorism will likely rely heavily on “expert” testimonials during the trial, according to their Notice of Expert Testimony.

One of the experts the government will rely on, according to those court documents, is Center for Security Policy employee and far-right political activist Kyle Shideler. Shideler has spent years spreading racist propaganda against Muslims and Black people under the guise of “counterterrorism.”

More recently he’s switched his targets to “antifa" and trans people, including using an anti-trans slur. In spite of the supposed requirement for court experts to have a commitment to objectivity in their subject matter, Shideler routinely engages with far-right trolls like Andy Ngo, and recently declared he “could be talked into drone striking marijuana smokers on U.S. streets."

The rest of the governments’ case lies largely on the existence of two Signal chats used by protestors, and an in-person meeting before the protest, according to the indictment. The other “evidence,” scanty as it is, includes fireworks, first aid kits, body armor, and alleged minor property damage to a CCTV camera and some tires. But their own evidence suggests that these materials align with equipment for a peaceful noise demonstration, and were only brought to protect from violence by ICE and police, a very real threat.

The government’s own allegations even admit that the protest was discussed in the larger chat as a peaceful noise demonstration, which coincided with the U.S. holiday known for countless civilians shooting fireworks to make noise.

The government’s sole supposed evidence of “intent” was the alleged shooter, Benjamin Song, carrying a rifle for what the indictment alleges was intimidation and self-defense purposes – a kind of open carry that is legal in Texas – and stating that he does “not want to go to jail.” Nowhere in the indictment is a stated intent to kill or harm alleged, nor is any evidence even given that Song is the shooter.

Further, the federal government has said it will “not give [the defendants] a detailed exposition of how it will prove knowledge and intent” prior to trial, stating that it will rely on the evidence in the chat messages, and people’s “adherence to a violent and extremist Antifa ideology for purposes of motive and intent.”

Beyond just alleged acts of violence, the indictment seeks to create a precedent that First Amendment-protected acts such as creating zines, practicing operational security, and having left-wing beliefs are evidence sufficient to escalate crimes to the level of terrorism, which carries some of the most severe legal penalties. One defendant in the case has even been charged merely for “concealing" zines.

While the brutality of the U.S.’s authoritarianism has ramped up since Trump’s reelection, the country has a long history of using similar authoritarian tactics to arrest Black, Indigenous, Muslim, queer, and environmental activists as political prisoners. Throughout this long history of oppression, activists have built community networks, even from behind bars and persevered with new tactics that adapt to the times.

Everyone reading this has a chance to play a part in doing that in our current time too.

When asked what people at home could do to support her and her co-defendants, Morris said, “It would help a lot for the public to donate to our fundraiser. It would help *a lot* for the public to understand and spread the point I made, that the government line about a targeted attack is a ridiculous suicide attack.”

“The most urgent thing we need is filthy lucre!” Hill said when asked the same question. “I hate to beg, but our fundraiser can always use more donations. Other than that, spreading news of the truth of what has happened to us, talking amongst themselves, and making their dissatisfaction about our case known loud and clear to the administration is, in my opinion, the best thing our friends can do. Let the voice of the people be heard!”

Currently, the organizers of the DFWSC have set up a GiveSendGo campaign to raise $80,000 for each of the defendants’ legal costs. DFWSC also has set up a page outlining ways people can get involved, including sending money and resources to the prisoners directly, setting up letter writing campaigns to keep inmates’ spirits up, and helping organize actions to raise awareness.

No matter what happens, this is an important reminder for the public to build connections in their local communities and rely on support from their family, friends, and neighbors to make it through to tomorrow. The only way out of oppression is by solidarity, and by rejecting and pushing back against efforts to single people out, to keep us terrified, weak and alone. The solution can only be found together.

—Edited by Mady Castigan and David Forbes